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Is there some reason you, as a parent, are incapable of discussing this with your daughters to the depth you feel is satisfactory? Or is this about wanting to dictate what is taught to other peoples' kids? Or about trying to bully the teacher and think you (with no training, knowledge of curriculum, or experience) must know best? Not every important thing can be taught in school. There simply isn't enough time in the day. History is important. But so is math. And English, science, physical education, art, music... and a host of other subjects, all of which are charged with covering a vast amount of material in an insufficient amount of time. Forty minutes a day cannot possibly cover every leader, culture, civilization, period, battle, or important event in history. In fact, even if the entire school day were devoted to NOTHING but the study of history, it would not be enough to cover every important occurrence in recorded history.
Additionally, the teaching of history as reduced to a series of facts, dates and names is outdated and simply a waste of time. The more raw material you attempt to cover, the shallower a treatment everything gets. Students stick with a curriculum and study units in depth to attempt to gain some real understanding of the time period, the important people and significant events. In my high school there was a single semester for the study of government--as if that could possibly cover everything. A single semester for economics.
Parents are their child's first and most important teacher. Learning should not stop at 3:00 when they get out of school. The school teaches a specific, basic curriculum to every single child. They cannot be expected to cover every single event on CNN, every important occurrence throughout the world, every significant event in history... because there simply isn't time. The job of a good parent is to supplement what is learned during the 7 hours in school with more in depth knowledge at home.
Excellent post....and I think you've taken a pretty good guess as to what this is about.
I can't imagine a better way to destroy what's left in effectiveness of our public school system than to demand that we teach to the media.
Is there some reason you, as a parent, are incapable of discussing this with your daughters to the depth you feel is satisfactory? Or is this about wanting to dictate what is taught to other peoples' kids? I said in my first post I told my girls about the man and that he died and what people were talking about on the news. Again I will say it was not a matter of TEACHING anything to my kids or anybody else's kids. I simply was confused about how it wasn't even mentioned. I'm well aware of limited time (I've been a teacher and know about curriculum and lesson plans.) I actually would have been happy with his name written on the board with year of birth and death and First Black President of South Africa. Is there no time to do that? You better believe if UNC beats Duke it is discussed in school the next day! Or about trying to bully the teacher and think you (with no training, knowledge of curriculum, or experience) must know best?How do you know what my experience, training and experience are???? Not every important thing can be taught in school. There simply isn't enough time in the day. History is important. But so is math. And English, science, physical education, art, music... and a host of other subjects, all of which are charged with covering a vast amount of material in an insufficient amount of time. Forty minutes a day cannot possibly cover every leader, culture, civilization, period, battle, or important event in history. In fact, even if the entire school day were devoted to NOTHING but the study of history, it would not be enough to cover every important occurrence in recorded history.
Additionally, the teaching of history as reduced to a series of facts, dates and names is outdated and simply a waste of time. The more raw material you attempt to cover, the shallower a treatment everything gets. Students stick with a curriculum and study units in depth to attempt to gain some real understanding of the time period, the important people and significant events. In my high school there was a single semester for the study of government--as if that could possibly cover everything. A single semester for economics.
Parents are their child's first and most important teacher. Learning should not stop at 3:00 when they get out of school. The school teaches a specific, basic curriculum to every single child. They cannot be expected to cover every single event on CNN, every important occurrence throughout the world, every significant event in history... because there simply isn't time. The job of a good parent is to supplement what is learned during the 7 hours in school with more in depth knowledge at home.
I certainly agree with you on that point. In fact we feel public education supplements what we teach at home and not the other way around.
I live in NY State, and work in a school just over the state line in Connecticut. At both my kids' school and where I work, it was definitely brought up (in the latter they did a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegiance and acknowledged him, in the former it was brought up during social studies).
To the OP: Maybe it's a geographical thing.....I hate to say it, but go back 50 years and in some ways North Carolina was South Africa......since I know it's a bit different there now (I have family that moved there from NY and Massachusetts respectively), I'd think it would be MORE rather than LESS impetus to memorialize him, but things are so politically polarized today, especially in the South....
