Creative writing teacher resigns after student writes about Jesus, pot
Go ahead and follow the link to watch and read the story. Lets break this down:
- The teacher gave a creative writing assignment
- The assignment was to take a fairy tale and rewrite it for modern times
- A student took a bible story and rewrote according to the students perspective
- The student chose to associate a biblical story as a "fairy tale"
- The student chose to "pretend" Jesus handed out pot to sick people instead of bread and fishes to hungry people
- When the stories were shared with the class, another student took offense and complained to their parents about the content of another students work.
- The teacher was called in for discipline
- The teacher resigned rather than face the school districts "review process"
I can't imagine too many things worse than having to read high school students thoughts on anything. Seriously who gives a rip about the "deep thoughts" of teenagers? What if it was your job to get a bunch of hormone addled kids to produce something that resembled English Literature? I get nauseous and cold chills thinking about it.
What is a teacher to do?
First, tell the kids that whatever garbage (and its all garbage, even the inoffensive stuff) that comes out will be accepted because its creative. "We won't judge you".
Second, promote every little brain dropping as "artistic" and "valuable" to the learning process.
Only then can the teacher move on to item number three. Try to come up with a writing assignment that the kids will or actually can do. Hopefully someone will learn something.
After spending the first half of the semester propagandizing the kids into thinking they have something to contribute and hopefully some instruction in the art of writing, they get a relatively benign assignment. Ok kid's, I want you take a fairy tale or legend and rewrite it in modern times.
What could happen?
The Three Little Pigs could end up in a industrialized farming facility where they never see the sun, before they end up as bacon. The chicken who crossed the road could be going to work at an organically run, environmentally sustainable egg farm. Little Red Riding Hood could get raped. Who knows how this turns out? Do the assignment in your head. Did you come up with anything interesting and/or worthwhile? Me either.
So some kid comes up with Jesus passing out pot to sick people. You told a high school kid to be creative. He was. Was it semi-blasphemous and offensive to anyone with a tad bit of respect towards Christianity? Yeah of course it is. So what?
Unlike Islam, where they have to cut off the head of anyone who isn't instantly adoring and accommodating to their religious peculiarities, the Christian Deity is able to take care of Himself. I don't speak for Jesus and He hasn't told me what His reaction to all this is, but I'm pretty sure He can fry or forgive as He sees best. If past performance is predictive of future actions, bet on forgive.
Back to the high school. A Christian kid is upset and does the "grown up" thing and runs to their parents who "address the issue". Fine and good. Equal expression is important and part of a public venue like a school. The long and short is the teacher quit. Over what we aren't told.
If the teacher bailed because they were sick of spending their day pursuing meaningless and thankless nonsense only to get bawled out by her supervisors when a kid actually did an assignment, I can understand. I sympathize even. Otherwise she should have stayed on at her job.
A student did the assignment. She should have defended herself by saying that she "tried to provide an assignment that was open enough to maximize creativity and demonstrate competency according to the goals outlined in the syllabus". That should have the end of that. It wasn't. I suspect there is a reason for that and it probably has to do with the philosophical bent of the teacher and her "educational agenda" as a change agent.
On its face however this whole situation is silly.
"On its face however this whole situation is silly."
ReplyDeleteYup. Mountains and molehills.
Homeschool.
ReplyDeleteAfter dealing with the school system back in the mid 80's to their graduations, I felt like I went through a 12 year war on behalf of each of my kids. That was a couple of decades ago. I can't imagine letting my children attend public school right now, especially with the kiddie fiddlers and drug addicts who run the place.
ReplyDeleteRes, if the bad apples of this profession who hate decency and Christianity want to leave it because they were caught, I say more power to them.
What we need to do as parents is to somehow take back control of our individual school districts in terms of curiculum, and control over who gets hired. There are a lot of Christian teachers out there who would love to get back into the public schools, and there aren't enough places in private schools to employ all of them.
One thought that occurred to me about two years ago is that the Proverb about "teaching your child in the way they should go" fits perfectly in the concept of why parents should home school their kids.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, when you apply this to public schools they are set up to not only send your kids the wrong way in life, but they take great pride in the failure rate of their districts as well.
Children are forced to face dangers that they are not emotionally equipped to deal with when they are only in the early years of their education.
Sorry Res, my coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.
ReplyDeleteParents are indeed realizing all over the Country how badly their school districts are performing. Problem is, the unions set their employment situations up in such a way that even when they are caught red handed, it is extremely difficult to get rid of the bad teacher. Some districts face bankruptcy if they try to get rid of the bad teachers in their schools.
Even if parents demand that a particular teacher be gotten rid of, most times they can't because of a little thing called tenure. It takes heavy and expensive weaponry to get rid of the slugs and bad apples.
Meanwhile, they are free to poison the minds of as many kids as they can, And the unions gleefully protect these bad seeds.
Susan,
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you've said about bad teachers, and a system that is set up to ensure that kids either fit into a mold or fail all together.
The problem as I see it in this story is that the teacher gave an assignment that should be benign. Rewriting a fairy tale, or legend into modern times is exactly what I would expect form a high school level creative writing class.
It was the student that choose what to write and the plot of the story, not the teacher. For some unnamed reason the teacher ended up quitting. I can't tell from the story what happened that made the teacher quit other than getting called into the principles office.
Something isn't right about this story.
Most likely there is something else going on here with this teacher that we aren't privy to.
ReplyDeleteSometimes(more & more) we only find out about the final straw that broke the camel's back without knowing what the content of the others in the saddlebags were. It's like walking into theater while the movie is 2/3-3/4 done. Context.
When they write without giving us proper context, it winds up being conjecture. To me, that is just worthless and a waste of the writer's time. Not to mention our time in reading it.