Student Opposes Homosexuality, Get Suspended

[Expat]

The teacher was obviously butthurt. He was mad that the student said homosexuality is wrong too.

 

[CalebToNowhere]

schools should teach children HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

That makes too much sense and you know it. "mind blowing" is right.

 

[Westside]

Students have constitutional free speech rights unless it is a viewpoint that the left does not agree with!

actually no they don't. In my high school Government class he said flat out that the unions choose the curriculum that is taught and how to teach it. the purpose of public school is not to teach people how to think but what to think.

Problem was he didn't get the students till the last semester of their senior year of high school.


I am sad to say that this does not surprise me that it occurred.

 

[RockofStrength]

schools should teach children HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

Our school system was originally designed to teach children what to think. The paradigm has not changed, only worsened...

Our modern educational system: working as intended

 

[Paco Bedejo]

No public schools = no public school policies and/or drama.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

schools should teach children HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

Since the Education Mafia doesn't any longer know how to "think", they don't want anyone else to be able to do it, either.

 

[bingley]

schools should teach children HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

This statement is resonating with a lot of people in this thread. But let me ask you: how are you going to think if you have no data, opinions, a view of the various schools of thought, etc., to think with? You need to have a substantial amount from the "what" column before you can apply the "how" column. This is like teaching people how to shoot without putting an actual gun (from the "what to shoot column") in their hands.

Maybe some people know how to think on this forum. But what I see is that some are so lacking in knowledge that their analyses become very skewed. In fact, they are so skewed that they look like confessions of prejudices or forms of psychosis. Without grounding, thinking ends up getting its energy from your emotions. At that point, it's no thinking at all. That's what you get with learning purely "how to think."

Da Bing

 

[Kutnupe14]

I gotta see the schools justification, because that;s outright ridiculous...

 

[Expat]

I gotta see the schools justification, because that;s outright ridiculous...

I think that is fairly obvious. The child engaged in hate speech number one. Second, we have separation of church and state in this country (not free exercise thereof as confused people have thought for many years) and that means no one may express religious opinions on gubmint property.

 

[Bill of Rights]

This statement is resonating with a lot of people in this thread. But let me ask you: how are you going to think if you have no data, opinions, a view of the various schools of thought, etc., to think with? You need to have a substantial amount from the "what" column before you can apply the "how" column. This is like teaching people how to shoot without putting an actual gun (from the "what to shoot column") in their hands.

Maybe some people know how to think on this forum. But what I see is that some are so lacking in knowledge that their analyses become very skewed. In fact, they are so skewed that they look like confessions of prejudices or forms of psychosis. Without grounding, thinking ends up getting its energy from your emotions. At that point, it's no thinking at all. That's what you get with learning purely "how to think."

Da Bing

It resonates because the teacher can easily present differing views as described upthread: Here is one school of thought. Here's another. I won't tell you one or the other is right or wrong, I'm only telling you that they're here. They do this in philosophy classes: Here's what Kant taught; this is what Socrates opined, etc. The teacher doesn't have to say that s/he thinks one or the other is right or wrong, only that there are a variety of theories. Make the students consider them all, learn about them, and then at the end of the day/week/month/class, you tell the students, "You've learned much. Decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, but don't carve it in stone. Your perceptions may change over time. Your philosophy might need to also. Have a nice life."

That's teaching how to think, rather than what to think.

Now... I'm no educator. Sure, I can teach on a variety of subjects, but it's not my profession. Thus, I have to ask: If a guy like me can come up with a scenario like the one above... Why can those who dedicate their lives to teaching not think of it and implement it? (and no, the answer is not universally "because they're liberals"... self-described liberals AND conservatives are equally guilty.)

Blessings,
Bill

 

[Palarran]

Because they're ideologues-advancing their agenda is the most important thing to them. For an ideologue, truth, logic, and facts take a back seat to their cause. As you said, BoR, they are found on both the left and the right.

I have had some excellent teachers in in high school and college, some on the left and some on the right, and their primary focus was to teach me how to think and learn. While they all certainly had their own perspective on things, they weren't ideologues.