I'm sure it was a bit South Africa, but so was NY. I was living in NY almost 50 years ago, and we had only one black family in town and no one - I mean no one- talked to them. Ever. They lived less than a quarter mile from me and I never learned a single one of their names. They were like their own little leper colony. And when a black family moved across the street from us (this would have been only 30 years ago) the neighbors were outraged, built tall fences just where their yards bordered that family's, and the kids threw rocks at their children and called them names. The south was probably worse, but it doesn't have a monopoly on racism.
I certainly agree with you on that point. In fact we feel public education supplements what we teach at home and not the other way around.
Then why is this such a big deal to you?
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I actually would have been happy with his name written on the board with year of birth and death and First Black President of South Africa. Is there no time to do that? You better believe if UNC beats Duke it is discussed in school the next day!
I have no idea how this teacher chooses to use her blackboard and if she routinely puts current event information up there or not. If part of the curriculum includes the study of apartheid, then obviously he would be included when it's time. But I agree with the previous teacher who pointed out that this is a sensitive subject that could potentially raise upsetting questions. It's also one that either needs to be dug into with some depth (impossible to do in a 30 second drive-by) or not mentioned as just a name and date, which will be meaningless to the kids.
There is a reason we typically wait until 8th grade to dig into the Holocaust. Kids that age are more capable of understanding the magnitude and significance of it and of learning the realities of what happened at a point they are emotionally ready to deal with it. Civil rights and discrimination in the US are typically studied in depth in 7th grade with the study of "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry." and "Farewell to Manzanar" (about Japanese internment in WW2.) And even in that study of discrimination? It doesn't cover discrimination towards Hispanics or gays, Native Americans, Arab-Americans or any of the other groups who experience it. The women's suffrage movement is barely covered. Are these things any less important? Of course not. But there simply isn't time to cover every important thing that ever happened anywhere. Instead, teachers cover specific units that will teach larger themes.
Unless your kid is in World History class and focusing on Africa, he/she shouldn't have to hear about this guy on school time. We really need to stop using public education to indoctrinate youngsters in liberal propaganda, and instead go back to teaching kids how to read, write, reason, and understand history.
You don't have any idea what being a school teacher is really like, or what curriculum is like. First, in my school district at least, no teacher has the freedom to discuss anything or anyone that is not in the district's curriculum. Moreover, if they do discuss someone, it has to be within the very limited contexts of what information is supposed to be taught. And it probably has to appear on a standardized test somewhere, too. If teachers made room to talk about every public figure in the news that day, they'd never finish teaching the stuff on the test that everyone cares so much about.
Add to that the fact that 5th and 6th graders really don't understand the history of apartheid to begin with (it's not in any curriculum that I know of in elementary school), it would be a pretty confusing lesson to come out of nowhere. It would also be a very sensitive topic leading to sensitive questions and ideas, and could easily get a teacher into big trouble if he or she didn't have some guidelines about what was approved and what was not. And teaching a sensitive subject, that is not approved, more or less according to one's own opinion and/or research, is absolutely the kind of thing that loses you your job in public school.
Finally, at least in my district, there are no history teachers up until 7th or 8th grade. There are only elementary school teachers who are mostly educated in teaching reading and math, and certainly don't have any significant history background. Many probably have no idea who Mandela was.
People are graduating college, and teaching, without knowing who Nelson Mandela was? That's a problem. You don't have to be a History or Political Science major to know who he was.
To answer the original posted question about what was talked about in local schools, re the death of Nelson Mandela.
Here in Toronto, the 450 students at Nelson Mandela Public school held a prayer service. The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper praised Mandela as a man of vision, and reminded all Canadians, that Nelson Mandela was the FIRST person to be named a Honorary CITIZEN of Canada. And he was also awarded the Order Of Canada, as a result of his Nobel Peace prize.
