So “red states” have lower educational outcomes than Baltimore City public schools? Can you back this up with some sources? |
Within the discipline of linguistics, there’s a longstanding and fundamental disagreement between so-called descriptivists and so-called prescriptivists. Descriptivists (tend to dominate academia) believe that language is how you use it; if the Latin fabulare evolves into Spanish hablar, so be it and that’s the order of things. Prescriptivists (who tend to dominate academia, say, professional editing and publishing) believe that there are “proper” standards that are rooted in some exogenous source of authority that determine what is right. The take in this thread is a dumb melange of the two. It presupposes that the ungrammatical use of a transitive verb’s simple past form (wake —> woke) may be permissibly substituted in place of a similar intransitive verb’s past passive participle (awake —> awakened) when employed in the context of social commentary but that that same word may not permissibly carry a connotation ascribed to it by its skeptics. This is a “heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” argument manufactured to impose a progressive orthodoxy on a narrow slice of linguistics. Surely those who welcome thoughtful critiques of power structures will recognize I am right! |
DP and MAGA. Right now, its a true statement that blue states tend to have better educational outcomes. That's not the whole story, though. Cities tend to have poor educational outcomes in public schools. And, the trajectory of the states are starting to diverge, with blue states posting significant declines in test scores, possibly due to prolonged school closures for covid (cite: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/03/17/the-pandemic-hit-pupils-hardest-in-americas-democrat-leaning-states?utm_source=chatgpt.com). Meanwhile, southern red states are showing rapid increases, particularly in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida. So while blue states have historically had better outcomes, their current policies are causing declines while red state current policies are causing increases. |
Best post of the day |
People posture otherwise, but every serious person knows in their bones that the primary drivers of educational outcomes are things other than the political allegiance of local and national elected officials |
It is easier to complain about MAGA use of woke than to admit that wokism was and is a tool of the elites used to strip power, including the most basic power of language, from the lower classes. It is and always was a movement designed to keep power centralized and to keep the working classes from unifying. |
| Woke is definately wrong in Chicago, where 53 people were shot, killing 7 over the weekend. |
This ignores other factors other than "red or blue policies". It ignores, for example, the migration that has occurred from blue areas to red. And as you move higher performing children from Massachusetts, for example, to Alabama, you will improve scholastic outcomes despite the crappy educational environment in Alabama. It also ignores the fact that improvements in red states have a greater visibility. If you go from 25% high school grads reading proficiently to 35% it reflects as a much greater improvement that going from 70% to 75%. It is also much, much easier. So just looking at "improvement" alone without looking at causes and appearances is deceptive. In the end, US education has fallen dramatically and compared to our competition sucks royally. Despite the fact that we continue to maintain the best quality education available. It just isn't available for very many. |
Those are not victims OP cares about. |
Personally, I think elites’ arrogation of the right to revise rules of language is one of the more effective strategies they’ve pursued when you layer on the ease of gaslighting people who notice (“lol, triggered by pronouns much?”, “lol, yeah, it’s a real *war* on Christmas, okay bub”, “the word ‘partner’ is simply more inclusive, not a big deal”) |
| Conservatives feed this crap to their base. Can’t spell conservative without con. Whoever uses this term as derogatory is telling on themselves. |
What exactly is the connection you are drawing? |
I know gas is cheaper. |
VMPI would have had Virginia high schools behind than rural high schools of 30 years ago. |
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