 

[redneckmedic]

Why can those who dedicate their lives to teaching not think of it and implement it?
Blessings,
Bill

Bill, your in-sight is nothing less than monumental, your tact is situational appropriete, and your message is always picture perfect. My hat is off to you.

To answer your question.... whether it be progressive or conservative... those who dedicate their lives to teaching in this manner... have an agenda, and the education isn't for the students best interest, it's for what the teacher thinks is for the students best interest. IMO a significant difference.

 

[SmileDocHill]

Bill, your in-sight is nothing less than monumental, your tact is situational appropriete, and your message is always picture perfect. My hat is off to you.

To answer your question.... whether it be progressive or conservative... those who dedicate their lives to teaching in this manner... have an agenda, and the education isn't for the students best interest, it's for what the teacher thinks is for the students best interest. IMO a significant difference.

Yeah, what he said. WOW, that was well done, bravo!

 

[bingley]

It resonates because the teacher can easily present differing views as described upthread: Here is one school of thought. Here's another. I won't tell you one or the other is right or wrong, I'm only telling you that they're here. They do this in philosophy classes: Here's what Kant taught; this is what Socrates opined, etc. The teacher doesn't have to say that s/he thinks one or the other is right or wrong, only that there are a variety of theories. Make the students consider them all, learn about them, and then at the end of the day/week/month/class, you tell the students, "You've learned much. Decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, but don't carve it in stone. Your perceptions may change over time. Your philosophy might need to also. Have a nice life."

That's teaching how to think, rather than what to think.

That implicitly teaches what to think. Each school of thought has foundational principles and ideas that are unconsciously assumed. To take the two examples you give, even though Kant and Socrates seem like both philosophers, one's philosophy is speculative, the other's philosophy is integral with a spiritual way of life. The students wouldn't ever know this unless someone tells them that ancient philosophy is quite a different animal from Enlightenment philosophy. The latter comes to define what we think of as philosophy: abstract, logical exercise of the mind. That's the image we apply to ancient philosophy, and indeed most people do that. But that's quite misleading, and would neglect a large part of ancient philosophy that doesn't fit into our view of philosophy. Ancient philosophers were concerned with spiritual exercises that transform oneself, from one's conduct in public to one's inner life, to one's afterlife. With something complicated it's incredibly easy to miss something as big as this, but most readers of philosophy do.

Now, the above is an example of what to think. But you can see that this will influence how you think. You will no longer decide between Kant's and Socrates' conclusions on, say, a given moral issue, because this is comparing apples and oranges. One is the Indy race car of the mind, the other is a do-it-all VW bus. The tips you get from one driver are not the same as those form the other, because they drive very different vehicles. I'm not telling you what's right or what's wrong in this post, but I am telling you that putting all your eggs in the "how to think" basket is wrong. "How" and "what" are never separate, and that's what the previous sentence demonstrates.

By the way, every teacher who tells you, "I'm not going to tell you what to think, you'll have to decide for yourself," is lying to you, not because he/she is a bad person, but because that's impossible to do.

Da Bing

 

[Bill of Rights]

That implicitly teaches what to think. Each school of thought has foundational principles and ideas that are unconsciously assumed. To take the two examples you give, even though Kant and Socrates seem like both philosophers, one's philosophy is speculative, the other's philosophy is integral with a spiritual way of life. The students wouldn't ever know this unless someone tells them that ancient philosophy is quite a different animal from Enlightenment philosophy. The latter comes to define what we think of as philosophy: abstract, logical exercise of the mind. That's the image we apply to ancient philosophy, and indeed most people do that. But that's quite misleading, and would neglect a large part of ancient philosophy that doesn't fit into our view of philosophy. Ancient philosophers were concerned with spiritual exercises that transform oneself, from one's conduct in public to one's inner life, to one's afterlife. With something complicated it's incredibly easy to miss something as big as this, but most readers of philosophy do.

