Books Our Teachers Are Using Revisted #1

The Observer picked up on my blog, “Books Our Teachers Are Using.” DeWayne Bartels wrote “It is hard not to agree with Widmer.” DeWayne states he called District #150 and says some interest was shown by assistant superintendent Cynthia Fischer who said she would look into the idea.

While doing this Dr. Fischer should realize that any taxpayer living in Dist. #150 has the right to come to any school and look at any book that is being used in that building. However, the process could take all day and cause much disruption because these are the steps the interested party would ordinarily need to take.

1. Go to the office and receive permission from the principal who may or may not be in the office at the time.
2. After securing permission, each class would need to be interrupted while the teacher found the proper books and the teacher would feel obligated to answer any questions asked. This process would need to repeated for each book in each classroom on each subject being taught.
3. The requester may be delayed in each classroom visited because this is valuable teaching time for the teacher and while this review could be done after school, many teachers have extra-curricular activities or may have other duties or may even wish to meet an obligation at home.

I realize that Dist. #150 has a new curriculum director starting Monday so I did not plan to pursue my idea for 45 days. However, I believe the Observer and others may get involved with me. If not, then it is no wonder why our school system and the “finished” product it turns out, have been under attack for many years.

(This idea came to me after visiting some schools and being in total disagreement with two of the books being used. At White School, the teacher spent the entire period reading out of a book that appeared to me to be written to make some of the kids in the class feel that mistreatment of the underclass was standard operating procedure since early days of immigrants passing thru Ellis Island. Another book made no sense at all but its message was to convey to the underclass that people had power over them to make them do stupid things like constantly digging holes in the ground for no apparent reason other than to find riches for the upper class. Interest in the subject was poor and the teacher spent much of her time keeping the classroom settled down and trying to poorly discipline one unruly kid.)