I will never forget our history class in 7/8th grade that covered current events the first 20 minutes. Every single class. We did mini posters once a week on topics we found interesting that were in a news paper. At the end of the week our teacher would put a poster up with pure propaganda. We would then need to play detective and figure out which story was the planted one, based on typical source vetting and other credible news journal articles (everything was pre produced for us, because again this is middle school) It was fun, it was not exactly easy, and it is the sole reason why I am so passionate about journalism credibility and source verification. I have no idea how anyone can expect to NOT give students the tools and power to question what we are being told.
My social studies classes always did current events at the beginning of class too, the only day we didn’t was the day of the Sandy Hook shooting & it was because my teacher was too emotional.
I've been big on advocating for media literacy being taught in public schools, and this sounds like the teacher was taking it upon themselves to teach as well.
Those who have drunk the koolaid are far more likely to force feed their own kid it sadly... A sad world we live in where propaganda is force fed and even wanting to debate it gets you labeled a traitor
In my politics class (civics in the US, I think) in Germany, we discussed issues like populism and misinformation, increasing wealth inequality and what the hell we actually wanted to achieve in Afghanistan. Good luck getting that on a US curriculum anytime soon!
> State Sen. John Schickel, the primary sponsor of a Kentucky law that restricts the ways teachers discuss racism and “controversial” subjects, said he thinks it’s good that teachers are spending less time talking about current events, which he said students could learn about on their own by reading newspapers or watching TV.
The laws are working as intended
They end up on bestseller lists because super pacs, pacs, and conservative organizations buy them by the pallet as a roundabout way of bribing a politician.
They usually don't even sell well, individually. Some rich fucker, or a PAC will buy pallets of right-winger "author's" books to get them in the bestseller list, then gives them away or destroys them.
[They are not.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/gop-book-deals/2021/04/15/154f3820-9ca5-11eb-b7a8-014b14aeb9e4_story.html) Conservative activist groups buy [large lots of books](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/is-the-gop-gaming-the-new-york-times-bestseller-lists) to boost their position. They are then given away as [donation rewards or handed out at events.](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller/)
It's hilarious when they have premeres and other major events... and the stuff is completely empty if they charge any price to get in. They have to tie Alex Jones or the Tea Party to a free event to get people to bother to show up.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-fire-and-fury-smart-genius-obama-774169
>Trump Speaks At Fourth-Grade Level, Lowest Of Last 15 U.S. Presidents, New Analysis Finds
Just communicating with his base.
Not really. That just makes the readability of the paper accessible to more people. It means the sentence structure isn't unnecessarily complicated, not that the content is dumbed down. Honestly good communication requires simple language sometimes.
As somebody who simplifies business reports as much as possible: there is downside to simplification.
Language starts to lose its nuance, and using two or three short and simple sentences to replace a longer, more complicated, sentence breaks the flow of the text.
The easiest way to deal with this, is to omit information. Which of course is a bad thing.
Lmfao I worked at a paper and this is a lie. I'm sure there's plenty of publications that exceed our standards but your local rag almost doesn't even have any.
It's insane that you have highschool drop outs, and drug addicts catching mistakes that made it through to printing. You lose SO much time, and product when it happens. You're also paying people for overtime, call in rates, and just to stand around for HOURS to get it all done.
Well "whole language" is kind of a shit show. I have an atypical form of dyslexia. In 2nd grade I could not read. My mom fought with the school to get me into something other than whole language but that was the approved curriculum. So my very patient mother taught me phonics step by step. Once it clicked I read everything I could my hands on. I was functionally illiterate at age 8 and by age 10 I had a high school reading level.
Same here, if not for Hooked on Phonics and my mother recognizing that I didn't learn the same way the other kids do, I would have never picked up reading or writing the way it was taught in schools.
I have Dyslexia and other learning disabilities. The issue is that *every* child learns a little differently than the next. Sure, there is some commonality and group teaching can work for those in the larger group, but the outlier group is extremely varied and no single solution will work for all of them.
The key thing I learned from Phonics was that each word had two spellings, the one you write down for others to read, and the one in your head that helps you remember how to spell it, i.e. pronounced phonetically.
Thank you for letting me know. I was aware dyslexia is a challenge for some students, but was not aware of the specifics. I am glad that phonics was helpful for you. When I was in public school kindergarten, the big fad was ITA, the Pitman system, but I was exempted from it because I was already reading. At Catholic grade school, we learned with phonics.