Now, the above is an example of what to think. But you can see that this will influence how you think. You will no longer decide between Kant's and Socrates' conclusions on, say, a given moral issue, because this is comparing apples and oranges. One is the Indy race car of the mind, the other is a do-it-all VW bus. The tips you get from one driver are not the same as those form the other, because they drive very different vehicles. I'm not telling you what's right or what's wrong in this post, but I am telling you that putting all your eggs in the "how to think" basket is wrong. "How" and "what" are never separate, and that's what the previous sentence demonstrates.

By the way, every teacher who tells you, "I'm not going to tell you what to think, you'll have to decide for yourself," is lying to you, not because he/she is a bad person, but because that's impossible to do.

Da Bing

It's been a long, long time since philosophy classes, and honestly, I don't remember much of them. A good teacher, however, can tell you, "This is what Kant said he thought. This is what Socrates wrote that he thought."

This avoids taking a right vs. wrong position on either. Right vs. wrong is a value judgment; I doubt, for example, that even Charles Manson and Jim Jones considered themselves to be wrong (or possibly even evil.) Were we to ask Janet Reno or even Lon Horiuchi about their roles in Ruby Ridge or Waco, would they tell us that they were wrong? Horiuchi killed innocents. With all of his training, the idea that his shot was anything but intentional is ludicrous at best, and yet, somehow, I'm sure he was (and is) of the thinking that he was in the right to pull that trigger.

Teaching someone what someone else thought is not teaching them what to think. It's presenting facts, hopefully good, solid facts, on which to make decisions. I can make the decision that, based on the facts before me, some people have done wrong, even evil things. Were I presenting these cases to people without knowledge of them in such a setting, however, I'd like to think my presentation would be without value judgment. Depending on the students, I would expect that at least some percentage would take a statist view and also decide that those people I consider wrong were actually right. Maybe they'd consider the Weaver family to be "collateral damage", I don't know. I don't understand that way of thinking.

I had a conversation on here with a member a long while back. He is a self-described liberal. I call myself a libertarian (small L) with conservative leanings. I've discussed similar subjects with him since then, mostly of liberal philosophy vs. those I hold to be more correct. These conversations I expect to be "what I think" from both perspectives. The really cool thing was that neither of us told the other what he should think. Mutual respect for each others' differing points of view. I learn from those conversations and I hope he does also, as I also hope for others who may read them. What do I want those others to learn? How to converse with that mutual respect, even in the face of disagreement. How to disagree without being disagreeable. I'd like for people to agree with me on the points of libertarian belief that I hold, sure. The better lesson to take from it, IMHO, is not what I said but how I said it. Maybe that's teaching what to think, I don't know. I don't think that it is. Whatever the case, it seems to go over well, at least with the membership of this board, and that, I'll think of as a success.

You're free to think otherwise, of course.

To all who've posted compliments and rep, thank you very much.

Blessings,
Bill

 

[04DarkShadowGT]

its amazing to me that people who stand up for morality are the bad guys!

jake

Its amazing to me that people think those who are different are morally inferior...


Now I dont think he should be suspended or anything like that, but I wonder why they were discussing homosexuality at all in a German class. That seem to be not necessary.

 

[Bill of Rights]

Bingley,

I meant to comment also on your example above, in re: teaching how to shoot without teaching what to shoot.

We do this at Appleseed all the time! We say that we "run what you brung", meaning, you bring a rifle (the type of implement we teach) and we'll show you how to shoot it.
I've seen people bring Grandpa's old single-shot rifle that has no provision for sling and doesn't even fit together safely. (and for the latter, we don't allow THAT rifle on the line) I've seen 10/22s, Marlins, Mosins, Garands, Enfields, ARs, M1As, bolt-actions, semi-autos... One of our instructors even managed a Rifleman score with a single-shot Crickett.

It doesn't matter what they bring. We teach universal principles that allow a shooter to pick up a rack-grade rifle and surplus ammo, sight it in, and put rounds on target.

