Talk about indoctrination of youths
My daughter has an English assignment to help her identify bias in the newspaper.
She was given an Article by the Washington times as the conservative source
and an article By Richard Cohen as the Liberal source
I’m ready to spew an email to the english teacher
Might want to make sure your letter gets some sort of editorial review first…just sayin’ 🙂
no good deed goes unpunished
What’s a Yute?
You might want to consider:
1) that it is the beginning of the year, and
2) your daughter will have the teacher for the rest of the year, and
3) her paper just might be able to reflect some critical thinking as to whether or not Richard Cohen is a “liberal” source
What specific article was cited as a conservative source?
The choice of Richard Cohen as an example of the liberal press tells you something about this teacher’s mind set. Don’t go wading in and making trouble that your daughter will be left to deal with — anonone and Joanne are right on this.
But there is nothing to stop you from using this as a teaching moment at home.
You should embrace this exercise. Or, do you fear that, despite your indoctrination, your daughter may be able to form an objective opinion of her own as a result? I can tell you from experience, she’s probably more capable than you think.
Consider that the childs teacher may well be politically ignorant as are so many Americans.
Richard Cohen, liberal? Seriously? Have your daughter point out the conservative bias of both.
Interesting approach. If you can’t play the game, change the rules.
Well, there’s the lesson…
BINGO xstryker–then save the spewing for when she gets the assignment back!!
Ezra Klein would be a good choice for liberal. Cohen’s more of a moderate than liberal.
If I were your daughter, I’d add Klein to the mix, along with Cohen and whatever corporate proxy from the Wash Times. Be sure to have her point out the teacher’s inherently skewed perceptive of modern political ideology, as well…
Gotta love that liberal bias in education!
I dealt with this last year – with a global warming absolute denier, Obama/Biden dislike-er science teacher.
Since the lesson is to find the bias, let her find the bias. Could be both are conservative…or could be the bias is anti-intellectual, anti-fair trade, etc. Bias comes in many forms … if your daughter is in high school, this would make for a nice essay.
That said, if I read you correctly, she was given a news article and a Richard Cohen column.
Isn’t a news article supposed to be devoid of bias, as much as possible? Is the teacher making a political statement of her own?
I don’t worry about my own daughter…i worry about the other kids
It depends on the specific columns. If Cohen is on the liberal side of this topic, and the Times is on the conservative side, and they both happen to make coherent arguments, it might yet be a decent assignment.
Funny, I don’t read Cohen much, but I know him by his reputation in lefty blogs. So I just went and skimmed the last dozen or so Cohen columns, and didn’t find anything too objectionable; he seemed to be on the left side of most issues and I didn’t see any Republican talking points. None of his liberal arguments were especially powerful though; most liberal blog commenters could outperform Cohen.
Please don’t reveal the specific columns or topics here though; school is hard enough without bloggers arguing over your homework.
the lesson states the liberal Wapo and the conservative WaTimes and then gives writers. It is current events related and he is on the Democrat side regarding the “You Lie” incident
Bias seems like such a loaded term. I think a smart kid could make this assignment really interesting – mainly by proving there’s no one free of “bias.” What I would love to see actually is the “right” columnist and the “left” columnist and see if their framing of the issues can be detected in supposed news articles.
anon,
A big part of the problem that the left has with Richard Cohen is that he thinks that it’s bad manners to investigate the actions of the Bush administration. So he’s on the side of having a political aristocracy.
Cohen would actually be an interesting case to study because Cohen tends to be one of the mealy-mouthed “let’s just get along” types. It would be interesting to contrast him with an unapologetical liberal, like Michael Moore.
I don’t worry about my own daughter…i worry about the other kids.
Don’t. They have parents, and those parents will not thank you for it. Aggressively.
I’m just curious as to what was your daughter’s response before you saw the material: would she have gotten on her own that the Cohen piece was not liberal?
The reason I ask is that if she is in something like an AP class with an inexperienced but overzealous teacher, you could even have gotten a teacher who intended to let them write the compare and contrast piece and then point out to them that nobody noticed Cohen is not a liberal.
I know that sounds bizarre, but I see worse examples of good intentions gone bad in the classroom every day. Go with Anonone and JoAnn on this one.
I would wonder how the kid is graded on this exercise. As in is this set up as a Where’s Waldo exercise where you get graded on finding the bias that the teacher has identified? What happens if you go outside the lines? I would watch this pretty closely — to see if the teacher is providing the bias here rather than the kid or the columns.
