Ryan Fan
1 min readMay 23, 2021

--

I agree with you on the aims, Gabrielle! This is a great piece. It's our job to teach students skills as much as theory or content. Our curriculum mainly selects texts and topics relatable to students, and pedagogically, it's difficult to teach something we feel students can't relate to because it's not engaging, particularly in this day and age. I'm for anything that truly engages students and challenges and builds critical thinking skills, ability to find textual evidence, the ability to tackle counterarguments, etc.

Recently, I've been disappointed in what seems like our education system's shortsightedness. As a Baltimore City special educator, we were going over some current events units and I asked my students what the Holocaust was. Only one of my students knew what it was when I asked them questions like "why does Israel exist?" or "What's the Holocaust?"-- and reflecting on the social studies curriculum, I don't remember if the Holocaust ever came up. I think it's a balance, and my students were very engaged learning about Auschwitz, Hitler, and more. Of course education needs a paradigm shift, but there comes a point where it goes a bit too far.

--

--

Ryan Fan
Ryan Fan

Written by Ryan Fan

Believer, Baltimore City IEP Chair, and 2:35 marathon runner. Diehard fan of “The Wire.”

Responses (1)