You could say we're "teaching what to think" in requiring it be a rifle. The really cool part, though, is that most of what we teach translates to other firearms, even handguns, very well.

In addition to the above, we also present American history and civic involvement. We do NOT concern ourselves with any politics after the late 1700s. Our lesson: Get involved. Find out who your reps are and let them know what you think. Be aware of items that interest you. Get out and vote: That's what our Founders died to give us: that crucial third choice, so we wouldn't have a situation where we had to either fight or die. At no time do we tell our students for whom they should vote nor for which initiatives they should show support; we only tell them to get out and do it.

That, to me, is teaching how to think, rather than what.

Hope that helps!

Blessings,
Bill

 

[bingley]

Were I presenting these cases to people without knowledge of them in such a setting, however, I'd like to think my presentation would be without value judgment.

This is where we disagree.

Let's take your post for example. The belief you espouse that truly free thinking is possible without implicit, unconscious value judgement, that it is not constrained in some way by what you know and perhaps even more importantly, by what you don't know, is a form of liberal ideology deriving from Enlightenment. The very idea that someone in the position of authority, say a teacher, can honestly tell the students, "I won't tell you what to think because I'll give that choice to you," is also liberalism. After all, the authority has chosen the schools of thought to be presented to the students, the manner in which they are presented, which can include unconscious shadings that can push students away or towards, etc. Some posters fume about ideologues in the school. Well, Bill here is an ideologue. He just happens to say the sort of stuff we have been trained to like.

I'm a more conservative thinker, and I'd like to disabuse you of the notion that intellectual inquiry is value neutral, free from ideological biases, etc. I believe I have demonstrated the reasons behind that. What can you do to persuade me that you can put forth a thought without value judgement or an ideological bent? If so, what is the ideology of that? What is the ideology of "no ideology, I'm just telling you like it is"? Now, if I'm right, it does not make thinking invalid, but this just means you have to be more aware of where you are coming from. Even though you may not identify with liberalism consciously, the that where sort of thinking you espouse comes from. In my school of thought, you'd need to take a hard look at your own intellectual influences.

Your response also ignores the larger point my previous post made, which is that "how to think" is already a form of "what to think." After all, the statement that "you should teach people how to think rather than what to think" is not an example of "how to think." It is an example of "what to think." So, Bill, aren't you, in your guise of freedom of thought, oppressing our minds and depriving us of liberty?

Now, I'm not advocating incivility, irrationality, or close-mindedness. That's the sort of basic stuff I assume. If someone is incapable of either, it's not advisable for us to talk to that person. We're not talking about bad behaviors, but we're talking about loftier issues.

Da Bing

 

[brutalone]

I know this to a certainty.....
If I had to go to school in today's environment.... I would have make it through....

When I was in school.... we said "One Nation.... Under God" every morning.....

We played dodge ball.....

Hell.... we had a trap shooting team...... The 2 shotguns and 500 rounds in my trunk was looked at the same way as my football helmet.... just another piece of equipment...

 

[bingley]

It's been a long, long time since philosophy classes, and honestly, I don't remember much of them. A good teacher, however, can tell you, "This is what Kant said he thought. This is what Socrates wrote that he thought."

Ah, the good thing about philosophy is that you don't need to remember any of it to live it!

Here's another example how the point I've trying to make. In US, philosophy profs tend to conceive of philosophy in the modern fashion. They'd present Socrates within the framework of this notion of philosophy, not because they're some sort of nefarious conspiracists, but because that's honestly what they think. Europeans are more aware of the differences between ancient and modern philosophy, and over there you can get a different view. But if you went to college in the US, you probably never got any of this view. So "how you think" is derived in part from "what you think."

Sure, a good teacher can tell you, "This is what so-and-so thought." But the very framework the teacher is working from gives value judgement to the presentation.

For a less subtle point, people with only the "how" and not the "what" tend to be the abstract thinkers. That's not bad in itself, but when they, say, supervise a factory, things can go wrong pretty fast. At some point we're not talking about political ideals anymore, but things that can be life and death consequences.

Da Bing