PBS classroom lesson on Community BuildingThis appeared here and I wish to thank Mary for allowing me to publish her work. RK
While students flee for summer fun 'n
sun, their teachers are preparing indoctrination lessons for the fall, with
help from our government and our government-supported PBS. A "documentary
film and strategic entertainment company," Kontentreal, produces propaganda
films for PBS, which then distributes them to government schools. One is about Generation G, a generation of preteens
anxious about the sustainability of the planet. It's filmed at the exclusive
Sidwell Friends School attended by Sasha and Malia Obama.
PBS Teachers, in its most recent
newsletter, promotes a lesson in collectivism for high school students called
"Affordable
Green Housing"--produced by Kontentreal. The focus is on
"community," which means forcing people of all income levels to live
together.
The promo video tells teachers that the
lesson should focus on "fostering diversity" and being
"environmentally responsible." It features a bunch of urban planning
types around a table discussing how dehumanizing the free public housing was
because it isolated the residents. Now they must be integrated into all
neighborhoods. Forcing such mixed housing is much more "organic" than
the patterns made by the real estate free market system.
All kinds of helpful pedagogical aids
are given to teachers. (Such a great resourse!) They are told that students
should be given discussion questions before watching the video. "Next
day" suggested activities
include three: 1) having students individually answer questions, 2)
answer questions as a group, and 3) do a "group graffiti draw," with
groups given colored markers based on their question. Students are to walk
around the room and write the answers on large sheets of posted paper, making
"graffiti walls."
So write on a "graffiti wall,"
because it's so much easier than sitting down and reading and writing a
research paper on the fall-out of Great Society programs that devastated once
thriving, safe--and diverse--inner-city neighborhoods! The pretend-graffiti
wall will probably be the only kind of graffiti wall that the Sidwell students
will ever have to worry about in their "green neighborhoods."
The irony of the "graffiti
walls" will be lost because under the federal education program called
Common Core high school students will be spending only about 25% of their time
in English class reading literature and being exposed to real irony.
And when they do read literature, they will be able to do it through
graphic novels.
According to Publishers
Weekly, Diamond Book Distributors now has a
wide offering of Common Core-compliant graphic books. The list was released at
the recent American Library Association meeting in Chicago and features such
offerings as Power Lunch with a healthful superhero with an apple in hand
on the cover. It's for kindergartners and first-graders. Congressman John
Lewis's March, about the civil rights movement, offers challenging
pictures for high school students. Other high school offerings include A Comic Book
History of Comics and Kill Shakespeare. Graphic adaptations
of actual Shakespeare plays are not on the list, however, although graphic
adaptations of other classics, like Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, and Native
American "Classics" are. Here we have evidence about the
"standards" of Common Core. Maybe it is appropriate that a title like
"Kill Shakespeare" should appear on a list of Common Core compliant
graphic books.
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