Smart Kids
Either I am prejudiced by my old age and kids in school have suddenly become active scholars, or someone needs to rethink this whole issue.
I refer to the bill to be introduced in the Texas Legislature regarding posting the Ten Commandments in school classrooms. At least one person thinks that is a surefire way to have students learn/practice them.
“Children are a captive audience,” Masci [David Masci, a senior researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life] said. “They have to be there a certain amount of time every day. They also don’t fully have the capacity to understand what is necessarily a requirement and what is a gesture. ‘If a teacher puts a Ten Commandments poster in the classroom, a child might say, ‘This is something I need to learn and understand.’ Masci said government institutions, such as schools, may acknowledge religion but cannot promote it. ‘We’ve been fighting about this for years,’ he said.”
Well now, if putting up a poster causes learning to occur, shouldn’t everyone have memorized the Periodic Table? How about those postings of how to diagram a sentence, maybe they would know who the President of the United States is (wait, that’s a picture), or wouldn’t our kids know where Afghanistan is. . .or San Francisco, for that matter? Those wall maps are huge!
I think most teachers would argue that if hanging a poster on the wall changed thinking and behavior, we would be a more knowledgeable, wiser Nation.