DV, you and your kids are lost causes. No one cares. Kill yourself.
creepy shit 🙄
i agree with cassandra. you should probably keep an eye on her; she’s probably an obama-hating racist. she should probably be jailed or maybe even set on fire. who the fuck does she think she is? nobody teaches baby bias except dadviti.
Have her analyze one of your blog posts.
What would be helpful would be for you to give us links to the two pieces so that those of us making comments could do so in an informed manner. That way we could judge whether the WT piece was particularly conservative, and whether the Cohen piece was particularly liberal.
However, I’ll offer a general observation as a teacher — one who spent much of the first half of his career teaching English (social studies jobs are hard to find for non-coaches). On its face, the assignment doesn’t seem unreasonable. I’d approach the teacher respectfully, asking why those particular articles/columns? Ask if she (or is it he) considered any other pieces — and maybe suggest one or two other columns/articles for future use.
And remember — the assignment is about biases, not picking a side as to which author is correct. ANY TWO PIECES OF WRITING on a topic could have been used.
More to the point, do not presume bad faith on the part of the teacher. You sound like you are going off half-cocked on this one, without having gathered the necessary facts to do so.
But regardless, don’t be an ass towards the teacher. It will make it more difficult for you to be taken seriously by this teacher and others later in the year (or beyond). After all, we teachers do talk and certain parents do get reputations for being hot-headed and difficult, and such parents (rightly or wrongly) don’t get much respect from teachers when that happens. Indeed, such parents are the folks who often find the teachers insisting on meetings with an administrator present — and if you act like an ass in that situation, you might just find yourself taken off campus in cuffs and/or banned from campus.
But let me make you a serious offer here, DV — email me at the email I supply when I comment. Let me take a look at the articles and assignment and offer you an opinion from a professional point of view. Because even though i give you (and the rest of the posting crew) a lot of crap, I do have personal respect for you AND I hate it when teachers of any political stripe push an agenda in the classroom.
Have her analyze Dominique and kinicky! Just kidding. As several have said, I would leave it up to daughter to work out her response. If she needs help, prime her with questions like the definitions of Liberal and Conservative, and prominent issues of the day, and give her some examples of prominent people whom we label as such. Then a more broad compare and contrast exercise is open to her for her paper.
Uh huh. Get the professional opinion of a reactionary Texas teacher who thinks segregation should be legalized. That should settle things.
Just let it go, donviti. In a week, this will seem so small.
The problem with contrasting an article, from any source, with an opinion column, from any source, is that one is supposed to strive for fairness, while the other is an essay supposedly espousing a personal opinion. It’s ridiculous to call any columnist’s output “biased” when the job description is “give us your opinion.”
You may resume crash positions.
“social studies jobs are hard to find for non-coaches”
WTF?? Are you making funny, or is that true? If so, why? Is civics considered so easy anyone can do it? If so, why?
Sorry, I don’t mean to be grilling you. But you offer a window into a side of education few of us get to experience.
Geezer — one of the realities is that a lot of coaches are also teachers with degrees (or minors) in history or one of the other social sciences. That is not to say that they are bad teachers — most of my colleagues who are coaches are good teachers. However, for some reason there is a super-abundance of teachers in that field.
At my school we have 18 teachers in my department, and that includes the tennis coach, the soccer coach and his assistant, two football assistant coaches and the JV basketball head coach. No other department has that sort of concentration (other than health/PE). That isn’t bad — I know of schools in other districts where the proportion is closer to half. And I can remember interviewing one place years ago where there were three social studies openings, but the principal told me that the only way I could be hired for one of them was if I also coached, because they were bundled with coaching positions and that could not be undone without prior approval from the school board.
I fear for the youths in Texas.
RWR — amazing … our social studies department is filled with coaches as well! I thought it was just us (we’re a very sports-oriented district).
I agree that Dondaddy should let this go and, depending upon the age of Dondaughter, use it as a home teaching moment and keep eyes open.
Thinking about the foundational assignment of “find the bias”, I think it might have been more useful to say “determine what’s being sold to the reader; is it more than just fact? And how it is being sold?” Bias where it exists could then be discussed in class as the byproduct or background of the piece, and not the featured item. And no essay would be labeled in advance.
But that’s after-assignment quarterbacking.
You will find that to be the case in most schools and districts, regardless of the state.
RwR: Thank you for the reply. I’m sure a lot of these coaches make fine teachers, but it’s still troubling that the job pool for non-coaching teachers is smaller because of it.
viti,
stop doing the kids homework.
I’m still quite curious — how did this turn out?
Probably about as well as everything else in Donviti’s life…..hide the pills.