DCUM Weblog

Yesterday was Labor Day and it appears that many DCUM users were offline celebrating rather than posting on DCUM because the active threads were not all that active yesterday. The most active thread was titled, "High schoolers can’t write", and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster says that her kids go to Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, are native English speakers, and get all As in school. Nevertheless, their writing is "awful". They have poor grammer and punctuation and can't correctly form an argument. The original poster says that she is in shock and wants to know if others have noticed this issue with their kids. Almost all of those responding have noticed this. They blame it on Montgomery County Public Schools not teaching grammer, spelling, or writing skills anymore. Some posters allege that the problem begins in early grades so that by high school the teachers have given up. Others say that kids don't read enough these days and that reading is important to gaining writing skills. Another poster, however, says that reading doesn't build writing skills but rather practice does. A teacher says that in public school she had too many students and not enough time for reviewing their writing, implying that she didn't provide writing assignments as a result. However, after switching to private school, she had greater support and fewer students and the school placed more emphasis on writing. Therefore, she was much more involved in teaching writing. Because of the shortcomings posters see in MCPS with regard to reading and writing, many posters say that they have either supplemented with tutors or writing classes, or moved their children to private or parochial schools. In their search for whom to blame for the current state of writing education, some posters focus on kids with special needs who, in these posters' view, require too much support and take away resources – especially the teachers' attention — from the other students. According to these posters, teachers are spending their time assisting students with special needs and, therefore, don't have time to teach writing. The second target is the "social justice, social emotional learning, anti-racism" initiatives that some posters believe have replaced traditional teaching in MCPS. Several posters would like to see MCPS return to focusing on the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Other posters blame the parents who are complaining, asking why they didn't read to their kids and teach them writing themselves. These might be valid questions for the average DCUM poster, but it ignores that some MCPS parents may lack proper English reading and writing skills themselves and, therefore, are not in a position to assist their children. Much of this thread is devoted to debating the pros and cons of private or parochial education compared to public. Catholic schools are especially debated with several posters praising their traditional teaching while others decry them as "archaic" or unappealing to non-Catholics.

I have had a busy few days, doing a bit of traveling and spending time with family. I was unable to write a blog post on Friday, so today I will discuss the most active threads since Thursday. The most active thread during that period that I have not already discussed was titled, "Harris Walz interview w CNN" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original title of this thread was actually, "Harris Walz interview w CNN – only 18 minutes", but after a number of requests I shortened the title because it misstated the actual length of the interview. The controversy over the length of the interview is a story in itself. Former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump and his supporters devote a huge amount of time and effort to trying to convince the public that they are not being treated fairly. In this instance, soon after the announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would be interviewed by CNN, Trump supporters began circulating on social media the claim that the interview would only be 18 minutes long and that a full transcript would not be released. This, they claimed, was evidence that the interview would be cleaned up to hide the fact that Harris is, according to them, unable to articulate a complete sentence or connect two thoughts together. The original poster apparently based this thread on those inaccurate claims, but attributed the misinformation to CNN. As it turned out, the interview was longer than 18 minutes and a full transcript was released. A recurring phenomenon that has really started to bug me is that right-wingers will post false information and left-wingers will accept those falsehoods as fact and defend them. In this instance, posters immediately began defending Harris for giving an 18 minute interview and not making a full transcript available. This only helped to spread and confirm inaccurate information. My rule of thumb is to assume by default that anything posted by conservatives is wrong, either intentionally or simply because they don't know any better. Instead of posting knee-jerk responses defending lies about Democrats, liberal posters should take a minute to check whether the information is true or not. As for posters' reactions to the interview, they were about what you would expect. Conservatives had plenty of criticisms. According to them, Harris looked down too much, did not speak coherently, and had lots of help from Walz and Dana Bash, the interviewer. Liberals, of course, thought that Harris had done great. There were a few posters who claimed that their vote had been influenced one way or another but most people simply had their previous opinions reinforced. There was almost as much discussion about Bash as there was about Harris and Walz with conservative posters trying desperately to demonstrate that she was biased in favor of Harris. Several liberal posters also believed that Bash was biased, but against Harris rather than in her favor. Another manufactured controversy involved the fact that Walz was included in the interview. Right-wingers argued that this was unusual and showed that Harris could not be trusted on her own and needed Walz to babysit. In fact, interviews including both the presidential and vice presidential nominees are common and have been conducted by all recent nominees.

