You got a problem? They’ve got a curriculum to fix it. Or so says Peter Meyer, with insightful commentary on Fordham’s “Flypaper.”
“Just as you don’t stop teaching math to fix a water fountain, so you don’t stop teaching literature, history, and science because a child has an emotional problem. But that is what happens. I heard a wonderful speech the other day by one of New York State’s newest Regents, James O. Jackson, an African-American, who complained that our schools have been ‘turned into social service agencies.’ And he’s right. Every social problem gets a curriculum. Drugs – we have anti-drug classes. Character? Hours of character-building exercises. Jobs? We’ll visit employers (forget whether the kid can’t read or write). Teen pregnancy? Let’s hand out dolls and condoms and spend hours talking about body plumbing. Did someone say Dickens? Names of the fifty states? Abraham Lincoln? Who’s got time?
“I’m sorry, dear scholars, but African American children, like most children, would do much better later in life if school taught them how to read and write – and, hopefully, a little history and science, art and math along the way – instead of being served up what has become a steady and distracting and unhealthy diet of paternalism and fries.”
As we clean up our act in the cafeteria, let’s bring a well-rounded diet to the classroom, too.
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