Well I can't say I have experience in teaching like yourself Kelly and I also haven't been in school for over a decade so I will differ to your expert opinion since it makes sense to me.
I don't want you to think that the things you care about are not important....they are. It's just that on the day to day life of teachers and students in the classroom, they just aren't a problem, they are simply the things that catch people's attention.
To give you an example OF some of the things that a teacher might have as a problem.
In the 6th grade TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) the things I have to teach, one of the TEKS is about the oppression of certain groups around the world, and the group that they use as an example are Christians in Sudan. A very good example, and you can pretty much add women to that in most 3rd world, less developed countries. So, I wrote the curriculum with those things in mind and I talked about the Genocide in Sudan. WELL, in the ppt that we use, it talks about the rape of women. That is one of the tenants of what constitutes Genocide as the UN defines the word. Well we got a call from a school board member asking us about that part of the curriculum. My answer was, if you don't want me teaching it, then you need to take it out of the TEKS....but TEA, put that in the TEKS so I teach it. The school board member went back to the parent explained to them, showed them the TEK and the UN definition of genocide and the parent simply ended it saying, I think that is too much for an 11 year old to comprehend, but he (her student) seems to be fine with it so OK. OR WHEN my teachers in my department found out that TEA had taken Jefferson OUT of the TEK about the writing of the Declaration of Independence (yes stupid, but what can ya do), and only had him in as a President. My teachers were in an UPROAR....I just stared at them....as they yelled "what are we going to do, that is stupid" and I said, you are going to teach like you have always taught and when you get to the Declaration of Independence you will talk about Jefferson....duh.
I think we just get way to worked up over silly things. IF YOU HIRE GOOD TEACHERS, IF YOU CAN KEEP GOOD TEACHERS, IF YOU CAN GET RID OF BAD TEACHERS, YOUR STUDENTS WILL LEARN. That is the bottom line. My friends that are Christians (strong Christians) that teach Science are more than capable of teaching the TEKS as they are written, as they learned the curriculum in college. They don't have to throw one out in order to teach the other.
In my curriculum religion is a HUGE PART of the curriculum. I'm a Christian, I know what I can say and what I cannot say. I am to teach the history of the main religions of the world, and how they have impacted culture. It is not my job to be an apostle, I am a teacher. Your good teachers understand this...I had a teacher at the other Junior High that just started teaching 6th grade Contemporary World Cultures and she was worried about having to teach religions because she strongly disagreed with some of them. I said, teach the curriculum that I wrote and you will have no problems. She did, and came back saying that she actually learned a lot about other religions and was very happy with hoe the unit turned out.
Allow the teachers and those teachers mentors to teach...allow us to sift through those teachers that are good and can become master teachers and those that should not be in the classroom. Allow us to do that, not a bureaucrat with a secular agenda or a religious agenda to do it for us....and I bet it will turn out pretty damn good in the end.
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