Yesterday's most active thread was titled, "Breakfast drama", and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster says that she has a 5 year old child who is just starting kindergarten. She and her husband divide up parenting duties in the morning. While one parent is getting ready, the other serves breakfast to their daughter and then the first parent takes the child to school. Two days this week the original poster's husband was responsible for breakfast. The first day, he served the girl toast with peanut butter. When the original poster took over, her daughter had not eaten and wanted jelly with the peanut butter. They didn't have jelly and the girl refused to eat. The original poster, believing that eating before going to school was more important than a food struggle, quickly made her cereal. The next day, the original poster's husband attempted to serve the same leftover toast with peanut butter which, again, the child refused to eat. This time the original poster made oatmeal and an egg. The original poster is worried that her husband thinks that she is coddling the child but she is also frustrated with her husband for providing the leftover breakfast which the girl had already rejected. This post involves at least three very touchy issues: 1) child-parent relationships; 2) husband-wife relationships; and 3) food. DCUM posters have strong feelings about all three and even a single one of these topics could have provoked a long thread, let alone all three at once. Many posters focus on the first issue concerning how the parents are handling their child. While a few favor the "eat this or nothing" rule for meals, most prefer offering the child at least limited choices. Once the choice has been made, the child is expected to eat it. Because the original poster was not there when her husband provided the toast with peanut butter, she doesn't know whether the child initially requested it. However, she faults her husband, as do many other posters, for providing the day-old bread with peanut butter on the second day. Some posters say that at kindergarten age, their kids were already able to take care of their own breakfast. Regarding the original poster's relationship with her husband, a few posters believe that her husband is trying to fail so that he will be relieved of responsibility for breakfast due to incompetence. The original poster doesn't think this is the case because he wants to do it, but she says he is very stubborn. Some posters argue that the original poster should stay out of her husband's breakfast choices and let him deal with it, but that means that the original poster would end up taking a melting-down hungry child to school. Others say that the original poster should just have a conversation about the issue with her husband and work out ways to address this sort of thing. Finally, the issue of food. Posters have a range of opinions about what children should eat in the morning. From "anything" at one end of the spectrum to "must be protein" on the other. Probably the only thing those responding agreed about is that day-old toast with peanut butter is not appropriate.

The most active thread yesterday was one I've already discussed about the presidential election poll numbers. I'll skip that one and start with a thread titled, "I’m breadwinner, dh asked me to help with side hustle", and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster and her husband are both attorneys. However, the original poster's husband lost his job several years ago and, while he currently works full time, he is severely underemployed. For these many years, the original poster has been the family's breadwinner, earning almost twice as much as her husband. However, during that time the original poster has also acted as the default parent, dealing with the bulk of the parenting tasks. This has understandably stretched her pretty thin and, in a moment of having too much to do and not enough time to do it, she lost patience with her husband. The original poster revealed her resentment about not having a full partner and feeling like the only adult in the home. A week after this, the original poster's husband approached her about a side gig opportunity in which he is interested. However, he said that because he is not very organized, he would like the original poster to participate and handle the organizing. The original poster lost her patience, not believing that after describing how she is overwhelmed her husband would approach her with the idea of adding more work to her plate. The original poster wants to know who is right or wrong in this issue. What is going on here seems pretty clear to me. Early in their relationship, the original poster's husband out-earned her. That justified to both of them that the original poster should undertake the responsibilities of the default parent. In a better world, they would have shared responsibilities more evenly even then. But many families don't live in such a better world and the original poster's situation is not unusual. Problems began when the couple's salary disparity reversed but their responsibilities didn't. Not only does the original poster's husband show no interest in correcting the current imbalance, but he actually wants to make things worse. No wonder the original poster is resentful. As clear as this seems to me, the vast majority of the responses in this thread are really disappointing. A good portion of the responses appear to be from women who may well be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. They argue that the original poster and her husband should be a team and that the original poster should support her husband with his new venture. This ignores that the couple has not hitherto acted as a team and that the original poster's husband's concept of a team is him as captain and the original poster as team manager. Another large portion of the responses are from misogynist males who believe that it is unquestionably the original poster's duty to attend to parenting tasks and that she should fully support her husband by helping with his new business. Intermixed are a number of responses from posters who are trying to be helpful by suggesting strategies for the original poster to deal with her husband. Many of these seem to infantilize the man, something that I don't think is either required or appropriate. Eventually the thread more or less turned into a battle between wives who do everything and like it and those who want equal partnerships.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Sooo am I just the best parent ever or are the others complete duds?" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster is very proud of herself because she just completed a 3 hour flight with her preschool and elementary school-aged children. She had packed lots of games and engaged her children constantly during the flight. Meanwhile she noticed that other kids on the airplane were all using iPads while their parents used their phones. The original poster feels she is superior to the other parents because she used the travel time for talking and engaging with her kids while the other parents did not. The original poster did not post again until the 13th page of the thread at which point she criticized DCUM posters as "screen-addicted parents with screen-addicted kids". In terms of the replies, one of the posters responding basically did my job for me by writing a lengthy post that described the types of replies the thread received. I'll just crib some points from that post. As the poster noted, there was not agreement among posters about what constituted "good parenting". Many posters considered that good parenting was determined by how little their children bothered other passengers. In this regard, providing a child with a iPad and headphones is great parenting if it keeps the child quiet and still during the flight. Other posters, including the original poster, based their judgement on what they believed to be best for the child. But members of this group were not in complete agreement with each other because there were differences of opinion about what was best for the child. The original poster believes that engagement with a parent is best while others have different ideas, including the suggestion that using an iPad might be best. Another group of posters prioritized what is best for the parent. Because travelling can be stressful and parents, especially moms, are expected to not only plan and pack for themselves, but the children as well, the plane ride may be the only time parents will have to relex and de-stress. An iPad can help distract the kids while the parents have a break. The bottom line is that almost all posters beyond the original poster and a very few others view children using iPads on airplanes as potentially good parenting, rather than bad as the original poster believes. This includes posters whose families are "screen-free" in most other circumstances, but make allowances for air travel. As you would expect, there are plenty of posts that are critical of the original poster who is considered "judgemental", a "troll", and someone who likely has parenting failures as well and probably shouldn't be so smug. More than one poster noted that for all of her criticism of screens and screen-addicted adults, the original poster was using a screen to post on DCUM and appeared to be quite familiar with the website, suggesting frequent screen use. But, I'm sure the original poster can quit at any time.

