Growing Up Moral, part deux
Posted June 15th, 2009 at 07:32 PM by Victory
High school (grades 7-11)
(7) Major leagues! Or not. This is the first time where we have a dedicated moral education teacher.
The teacher is a French lady fresh off the boat. I don't remember what she taught us, predictably. I know she didn't want to teach us her first name. Some weird and hilarious hang-up you had there, Béatrice. I learned from this class that people in France talk about their love interests more readily than their income. Sure is making $35K CDN a year, Béa. I'm making that number up. Anyways she taught for like half a year before passing the moral hot potato. Most of the teachers who taught us this class weren't particularly trained for it. I think Béa was a French teacher, for example. By the way she had an affair with the geography teacher who was many years her elder. Scandalou~s.
Yeah, so she gives up and we have a substitute for the rest of the year. Now we all know that substitute = party. The substitute lady is even less trained than Béa and we learn nothing. Damn that lady was frail. I could see her bones through her skin.
(8) This teacher is actually competent. We had a textbook (had one in 7th grade too but...) about self-esteem, tolerance, bullying, sex ed. Uhn we're getting somewhere now. We watched American History X and La Haine. We also learned how to use condoms, that was cool. I'm 14 at this point and it's already too late for some folks. BREEDERS. Not sure what the people in religious education learned... doesn't Jesus disapprove of condoms?
(9) Same teacher as 8th grade oh boy oh boy! This is going to be... she's pregnant and goes on maternity leave for the rest of year. Arts and crafts teacher substitutes. Insert goofy music.
(10) This guy. Wow. He's really interesting but the curriculum is very light/vague so he ends up taking up a large percentage of the class to talk about not-so-related things. The exams are hard because he does multiple answers on complicated ethics texts. And he's spent most of the class talking about other stuff.
(11) New curriculum kicks in. Same teacher as the year before but we get a series of booklets about various religions (islam, buddhism, hinduism) in addition to ethics.
(Summary) Clownboat tier: grades 1-7, 9
Sort of serious tier: grade 10
I'm learning stuff tier: grade 8 and 11
The big hubbub right now in Quebec is that the ministry of education wants to apply the new curriculum to the entirety of primary and secondary education. That is, take out moral/religious education and replace them with one class to rule them all similar to the one I had in 11th grade. The people opposed to this are:
(a)some religious groups and schools (typically catholic schools run by priests. yes they still exist even though most teachers are non-priests). In my appreciation they are worried about children learning DEVILISH FOREIGN RITUALS.
(b)Quebec secular movement. These folks oppose the new curriculum on the basis that it conflates religion and ethics.
I'm personally in favor of the general idea of it. Using an updated curriculum might teach something useful to kids compared to the barren wasteland they had in place when I was there. And two, learning about more religions is useful.
There have been arguments put forth that say kids will believe anything you teach them at that age which might be true, but telling them some people practice __ is not the same as telling them to practice __.
Hm. This last part would require some more thought on my part maybe. That was a bit long but I hope you enjoyed. The new class would be called "Ethics and religious culture".
(7) Major leagues! Or not. This is the first time where we have a dedicated moral education teacher.
The teacher is a French lady fresh off the boat. I don't remember what she taught us, predictably. I know she didn't want to teach us her first name. Some weird and hilarious hang-up you had there, Béatrice. I learned from this class that people in France talk about their love interests more readily than their income. Sure is making $35K CDN a year, Béa. I'm making that number up. Anyways she taught for like half a year before passing the moral hot potato. Most of the teachers who taught us this class weren't particularly trained for it. I think Béa was a French teacher, for example. By the way she had an affair with the geography teacher who was many years her elder. Scandalou~s.
Yeah, so she gives up and we have a substitute for the rest of the year. Now we all know that substitute = party. The substitute lady is even less trained than Béa and we learn nothing. Damn that lady was frail. I could see her bones through her skin.
(8) This teacher is actually competent. We had a textbook (had one in 7th grade too but...) about self-esteem, tolerance, bullying, sex ed. Uhn we're getting somewhere now. We watched American History X and La Haine. We also learned how to use condoms, that was cool. I'm 14 at this point and it's already too late for some folks. BREEDERS. Not sure what the people in religious education learned... doesn't Jesus disapprove of condoms?
(9) Same teacher as 8th grade oh boy oh boy! This is going to be... she's pregnant and goes on maternity leave for the rest of year. Arts and crafts teacher substitutes. Insert goofy music.
(10) This guy. Wow. He's really interesting but the curriculum is very light/vague so he ends up taking up a large percentage of the class to talk about not-so-related things. The exams are hard because he does multiple answers on complicated ethics texts. And he's spent most of the class talking about other stuff.
(11) New curriculum kicks in. Same teacher as the year before but we get a series of booklets about various religions (islam, buddhism, hinduism) in addition to ethics.
(Summary) Clownboat tier: grades 1-7, 9
Sort of serious tier: grade 10
I'm learning stuff tier: grade 8 and 11
The big hubbub right now in Quebec is that the ministry of education wants to apply the new curriculum to the entirety of primary and secondary education. That is, take out moral/religious education and replace them with one class to rule them all similar to the one I had in 11th grade. The people opposed to this are:
(a)some religious groups and schools (typically catholic schools run by priests. yes they still exist even though most teachers are non-priests). In my appreciation they are worried about children learning DEVILISH FOREIGN RITUALS.
(b)Quebec secular movement. These folks oppose the new curriculum on the basis that it conflates religion and ethics.
I'm personally in favor of the general idea of it. Using an updated curriculum might teach something useful to kids compared to the barren wasteland they had in place when I was there. And two, learning about more religions is useful.
There have been arguments put forth that say kids will believe anything you teach them at that age which might be true, but telling them some people practice __ is not the same as telling them to practice __.
Hm. This last part would require some more thought on my part maybe. That was a bit long but I hope you enjoyed. The new class would be called "Ethics and religious culture".
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