Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
After curriculum was starting to be developed based on the controversial 1619 Project, I read the words of a teacher defending the curriculum. I didn't record the exact words, but it was something along the lines of being able to trust the curriculum because there are no teachers out there who would lie to students. In other words, we should trust teachers because they say they are honest.
This contrasts drastically with what I encountered during my school years. In elementary school, I was told that a larger number couldn't be subtracted from a smaller number. If true, how do you explain our federal budget? It turned out that my teacher thought that it would be easier to lie to us than explain that we weren't ready to learn about negative values.
Also in elementary school, I was told that we should ignore leading zeros when evaluating size of decimal values. That teacher at least admitted that he was wrong, but it raises another issue. There's a lot of incompetence in the teaching profession. Even if they are not knowingly lying, that doesn't mean we can trust them.
My teachers repeatedly pushed the narrative that the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. If that's true, then why is it that absolutely nobody trying to accurately represent colors is using red, yellow, and blue? As it turns out, it's easy to find an answer. Red, yellow, and blue reflect an obsolete color model embraced when there was very little known about how we see color. It was debunked more than a century ago.
I had other reasons to distrust my teachers beyond simply getting their lessons wrong. My teachers outright lied to me about their expectations. I had a teacher tell me that I wouldn't have to take a unit of his class if I passed a test just to be forced into that unit despite passing. I had a Spanish teacher who required culture projects. Pictures were recommended but not required. This was when I reached the point of doing the bare minimum required. I didn't get credit because I didn't include any pictures.
Since I started with curriculum tied to history, how did that subject go for me? My biggest issues weren't as much with outright lies as they were with an intentional skewed narrative. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, so we bombed Japan, sent Japanese Americans to internment camps, and went after Hitler. Obviously, there was at least something conveniently omitted there. It was clear that history was being framed around what my teachers wanted me to think rather than being honest and accurate.
I could also go on about suspicions relating to how my teachers portrayed the Civil War, but the revised narrative I am now reading from teachers provides an even better example. These days, it is wrong to even consider any factor other than slavery in causing the Civil War, but the North did not go to war over slavery. You don't have to be a historian to know there's a serious problem with the new narrative.
Overall, I would say that roughly half of everything my teachers told me turned out to be false. The idea that we can trust them because of their honesty is absolutely absurd. In the case of the claim that no teachers would lie, that itself is an outright lie.
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