Letter to the Editor: Yes, let the teachers just teach

I’m writing in response to Michael Jones’ Sept. 23 Gaylord Herald Times column: “Keep it Simple: Let teachers teach and children learn” because it is so direct and true!

I remember starting my teaching career in 1969 in Providence, RI, teaching the new South American social studies curriculum to sixth-graders. This curriculum emphasized using a small group collaboration to achieve maximum learning. Naturally these rambunctious students were louder and more mobile than my older principal was used to when social studies was the teacher lecturing. I knew, even as a 22-year-old, non-education major, I could handle 12- to 13-year-old students.

The thought never occurred to me that Che Guevara, an Argentinian “hero” of the Fidel Castro-led Cuban Revolution who was only dead a few years, had anything to do with this curriculum. After all, he was a modern Marxist and I was teaching about ancient Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilizations of hundreds of years past. Didn’t matter whether my politics were liberal or conservative, just teach about past South American civilizations!

I also recall when I began teaching fourth grade in Hamtramck in 1978 our science book from the mid-1960s stated: “Someday a man will land on the moon. Obviously that had already happened in 1969, nine years previously! So, I had to remind my students that our science book was outdated and teach the real space exploration facts / theories. It never occurred to me to perpetuate the erroneous statement.

Mr. Jones is absolutely correct that teachers just want to teach so students can learn as much as possible. When we have a curriculum that’s accurate, we teach it, but when we have a science book that is in error, we teach what’s factual. We are not proselytizers; we are teachers, “plain and simple!"

Dr. John J. Mc Caugney, Ed.D.Gaylord