Anna Quindlen's article in the July 21 issue on the use of "The Freedom Writers Diary" leading to a veteran teacher's dismissal was timely. I am scheduled to travel to California next week and take the same training that Connie Heermann was given last year.
I thought Quindlen's statement that it, (the dismissal of Heermann for using the book and training) being less about censorship and more about "..the timidity and inefficiency of powerful bureaucracies far removed from the daily lives of either teachers or kids" to be an astute observation. School Districts spend enormous amounts of money on literacy programs that stupify students with pedantic drills meant to raise standardized testing scores and ensure No Child Left Behind federal funding for their schools. Some of the methodologies of these literacy programs were designed by speech pathologists for the learning disabled, and are touted as being used successfully in prisons and juvenile detention facilities. While they do teach decoding and morphology, they are not engaging to many "at-risk" youth. However, they are huge money-makers, for the companies that produce them, and almost a required purchase for districts trying to keep the federal funding for their programs.
My suspicion is that what school boards such as Perry Township's object to more than profanity, racial slurs, or real-life experiences is the student entry that reads: "...who would have thought of the 'a-risk' kids making it this far? But we did, even though the educational system desperately tried to hold us down". The real threat of using materials that provide teachable moments, engagement, and critical thinking, is that they encourage challenging existing authorities and institutions. That's what I feel is really being censored.
Carrie Thorburn
Idaho
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Pondering the Origins of Big Thoughts
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Take Me Home, Mountain Roads
"The Voters of Appalachia …" (July 14) sure awakened memories for me. I was among the first generation of our mountain people to attend high school, and we had to be sent down out of the mountains to board in the city. Before that I had never seen a policeman, heard a siren or lived with the benefits of electric power. While in high school I was called names like hick, and hillbilly, and took some pretty mean abuse at the hands of the "civilized." In fact the longer I remain in "civilization," the prouder I become of my heritage, and the less I find of real value among the so-called civilized. While I wouldn't want to go back to, say, not having refrigerators and toilet paper, in a sweet minute I'd go back to the way mountain people treated each other. We had no lawmen, and no formal laws, but people were neighborly, and helped one another. Thanks for helping to educate people about the virtues of real country life.
Jon Garate
St. Helena, Calif.
As a daughter of Appalachia, I appreciate Steve Tuttle's respectful candor about our home. These are a people used up and left behind by this society, a people upon whose backs the industrial age and modernity were fueled. They distrust outsiders because outsiders routinely disrespect them and destroy their homeland. I have tried, since leaving Appalachia, to educate the outside world about my people. My words are rarely taken seriously, just as my people are rarely taken seriously. Tuttle offers well-put advice that Barack Obama, John McCain and the rest of this country would do well do heed. And, though I don't expect they will, I'll continue to nurture the hope that this country can, one day, be as great as the ideals upon which it was founded.
Shannon S. Moon
Redwood City, Calif.
© 2008
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