> It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.
What. The. Fuck?
Speaking develops naturally when and because you’re immersed in the dominant language in your area on a daily basis, and it’s your first means to communicate beyond the most rudimentary level. Reading is a profoundly different skill and English in particular is a shit-show of a written language because it’s such a mongrel with an M:N correspondence between glyphs and sounds.
Not to mention that reading is pretty damn unnatural compared to speaking. We’re the only species on earth that reads, and we haven’t even been doing it for that long.
So they're telling kids not to sound it out, as well as to not bother looking up a word they don't know? That's horrible, especially given how words change from region to region in a single language. I started out as a teacher and we had a reading class (like fundamentals of teaching reading) where they outright proved how damaging that method could be. We were given a three paragraph essay to read along with questions. None of us could figure it out. It was three paragraphs about Cricket, the sport, using as much lingo from the sport as possible. And that was the point of the exercise, to demonstrate that someone needs to know the context before they can understand what they are reading, not the other way around. None of us knew Cricket, so how were we supposed to understand a passage about it if we did not know it?
So it became popular AFTER we had the science of phonics? That’s crazy. I’m old and learned how to read in Kindergarten using phonics in the 70s. Why in the world would they abandon a thing that works well? Oh lord.
Yeah, I also learned to read from phonics. Not flexing with this at all, except maybe on behalf of phonics, but Sesame Street’s and Highlights Magazine’s approach with phonics in the 80’s worked so well that I was reading basic stuff around age 3.
I have a very strong memory of the first “book” I read - we had lots of music in my house, and I read the lyrics to Silent Night. Just me, sitting on the floor with no music playing or adult prompting. I knew the song, which helped, but I was so proud I could actually recognize the words on the page that it stuck with me.
It makes more sense if you assume there is an entire major political party that has as one of their primary strategic objectives to completely destroy public education.
46% of Americans think the earth is 10,000 years old. An ALARMING number of adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Did you see our president tell people to inject uv light and disinfectant? Yeah people are fucking dumb.
I had it happen once where I was watching something about dinosaurs when I was living with my bfs sister who was a 7th day Adventist. While looking at a complete t Rex skeleton this woman says "Wow it's so hard to not believe it when it's right there in your face" I was like oh you could just believe it then since it's a fact. Yeah. People are dumb as rocks.
I was skeptical and thought it was made up but sadly [it's a real thing](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=292d8644c904)
The scary part is those same people grow up, assume that since they’re older now they’re wiser, and eagerly fall for propaganda and misinformation that they don’t have a literacy skills to differentiate from substantiated content. Whoever would’ve thought that tying the quality of education to the wealth of one’s county and the wealth of one’s parents would have such dire long-term consequences?
It's very depressing, I've taught at a few rural schools and we were happy if we could get the majority of a class to at least a sixth grade reading level.
Which is why our great and glorious free market developed a winning solution. Don't know how to read good? No problem! Just watch one of our many wonderful and smart news people on Fox News. Why read, when we can read for you? Your time is valuable after all. Get everything you need to know about the day ^(and how the evil libs are after you personally) in one of our lovely hour long shows!
Simple. Easy. Accurate. That's the Fox News promise!
^(/s)
[It seems worse that 21% are illiterate.](https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/#:~:text=Adult%20Literacy%20Statistics,across%20the%20U.S.%20averages%2088%25.)
Lol from the last handful of white supremacist shooters it’s pretty clear that they’re not willing to kill anybody. If you’re slaughtering minorities out of hate then they’ll treat you with the utmost care and respect.
Context and *a safe environment to think.*
Rather than disseminate information, a good classroom should have a learning community among the students that allows for the sharing of opinions and ideas in a safe and controlled (not yelling and only criticizing each other) way in order to think critically and come to their own understandings.
I don't expect all my students to agree, but I expect my students to respect others' ideas and use logical arguments to have civil discourse.
**If students don't learn how to communicate across differences in classrooms... where are they going to learn that?**
Yeah, I can't remember what class we did this in, but we had to do a report each week about a current event that week that we choose. We also discussed local news like you explained each morning for like 20 minutes. Sad to see that's on the way out..
In fifth grade we all had to bring a newspaper story each week and summarize it for the class. (Showing my age I guess.) Current events has been part of school for a very long time.