The two most active threads over the weekend were threads that I've already discussed. Therefore, I will start with the third most active thread which was titled, "Just got yelled at for leaving my kid alone in in the car while I went to the pharmacy" and posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum. The original poster says that she had to run into the pharmacy and her 7-year-old son didn't want to come in, even after the original poster had tried tempting him. Therefore, she left him alone in the car with the car running. When she returned about 10 minutes later, a security guard began yelling at her, saying that she could not leave her child in the car until he is a teenager. The security guard also questioned the original poster's son. The original poster wants to know if it is really a crime to leave her son alone in the car for 10 minutes. Whether or not leaving the child in the car is a crime depends on state and local laws. One responder says that in Maryland children must be at least 8 years old to be left alone in the car. Another poster copy and pasted regulations for DC, MD, and VA. DC law requires children to be 10 years old to be left alone. However, in Virginia it is only illegal to leave children 4 years old or younger alone. Because the original poster said that this happened in Virginia, her actions were apparently legal. Many posters agreed with the original poster that leaving her son alone for 10 minutes was okay, but they were concerned about the car being left running. One fear was of carjackers. That concern is not without merit as a huge number of carjacked cars in the region seem to have kids in them. Other posters worried about the child accidentally doing something to the car that could be dangerous, such as putting it in gear. Those concerns aside, many posters fully supported leaving an unattended child in the car for a brief time. But that opinion was far from universal. Many other posters considered the original poster's actions to have been "lazy" parenting and poor judgement. In addition to the concerns about the running car, these posters had other objections. For instance, the original poster may have been expecting to take only 10 minutes but could have been delayed and taken considerably longer. Several posters acknowledged the dangers of leaving an unattended child alone in a car, but admitted doing so nevertheless. They had found themselves in difficult situations with no good options and decided that briefly leaving their child alone was the least bad choice. Other posters seem to take pride in leaving their kids alone in the car, feeling that any objections were a result of overly-protective parenting. On the other hand, regardless of the wisdom or legality of leaving children alone in the car, some posters were most bothered that the original poster didn't simply tell her son he had to come with her and not allow him a choice. They saw that as her parenting failure.

