The Most "Over-Looked Sign" Of Good Teaching

Oprah's Principal gives four "over-looked signs" of good teaching to OWN.

My most "over-looked sign" of good teaching?

Teaching kids how much bullshit the system is going to try and put over on them.

I think George Carlin put it best:

“Don’t just teach your children to read… Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” -- George Carlin

Carlin elaborates here:




The most valuable lesson you can teach children these days is that every time someone in authority opens his or her mouth and says something to you, they're either lying to you, jiving you or selling you some crap you don't want and don't need.

The education reform movement wants to drive this kind of teaching and learning out of the system.

The movement wants schools to churn out obedient workers and compliant consumers, but certainly not children who grow up learning to question the crap the people in authority are trying to pull on them.

That's why they have promoted the Danielson rubric, with its 57 page checklist of "good teaching" that makes sure there is no room or time for teaching critical thinking skills that would question a system that puts a rigid observation rubric as a major measure of so-called good teaching into place.

That's why they have promoted so-called "student achievement" as measured by standardized multiple choice tests and essay tests graded by Microsoft/Pearson computer programs as a method for detecting good teaching.

They want to make sure that the only teaching that goes on in the classroom is the kind that teaches obedience, compliance, and FEAR - fear of failure, fear of authority, fear of the future, fear, fear, fear. 

I say, teach children how full of shit humans are - especially those in charge.

Start with teaching kids how full of shit the politicians and the business leaders and the media figures and the so-called Best and Brightest are.

You know, the people who brought us a country with Third World economic inequality, a dwindling standard of living for all but the top 1%, an oligarchical political system rigged by the wealthy, and a nation with a poisoned food system, a polluted environment and an exploitative economy.

That's a lesson kids need to learn.

And it's one you won't get from the full of shit Oprah Winfrey or the neo-liberal propaganda she promotes on OWN.

You won't get it from many other media sources either or from our politicians or business leaders or media figures.

But that is the most "overlooked sign" of good teaching - teaching kids how to detect and avoid the bullshit.