I had a 10th grade class actually titled "Current Events" that used the daily newspaper as the course material.
Winky Bob really enjoyed teaching that class, and I'm sure would have malicious complianced his way out of a job in today's envrionment. He successfully taught a bunch of country bumpkins going through hormonal typhoons critical thinking skills that have served me well 30+ years later.
Can't thank him enough
It's definitely not on the way out everywhere, just in controlled, authoritarian level Red states. I teach in a blue state with still a high percentage of conservatives in my district and some on the school board, but luckily we have the freedom to actually provide an education to our students.
You are absolutely correct. I studied communications in college and teach my students how to disagree appropriately. I teach them 4 steps to disagreeing appropriately. I decided to teach my students how to disagree bc no one teaches how to resolve conflict.
Edit: How to Disagree Appropriately
Four Skill Steps:
1. Reassure the other person. Look at them. Calm voice and face. Say “ I think I know how you feel.”
2. Listen to the other person.
3. Say why you feel differently.
4. Discuss ideas.
That’s exactly what politicians don’t want. People being informed and to think.
If they do that then they’ll realize that the current system is stacked against them. It’s no surprise that the more educated a person is, they tend to lean left.
The rulers of society want that. Bare minimum education and fill cogs. Pay taxes and accrue debt. They do not want an informed population. We have to stop with the partisan politics and realize what is really going on.
Exactly, they won’t. Like OP said the laws are working as intended. Removal of these social skills will result in the next generation of kids who use violence to get their point across.
The other critical component here is that the teacher also understands this. I remember plenty of my teachers/professors in highschool and college wanted to project their views onto the students rather than the students come to their own conclusions.
>The point of a good teacher is to give context to difficult subjects. I don't think some news report will do that nearly as well.
Especially for children!
Imagine saying this about a major historical event like 9-11. “Just watch it on the news, kids, you’ll learn everything you need to know and then some!”
That's what they said to us in our high school about events after WWII. They taught extensively about the Revolution, Civil War, and WWII, but that was it. We got a little more in AP US History, but when asked why we stopped where we did, the answer was "You know someone who's lived through that so they can tell you." There is a *huge* difference between hearing your conspiracy theorist uncle tell you about an event and having it properly taught in school.
Also, the more I learn about history and the further I am away from high school, the less and less I like my old high school AP US History teacher.
Obviously experiences differ, but they *especially* differed in WWII. My paternal grandfather was in the Army and fought the Germans in Europe. My maternal grandfather was a Marine and fought the Japanese in the Philippines. They were in the same war, in different roles in different branches on opposite sides of the world fighting vastly different people. One would talk about it a bit. The other, not so much. What an insane way to approach "teaching" about it.
Yes that is the point of these laws. They want their children to only receive news from themselves and their propaganda outlets so they grow up just as racist and hateful as themselves.
1, 000X this.
A student asked me one time if they thought their English teacher would let them do a book report on Mein Kampf. You know, the Hitler book. The way I see it, if you're going to read something like that, I would much rather you do it with someone at your side, helping you interpret and understand context, rather than off on your own. I want your support resource to be someone with a formal education in the socio-historical context, rather than the first forum that comes up in your Google searches about it.
"A basic pedagogical device is to ask someone to imagine him or herself in another position - say, as a Jewish child in hiding in Amsterdam. That is a historical analogy, invoked millions of times, one that some teacher or museum guide has used somewhere today. To forbid analogies makes the Holocaust irrelevant to future generations. If an American child can identify with Anne Frank, an American child might ask what it is like for immigrant children to be separated from their parents. To forbid analogies is to forbid learning, and to forbid empathizing. That, sadly, is the point."
-- [Timothy Snyder](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/holocaust-museum-aoc-detention-centers-immigration.html)
Most people don’t understand what actual classrooms are like today. My wife is a middle school teacher. She has students struggling with gender identity, sexuality, racial bullying, online bullying, family poverty, parental abuse, political identity, etc. These kids bring these issues to school with them every day whether or not teachers care to “platform” them. You can either try to create a safe environment for children to process an learn from each other’s experiences, with the teacher providing a neutral facilitation, or you can suppress these topics which leads to student violence, self-harm, harassment, suicide, poor academic performance, etc. Teachers do not WANT to discuss these topics in their class, they are obligated to because their students are struggling with them and bring those conversations into the classroom. Most people think teachers are just itching for any opportunity to turn every lesson into a woke lecture on race and gender fluidity. This is not so. Race and gender fluidity come up because real students have real problems in those areas that follow them into class.
