[etni] Fw: in response to Maxine

From: "Ask_Etni" <ask@xxxxxxxx>
To: "ETNI" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:57:39 +0200
----- Original Message ----- 
From: sbshai - sbshai@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: in response to Maxine


Hello Maxine and other ETNI colleagues who sympathize with her view,
Even though your message was addressed to Eleanor, please permit me to take 
this opportunity to ask you something:  Do your really think that so many 
teachers and coordinators would bother to become involved in a protest 
against a program that's so coveted by the English Inspectorate/MOE unless 
they found that program to be severely untenable?
You must surely know that hard-working, sorely-pressed for time English 
teachers cannot afford any "diversions" of this sort.

Once again, I will refrain from repeating what has been said so many times 
before.  (If you'd like, I can forward to you a host of messages that 
explain our objections in detail!)

For now, I will restrict myself to pointing out that the language you've 
used is rather confrontational.   You mentioned the terms "destroy"  and 
"concessions", for example, as if there were a war being waged between the 
Inspectorate and the teachers who are merely asking for answers to their 
valid questions!  So I'd like to pose another question: Is the function of 
the Inspectorate only to declare "do or die" edicts?  (Please correct my 
assumption if it is mistaken -- and I am NOT being cynical -- but I always 
thought that its major purpose was to assist us in doing our jobs well.)

By now it's no secret that the HOTS program was designed to enforce the 
teaching of literature because, unfortunately, there are schools where it is 
taught poorly or not at all.  Even in such cases, however, the program does 
not provide adequate direction for teachers who have not been trained to 
teach literature.  (Again, I invite you to read previous postings that 
explain this point of view.)  It's simply a band-aid approach to the 
problem.

The last question I have is how anyone can insist that teaching the HOTS 
explicitly is going to improve the quality of our students' thinking (not to 
mention their enjoyment of literature).  When this idea was suggested to a 
very bright native speakers class, they laughed outright.  One student said 
that all that will be accomplished is that students will learn to parrot the 
terms that the teachers choose to associate with each piece of literature.
I have yet to hear a good rebuttal to this student's statement!

I think it was another HOTS defender who maintained that not accepting HOTS 
with open arms was equivalent to living in the Dark Ages.  I'd like to 
remind everyone that not everything that's "new" is necessarily improved 
(though of course the sound ideas in HOTS are not innovative at all).
In the story of Chanukah, we see that the Hellenists also thought that 
traditional Jews were a relic of the past -- but  these were the people who 
were granted victory over the multitude of Greeks who sought to coerce them 
to abandon their ways in the name of 'progress'.

Chanukah sameach,
Batya



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[etni] Fw: in response to Maxine

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