Ralph K. Ginorio-164-INS Keep Right: RECLAIM SCHOOLS FROM THE PROS

RECLAIM SCHOOLS FROM THE PROS
by RALPH K. GINORIO/Keep Right
| April 25, 2022 11:07 AM

It is not for any educator to determine what will be the Portrait of a Graduate. Before they reach 18 years of age, children and teens belong to their parents. Moms and dads, not pedagogues, must determine what will constitute the proper moral education for each child.

Educators once understood the limits of their role. American public schools exist to pass on intact the skills, manners, culture, and norms of our distinct branch of Western civilization.

Children of immigrants from all over the world could rest assured knowing that their kids, the Nisei, would understand the USA as well as the children of natives. These second generation Americans would grow up with the "Old Country" at home and "America" at school.

The American dream is for each of us and our children to be free to develop our talents to their fullest. We and our kids can then compete and succeed based on merit, not identity.

Our ancestors paid in blood and treasure for us to reap the benefits of freedom and opportunity. However, today many who lead our schools have succumbed to the temptation of all who are entrusted to instruct the innocent. They conflate their own ideology with objective reality.

This is why Coeur d'Alene schools have been yoked to the burden of having academic success diluted by social and emotional learning goals. This is why the clarity of acculturation has been replaced by the siren song of liberation.

Instead of offering a solid academic curriculum that demands student and family commitment to excellence, today's messianic educators are trying to right all of the perceived social wrongs that their progressive philosophy has identified.

Instruction is shackled to a ludicrous conformity in pacing and assessment that denies the reality of individuality in students or teachers. Administrators can claim that the system is under control, and that transfers can be made without undue hardship.

Yet, this intrusive micromanagement stifles inspiration, suppresses creativity, and implicitly teaches students that abject conformity to the whims of authority trumps personal initiative and diversity. Oppressed classroom teachers cannot possibly model liberty to observant students.

Students who have nothing in common with one another are crammed into heterogeneously grouped classes, and Teachers are told to teach proverbial tough guys, gearheads, socialites, athletes and honors students all together, at once, in the same way.

This system sets everyone involved up to fail by demanding that teachers be all things to all students; simultaneously orienting lessons to every distinct learning style all at once. This is self-evidently impossible.

Multi-hour bloc scheduling is touted as the best way to get rid of lecture-oriented instruction, by establishing class sessions too long to accommodate straight lecturing. This imperative comes from progressive pedagogy that is reflexively hostile to anything even remotely traditional. Student-centered learning, they insist, must displace the direct instruction of teachers.

Discipline and academic standards are being constantly lowered in a desperate hope to avoid provoking troubled youths and difficult parents. This betrays a central duty of schools; to give young people experience in improvising, adapting to, and overcoming challenges.

Coeur d'Alene should lead the way in abandoning these distractions that waste our students' time and intrude on the parental prerogative to instill values in their kids.

Until progressive policies like Portrait of a Graduate, Social and Emotional Learning, Common Assessments, mandatory heterogeneous classes, administrative micromanagement, and the obsession with differentiated instruction are purged from our schools, students will continue to be the unwitting test subjects of an illegitimate social engineering experiment.

• • •

In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western civilization to high school students for over a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in special education, public schools and charter schools, grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com