Because you have the exact opposite going on in the advertisement for this "No Nonsense Nurturer" program that teaches new teachers how to discipline children and keep order in a classroom.
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| Still From The No Nonsense Nurturer Classroom Advertisement |
Again, "No Nonsense Nurturer" is a program that teaches teachers how to control a classroom or how to rule the unruly students. In the video advertisement, to sell this program to schools, there were approximately 6 or 7 images chock full of black and brown school children within 12 seconds, before you even get to see the title page of the video.
A few seconds later there were images of the teachers: I saw white man, white woman, and a brown skinned woman with what looked to have an Indian last name. Is it just me or are the optics problematic? There is an over-representation of black and brown skin in a video about discipline problems in schools. More than that, I think maybe unintended white supremacy attitudes are shining through once more.
Again, this "popular" program possibly being used in a school near you appears to be for teachers who haven't learned to control their classrooms. Instead of using another teacher-slash-human-being to teach the new teacher how to control their classrooms, this program introduces a bug and a earpiece into the classroom environment.
Yes, I said "a bug" - someone listens to everything that's going on in the classroom. They might be able to see as well. And the kids can see the earpiece. They know someone outside the classroom is controlling the teacher.
Gee, I wonder how kids will feel about privacy policy in the future if they get used to being bugged when they are 5 years old. But I digress.
The teacher wears the earpiece. Someone, the person on the other side of the bug, else tells the teacher how to respond to a child who is, for example, repeatedly talking out of turn or out of their seat without permission with standardized responses. The person on the other side of the bug even tells the teacher what body positions to use ("Stand in Mountain Pose").
Schools are doing all this instead teaching the teacher to respond to the child like an individual human being.
The thing I worry about most is in the article:
Robotic Step 1) Say this
Robotic Step 2) Do that
Robotic Step 3) Child doesn't obey twice in row
Robotic Step 4) Send child for formal discipline which winds up in your child's written record.
I see formal discipline for dark-skinned students multiplying exponentially in my crystal ball. I see this reducing the chances of the teacher EVER having a nurturing relationship with the students, a relationship without which I might not even be here.
What do YOU see in this video? In this program?
What kind of education is your child getting as a result of this treatment?
Just as important, who is being hired, disciplined, and fired in your school district if the voice in the teacher's ear is wrong just as often as it's right? What if the "natural teachers" the stellar teachers coming up through the ranks absolutely do not fit with the "No Nonsense Nurturer Classroom?"
Isn't this just a scam to get money out of your local school district?
What do you think?
I'm not even sure if a *calmer classroom* matters but so much if the teacher-student relationship is broken. If a teacher can't learn to teach from another human-being maybe the wanna-be-teacher and the teacher job is simply a bad fit. But I'd hate to lose great teachers because the bug and ear-piece instructions were the source of the bad fit. Wouldn't you?
I think the uglier aspects of our sci-fi projected future are here.
And again, why do I see so many black and brown students in the first few seconds of this advertisement for a training program that teaches teachers who need to learn how to deal with "discipline problems?" I'm confused. Somebody explain it to me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/25/teacher-blasts-popular-classroom-training-program-it-is-turning-us-into-robots/
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