November 5th, 2018

This week I decided to write my blog post in relation to the article “Why are schools brainwashing our children?” by Cynthia Reynolds. There was quite a bit of new information in this article for me, as I haven’t been keeping up with the news. The first thing was how children in a grade three class were protesting the laying of a pipeline in Western Canada. This was unbelievably shocking to me, as I do not believe that these young children came to oppose the pipeline on their own. This thought was likely forced on the children by their teachers. In the article it is also mentioned that fourth graders were to decide which people should survive if there were to be an explosion, based on race. I found this very frustrating as these children are being taught that they can base their opinions of others on their race alone. It is mentioned that teachers are including social justice into their classrooms and what they are teaching their students. I believe, however, that there is a much more constructive and positive way to do so.

I was able to connect to a few things in this article. The first being when Reynolds talks about how the terms wife or husband are being replaced with the term spouse. This has been an ongoing topic for years, and I am impressed that schools are finally taking the opportunity to change wherever and however they can. Another thing I could connect to was trying to understand where the teacher’s role stops and where the parent’s role begins. For instance, there are topics, such as death, that the teacher may leave for the parents to teach their children about. At the same time, teachers are supposed to be educating their students on difficult social justice issues.

This brings me to my question: how do we as teachers know what is out of scope to be teaching our younger students? Some topics may be difficult but need to be understood, and others may be just as difficult but can maybe be held off until the students are older.