Conservative confusion over schools
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Anonymous
| They aren't focused on it, it is just a small part of the broader curriculum. Only the right is overhyping this because they are total snowflakes. |
Anonymous
What if young earth creationism was just “a small part” of the curriculum? How much crazy is too much? For some people, any more than zero |
Anonymous
Oh, the "merit" argument. Asians work hard and Blacks are lazy. Nice. |
Anonymous
Senior citizen here. My high school biology teacher handled it by a couple of sentences--something like: there is a theory that some people believe that the earth was created at one moment by God. This was in the deep South. that was the only instruction on it. I don't recall any objections. At that time, Darwin was the focus and we learned a lot about Darwin's theory of evolution. I doubt that any public school science teacher will spend much more time on "creationism." Even in the Deep South. |
Anonymous
Depends where in the curriculum. If it's part of the science curriculum, then hell no. But if it was part of a comparative religions class, then I'd have no problem at all with some craziness being included. |
Anonymous
PP here and we agree! If the stuff about gender and antiracism was being studied clinically in a class about social movements and contagions etc, that would be fine - even better than fine, it would be great But it ain’t that way |
Anonymous
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Not sure if it's worth commenting, since there's so much "liberals are bad" "no conservatives are bad" tribalism going on in this discussion. I think both ends of the political spectrum are engaging in dishonesty and demagoguery here. So as not to be completely dismissed for #bothsidesing the issue, I think the right is doing more of it and for less compelling reasons.
Still, on the left, you have this "anti-racist" framing where they play dumb about "CRT" claiming its nothing more than a law school class rather than trying to understand at all where the complaints are coming from. And it's not simple racism. And it's not "we don't want to teach historically accurate things about race in America." It's not even the idea that past racist acts have current repercussions that continue to harm Black people. Rather, it's when lessons about those issues draw a harder ideological edge that parents start having problems. The idea that white Americans should devalue the real achievements that have been made in and by the United States over time. The idea that one is racist by merely existing in the U.S. because of structural racism. The idea that all acts are either racist or anti-racist and there is no in between. The idea that white Americans should walk around with hair shirts as penance for the acts of their predecessors. Meanwhile, the right seems determined to ignore the ongoing effects of racism. Often they want to pretend that every individual is born in a vacuum and any success or failure is merely a function of hard work and merit. (Recall, if you will, the right-wing freak out over Obama's "you didn't build that" speech where he recognized that, "if you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.") I don't agree with OP that the right's attack on public education is some scheme to make the populace dumb and docile. Mostly, I think the effort is more venal and less ambitious than that. The privatization effort is intended to help subsidize religious education through things like vouchers. It's intended to weaken the teacher's unions which mostly trend Democratic. It's intended to help funnel public education dollars to people friendly to the privatizers -- through, for example, charter school operators who award sweet contracts to Republican friendly management companies. There's often a racist component to the privatization effort as well, with mostly white parents sending their kids to private schools away from Those People. I feel sorry for teachers and middle-of-the-road school board members and administrators who are just trying to provide a solid education to children in the community while the commentariat goes nuts, making wild accusations - some invented whole cloth, others by blowing up the normal missteps into something more sinister. |
Anonymous
Uh, yes it is, either as part of social movements in history or as reflected in literature. Because these issues are part of our history and culture. We don't all live in a straight white male Christian world. |
Anonymous
I do agree with you. I suspect we'd be able to work on a school committee together, come up with a reasonable curriculum, and get roasted by people on both ends of the political spectrum as monsters who want to do unspeakable things to the world, American society, and the local school children. |
Anonymous
This is rule number two for the authoritarian playbook. Dismantle educational constructs so the word/opinion of the leader is taken as fact. It is why the GOP has been dismantling public education for decades. BTW, rule # 1 is to dismantle the free press - if you see how billionaires have purchased and shut down media outlets and how people like Trump delegitimize the media as "fake news" - ha, look at the revelations about Fox and the 2020 election and you can see actual fake news. See the problem? |
Anonymous
I’m not sure what you’re saying What I’m saying is that schools could study the emergence and dynamics of these belief systems - but instead, they are presenting them as the law |
Anonymous
No doubt…. No doubt…. |
Anonymous
Parents rarely bring it up directly to teachers. It comes up occasionally, and when it does I find that parents - on both sides - are relieved to hear that whatever they thought was or wasn't happening isn't reality. It's amazing that teachers aren't often included in conversations about what's really happening in classrooms. There are two reasons for that, in my experience: The first is that the administration makes decisions that we don't necessarily agree with but we're not able to speak up without risking our jobs. The second is that teaching isn't well-respected in the US, and now far too many teachers have been silenced. I'm liberal and I teach in a district that believes in equity. It's not equality, it's trying to meet our students where they are and build them up. We haven't harmed our brightest students - we haven't done away with leveling middle school and high school classes according to ability, we haven't stopped the gifted program, and we continue to give standardized tests. We also have a diversity group, a tolerance group, after-school tutoring groups, and teachers that are married to same-sex partners, alongside the usual community service, band, art, foreign-language, etc. clubs. All of this in a lower-middle-class, Title 1 school. The high, the low, and the average achievers, white children and children of color, native-born and immigrants, Christians/Jews/Muslims/atheists can all have their needs met as much as any public entity can. Public school will never be perfect because of the varied needs its presented with, but the goal is to create an equity and a sense of belonging and acceptance that can carry over into the general public. It's about acknowledging the validity of everyone, the opposite of the divisiveness the right has been brainwashed to believe in. |
Anonymous
PP keeping himself safe from antiracism indoctrination at starbucks 
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Anonymous
A PP above was insisting it was being taught in place of math. Still hasn't provided any evidence to support it. |