Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Deep question:Persepolis
I found it very interesting that as a ten-year-old Marji was very versed in politics. Her family included her in discussions and never sugar-coated the complexities of the world. Do you think we as a country have done a disservice to our youth by not allowing them to explore the complexities of political discussion. It seems as though our educational system tries to portray things in a "politically correct" manner. What is the rationale behind it. Do we as a nation undermine the true value of education by not discussing controversial topics? Does this cause the youth in our country to exist in a protective vacuum?
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Marji was well versed in politics because her parents were. Her parents never hid anything from her and they put her in a school that did the same. Also later in the book when Marji went to a new school the school gave her a skewed/false viewpoint of what was actually going on. I feel that children do need to be educated on politics but I find it hard to be able to get a well rounded viewpoint. Teachers are bias even if they don't mean to be, different news channels are bias, parents can even be bias. I also feel that because of this biasness teachers/schools don't express themselves because they are afraid to offend someone(parents). To me it's important to allow the students to be exposed to both sides of the situation and create their own viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult situation-- discussing teaching controversial issues in the school. I think the main reason it is avoided is because there are so many strong parental opinions out there. If you talk to any teacher, you will find that it is not the students who are calling/writing in to complain about being exposed to controversial issues, it's always the parents. I think most students would like to become more informed on political issues but in the end, they just side with their parents because they don't know the other side. Maybe instead of having the teacher directly teach about the issues, he or she could invite a speaker in for each side of the issue. This way he or she would not be directly responsible for teaching the information, just allowing students to hear both sides. In high school, if students are highly interested in politics, they can get involved in Debate club where they can explore political issues. There is only a small percentage of students who join, however.
ReplyDeletePolitics are definitely a touchy subject though, and honestly, I would not be comfortable teaching controversial topics in fear of parental reactions.