"Roger Woehl" wrote in message
. ..
Have any of you been in a public school in the last 5 years?
Roger

Yes, and in Biology class I had to teach a bit of Greek and Latin to help
them understand and internalize the vocabulary.

In History I had to remind them that there were more white people involved
in the underground railroad than black, that the preponderance of invention
was accomplished by males, and that assimilation not separation was how
immigrants became Americans.

I answered the question of "what use" in literature by pointing out that the
themes are universal, and tell us a lot about ourselves as human creatures
even when its Hercules or a couple of kids in Verona who are really the
descendants of many others in tales where the parents don't understand the
love of two who should by culture hate one another.

I have to do this because it's not in the books nor the curriculum. I can
still remember my first encounter with the "whole language" advocates who
were going to by God teach Johhny to read using this new method, and weren't
interested at all in finding out how McGuffey readers, phonics or Dick and
Jane, became the basics for generations of readers. Most of the wholes are
out now, but our reading texts still carry some of their stamp when females
are not portrayed as mothers and nurturers, but professionals, each minority
of color is represented as often as the majority, and Joe and Mary are now a
letter longer at Jose and Maria.

What are we teaching?