It was front page news here, across the country. All of the media here had prepared video reports about his life, knowing that he would not live forever.
Canada took a leading role in the international fight to remove the racist South African government, by introducing commercial and trade sanctions, and by refusing to buy products from South African companies.
When Nelson Mandela was first released from prison, the country that he visited first, was Canada. He could have gone to any country that he wanted to go to............But he came to Canada, to thank us for our support.
I am proud of that.
Jim b.
Toronto.
Toronto.
I can assure you similar things happened all across the US. As you know, our president said similar things. Madela's death was front page news here, too, even in the Boulder (CO) Daily Camera, a paper noted for headlining "Bear in a Tree" stories. The US, as you surely know, had similar sanctions against SA. Here's what Denver's mayor had to say:
Moderator Cut You want teachers in an American classroom to take time away from lesson plans to focus on a 95 year old non american man who died, when some of us thought he died months ago
Im in my 30's and if Im not mistaken, he did not affect my life here in the US in anyway. Lets stop acting like it was MLK.
If you're south african, i get it, but to ask your kids American teacher "when this great man will be discussed?", that shouldnt be your concern.
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Originally Posted by LauraC
Why are you expecting the teachers to do this? Do you think some American History teacher currently covering the American 1700s or 1800s or some elementary teacher had a lesson plan "ready to go" in case Mandela died? The cable news shows dropped their regular coverage to cover his life on the day he died. They always pre-prepare for a known figure's death who is up in age. Newspapers had his obituary written long before he died. If it was important to you, you could have sat them down to watch the TV news and talked to them about it.
It does seem to me that a good social studies teacher would be able to give a short impromptu talk about Mandela.
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Originally Posted by tgbwc
Agreed.
I teach fourth grade. It never occurred to me to spend time talking about Nelson Mandela on Friday. I don't think that's a bad thing. It doesn't take away from his life and importance, but many important things happen throughout the school year that we don't necessarily take time to discuss in class. If we did, it wouldn't take long to fall behind the pacing of our Program of Studies.
I can see that POV, but I do think a current event like that should have at least been mentioned in passing to fourth graders.
I sat my kids down last night and showed them his picture and told them all about Soweto and this man's life and his legacy. I wanted them to be aware of what was sure to be discussed in school today. I was shocked when both girls told me not one word was said about him And this is a very progressive school system. One girl in 5th and one in 6th grade. i plan to write a letter to their teachers asking how and when this great man will be discussed. Maybe it is too soon but surely this is not an unexpected death so at least a history teacher would have something to present.
Did your kids discuss Mandela in School today?
My daughter is my only child in K-12 and she is taking AP political science. Nelson Mandela was discussed at length, I am happy to report.
What makes me less happy are the two "Faux News" fed students who attempted to defame Mr.Mandela and actually had positive things to say about apartheid.
No Kudzu, I'd write that letter! Let me know what, if anything comes of it. All of this revisionist history just makes me sad.
People are graduating college, and teaching, without knowing who Nelson Mandela was? That's a problem. You don't have to be a History or Political Science major to know who he was.
Sadly, many people do graduate from college with "specialized" career focused majors and learn little else.
I'd personally prefer that teaching was not an undergraduate major, but a subject taught at the Master's level after having attained a degree in a liberal arts subject.
My kids go to regular public elementary school here and they learned about who Nelson Mandela was quite some time before he died - and they were saddened to learn of his death.
We were in the car when the news came on the radio and to my surprise a discussion then ensued between them about Mandela, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi and even Elie Wiesel!
Our school's demographics are roughly 65% old-stock French Canadians (mostly with roots going back 400 years to the colonists of New France), maybe 5% long-established descendants of Portuguese immigrants, 15% fairly recently arrived Lebanese, 10% would be black kids from either Haiti or francophone African countries, and the rest a smidgen of other groups like English Canadians from the other provinces, or European francophones from countries like France or Belgium.
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