I'm skipping yesterday's two most active threads because they are ones that I've already discussed. The third most active thread yesterday was titled, "Bible verse card at work", and posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. The original poster says that she is a public school teacher and that yesterday every teacher received a sealed envelope in their school mailbox containing a personalized Bible verse signed by a local church. The original poster is very upset and believes that the school secretary must have been involved in allowing the envelopes to be distributed. The original poster considers this an unacceptable intrusion of religion into a secular space. Responses can be categorized as three different types. There are many posters who think the Bible verses were harmless and many of these posters consider sending the verses to have been a nice gesture. This group believes the original poster is wrong to feel offended. Next are posters who agree with the original poster that distributing Bible verses in public school teachers' mailboxes is inappropriate. But they simply don't consider it to be a big enough deal to be upset about. They would have tossed the envelopes in the trash and not given them a second thought. Third were those posters who both agree with the original poster that the envelopes were inappropriate and that their distribution was worthy of a response. The original poster said that she had talked to her principal and emailed the church, steps that are consistent with the advice offered by other posters. Other public school teachers posted about the intrusion of religion into their schools. This includes prayers during meetings at which attendance is required and the reading of Bible verses at staff functions. Many posters argue that this is not only an unwelcome violation of the separation of church and state, but potentially an illegal one as well. Those who support the Church in this episode argue that it is simply the Church's right of free speech to distribute the Bible verses. What is particularly notable about this group is what I can only describe as their passive aggressive methods of practicing Christianity. The thread is full of such things as offers to "pray for" the original poster that are clearly not meant to be true offers to help the original poster in anyway. Rather, these are clearly attempts to further poke her. In addition, as several posters point out, it is very likely that the same posters who so adamantly claim support for the 1st Amendment that would be among the first to support banning books that offend them. Moreover, these folks have a very specific understanding of the 1st Amendment. Even if we disregard the establishment clause issues of distributing Bible verses at a public school, many of the supporters of that action don't seem to recognize a similar free expression right to oppose the activity. If we accept that a church can send teachers Bible verses, certainly we must also agree that a teacher has a right to vocally oppose the church's action. But many among the pro-Church crowd consider that to be intolerant and, because liberals are supposed to be tolerant, hypocritical (they also assume the original poster is a liberal).

Once again yesterday the most active thread was the one about the Democratic National Convention and, once again, I will skip the thread because I've already discussed it. After that, the most active thread was titled, "MIT releases post-affirmative action class of 2028 data" and was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster linked to a New York Times article reporting on admissions results at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is the first highly-selective university to release statistics regarding the composition of its freshmen class since the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited using race as a factor in college admissions. The topic of race and admissions has been the subject of many lengthy and heated discussions in DCUM's college forum. The results at MIT were almost exactly what critics of race-based admissions had predicted. The number of Asian applicants admitted increased while the number of Black and Hispanic students decreased. Both the NYT article and posters in the thread noted that the MIT results defied expectations by some that universities would use information gleaned from student essays to advantage Black and Hispanic students as a way around the Supreme Court restrictions. MIT, at least, does not appear to have done this. Posters in the thread described that sort of work-around as "cheating" and the Times article suggested that schools that engaged in the practice might expose themselves to legal action. Still, colleges seem to want to recruit diverse student bodies. Even Sally Kornbluth, MIT's president, seemed to lament the loss of diversity in a quote reported in the Times article. However, the MIT data would seem to present a significant roadblock to maintaining diversity. By being the first out of the gate, MIT's results set the benchmark by which other universities will be judged. If the admissions statistics of other top universities do not show similar drops in Black and Hispanic admissions, the schools will be accused of having "cheated". While many of the posts in this thread mention "Asians" and make broad generalizations about them, what comes across if you are paying attention is the significant diversity in that community. On the one hand are Asians who, despite the MIT results showing increased admissions of Asians, seem to feel that everything is stacked against them and, as a minority, they are prejudiced against. On the other hand are posters who seem to believe that the MIT results show that Asians will soon dominate. As one poster writes, "in 10-20 years most of these institutions will be led by Asian Americans." But, in the middle are Asian posters who value diversity and are not thrilled with the MIT results. Given that the term "Asian" encapsulates both east and south Asians, we might want to begin using other designations. China and India are the world's two most populous countries. That's a lot of people to identify by a single label. This issue is a topic of dispute in the thread. The missing element from the MIT data is the demographics of those who applied. Apparently, MIT did not collect that information. There seems to be general agreement among posters that the vast majority of applicants to elite schools have the academic qualifications required and are separated by other factors. Therefore, a drop in the number of Black and Hispanic applicants might explain their drop in admissions. It would also be interesting to see if those groups have higher or lower rejection rates. But we simply don't have those numbers.

