Soothsayer

If we’re serious about No Child Left Behind, what they need is some back-to-basics drills and skills work! (And big money textbooks contracts for Texas publishing conglomerates.)

(1) Teachers are pretty much like most people — that is, in weighing what actions, ideas, thoughts to advocate, they generally give first consideration to their own short term well-being. You can’t expect teachers to advocate an agenda that might take money out of their pockets, no matter how important that agenda might be. So, there are and always will be holes in our educational system.

(2) Everyone in our society needs education, and sometimes the education we need doesn’t benefit teachers or the educational establishment.

Bottom line: The NSTA (and/or our schoolteachers, the NEA, the local school district, the US Department of Education) is not responsible for educating us, our children, or our community. That responsibility is OURS.

I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it.

WE have to educate our children and each other about the realities of our world! I was encouraged by Laurie David’s attempt to donate the 50,000 copies of “An Inconvenient Truth” to the NSTA — it means someone cares, and I think the film is a good educational tool. But, the fact that she was rebuffed by the NSTA just means that she and others with similar good intentions will have to focus their efforts more sharply. Invite your kids and their friends over for movie night! Show them the flick and ask them what they think. Give your neighbors a copy — but don’t mail it, knock on the door and look them in the eye and ask them to watch it, then pass it on. Most of all, don’t give up if someone says they’re not interested…press on, like one of those annoying telemarketers. You are “selling” something everyone needs!

NSTA does not mass distribute any outside organization’s products and/or messages to all of its members. We receive hundreds of requests for such distribution and we do not believe that this blanket distribution is desired by members.

The op-ed Science a la Joe Camel is misleading. NSTA has always supported sound environmental education as a way to instill environmental literacy in our nation’s pre-K-12 students. Global warming is a very important science/societal issue. This current media challenge should not be about that. In fact, NSTA has always supported sound environmental science education. You might want to review the NSTA position statement adopted by the Board of Directors in February, 2003.

National Science Teachers Association.

http://www.nsta.org/contact

(703) 243-7100

I know, what about computers? They are being donated all the time to schools, so all schools should have them now. And if they don’t, all they need to do is contact the right organizations, like the Bill and Melinda organization.

If someone WANTS to learn and better themselves, there is always a way.
I teach my kids, never say, “I can’t” find a way to say, “I can”.

The idea that global climate science is itself too hot a political issue for science teachers to teach is tantamount to a victory for the “faith in place of science” crowd or the “we hate hippies” geezers listening to Dimbaugh everyday and can’t seem to drag there sorry butts into the new century.