The most active thread yesterday was the thread about the Democratic National Convention which had a big night last night. But since I have already discussed that thread, I'll move to the next most active thread which was titled, "To my husband’s work AP", and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster writes an open letter to her husband's affair partner who works with the original poster's husband. The original poster tells the affair partner that after working with her husband for so long, she should know that the man can be sloppy. As a result, he didn't cover his tracks regarding the affair very well and the original poster found out about it. Now, the original poster warns, she plans to tell the affair partner's husband about the affair. The original poster seems to take considerable delight regarding the problems that this wil cause in the affair partner's family. This thread is a bit of a mystery. The original poster sock puppeted throughout the thread, repeatedly offering support for herself. In one post, she alluded to earlier threads which she posted on this topic and I did find an earlier thread that is mostly consistent with this one. While I initially thought that the "open letter" format used by the original poster was just a stylistic technique, later in the thread the original poster demonstrated that she truly believes that the affair partner has not only been reading, but participating in the discussion. The original poster posted several messages in response to posts she believed were from the affair partner. As if to confirm the original poster's suspicions, another poster responded to say that she was the affair partner and because she and her husband have an open relationship, her husband would not be bothered by the original poster's revelations. The original poster did not immediately buy what this poster was saying and asked for evidence that the poster really was her husband's affair partner. The original poster has not posted on DCUM since then and the evidence has not been provided by the other poster, who I believe was trolling in any case. That is all to say that I am not sure what to make of this thread. On the one hand, the original poster may be a troll with a flair for the dramatic, being trolled by another poster who also enjoys drama. On the other hand, the original poster could be a slightly deranged, revenge-seeking, obsessive who probably should not be left alone near bunny rabbits and pots of boiling water. I am not sure which alternative is preferable. Frankly, it is not clear to me that most of those reading the thread care whether it is true or not since they are enjoying the drama so much. A few even managed to sleuth out one of the original poster's earlier threads. At this point the original poster might have legitimate concerns that one or more of those involved — assuming the story is true — might be identified.

Yesterday was another day in which politics dominated discussion. Over half of the ten most active topics were political, including the top four that I will discuss toda. The first of those was titled, "2024 Democratic National Convention" and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. This thread was started Saturday in advance of yesterday's opening day of the Democratic National Convention. The original poster appears to be a Republican who asked if anyone was planning to attend the convention and then quickly turned to expectation setting by suggesting that the DNC might get a bigger audience than the Republican National Convention because the RNC was held while everyone was on vacation. It is clear to anyone that enthusiasm and momentum have clearly switched to the Democrats since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the presidential nominee. That even Republicans understand this is evident from the preemptive excuse-making of the original poster and the apocalyptic tone of many of the Republican posts. For instance, one MAGA poster claimed that the DNC would be "watched for decades to come as the death of democracy in America". The thread was 10 pages long before the convention even got started as posters debated whatever political issue crossed their minds. I have long since given up that any thread in the political forum will stay on topic for longer than a few posts. In this thread, posters were debating Harris' anti-price gouging position and Doritos, both of which have their own threads. Once things finally got started, the thread settled into a routine of each side trying to spin events as much as possible. There have been expectations of large, possibly violent, protests against Israel's war in Gaza. As it turned out, the number of protesters was smaller than expected. Police had erected several rows of fences to contain the protesters and, while protesters broke through one row at one point, things remained under control and there was no real violence. That didn't stop some posters from fixating on the protests and doing their best to blow them out of proportion. On the other hand were posters who attempted to minimize the authentic anger aroused by Biden's complete and total support for Israel while it kills tens of thousands of Palestinians, blaming the protests on Iran. With regard to the speeches, things were much the same. Conservative posters found many things about which to complain while liberals were full of praise. Much of the discussion revolved around Biden and his stepping down from the race. Many posters, most of whom were probably Republicans, claimed that there was something irregular about Harris replacing Biden at the top of the ticket. Former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump has been referring to this as a coup and some of his supporters in this thread followed suit. Several posters asserted that nobody had voted for Harris and, therefore, her accession to presidential nominee was anti-Democratic. Factually, due to the peculiarities of the American political system, voters in the primary elections actually select delegates rather than an actual candidate. The majority of the delegates elected were pledged to Biden. When he stepped down, however, Biden asked his delegates to support Harris. Those delegates were free to support any candidate of their choice, but most chose to support Harris. There is nothing anti-Democratic about this, particularly since Harris was Biden's running mate in the first place.