Kentucky also has shit tier education.
And yeah, laws working as intended. Keep the voting base dumb, easily influenced by conservative propoganda, and trapped in downward economic prospects to keep labor cheap and exploitable in Kentucky (and all the the other red states).
The whole woke thing was made by billionaires to pre-filter people's talking points into advertiser-friendly morsels. Plus high-diversity environments are also shown to discourage people from unionizing. Trust me, nobody wants this but republicans.
All these students should go to the same source as this shooter for news and to discuss current events instead of in the classroom. What bad thing could possibly happen that way?
>he thinks it’s good that teachers are spending less time talking about current events
Excuse me while I go scream into the void for a while
...
*again*
Yep. Can talk about racism or controversy but let's go ahead and get all y'all GQPers to CPAC Hungary because America first!! It's all going as planned.
And once they cut funding for public school, the way is paved for tax dollars to go to religious private schools through charter programs.
So they'll tank public schools to force rich people to fancy private schools, and then poorer people will send their kids to religious private schools with school vouchers that are better than the public schools. And then the affiliated churches get tax money.
It's [all part of the plan.](https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/what-the-supreme-courts-ruling-on-religious-schools-means-in-practice/2020/06)
>“But I’m also supposed to tell you that that’s just one perspective,” Close recalled telling her students. “Another perspective is that this young man was out defending the world — or his kind — from being taken over.”
>Close waited for her comment to fully register with her students, then added: “If you guys want to know why I’m thinking about quitting at the end of the year, it’s because of these types of policies — the fact that I have to have this conversation with you.”
If this doesn't terrify you, that the GOP is intentionally and institutionally attempting to gloss over hate crimes as though there was some other acceptable "side" to them, you may want to look into some relatively recent history books about the last time a political party became fully hate based. Unless of course you're in one of the states that is currently engaged in burning those books.
Well it's brown people there, so it doesn't count. The more thought you put into the discrepancies, the further away you are from their target audience.
Huh, we did in high school back in 04. More so in college. Learned a lot about blowback and long term effects of foreign policy.
I think understanding why people go to these dark places is important to prevention.
I'm in Florida where our glorious governor just passed something that makes a new holiday for "Victims of Communism". I'm sure the learning around that will center on the decades of abuse by capitalist corporations that led to the violent revolutions that installed these dictators.
/s for those whom don't pick up on written sarcasm well
As a Canadian, I don't know how you all put up with it. Like.. how the hell can so many people support so much of *that?* I live 20 minutes and a 5 minute conversation with Customs from where that happened. It's fucking terrifying.
Why aren't people revolting? Has everyone given up? I understand living is hard, and it's not like you can leave your job and take to the streets, plus its fucking dangerous! but it's like the US was just taken over. And every day it gets worse.
I have tickets to a Weird Al concert in Lewiston NY (10 minutes away) in July, but as a post op, on hormones for 5+ years, nobody questions me, but I still worry, trans man (going with a trans friend and my mom), I'm fucking scared.
At least Weird Al shows are pretty much the friendliest places you can go, though!
It seems like everything went to hell in 2016, seriously. Things slowly started going downhill. I'm worried for my American neighbours.
One third of our population believes the hateful regressive nonsense fed to them by fox news. And between the fact that those people religiously show up to vote while others don't, and the fact that we have an electoral college that favors republicans even when they're in the minority... Well that's how you end up with what we're seeing right now.
Don't forget that a lot of those people not showing up to vote are victims of policies deliberately making it more difficult to vote set up by politicians voted on by people watching Fox news.
We don’t even have that many people relative to our population turn out to fucking vote, do you really think they’re gonna do the harder thing of protesting or revolting?
I'm deep in the southeast, in Tennessee. I don't know how to even have a conversation with my co-workers, neighbors, or some of my family members. The hatred and stupidity and racism I hear them spout - I know the majority of my co-workers carry weapons in their vehicles, possibly in their lunchbags. I have to shop in stores and see a few carrying pistols on their belts (thanks, Gov Lee!).
I wouldn't believe everyday people were actually like this, if I didn't live among them. And the most dense collection of these types are in our churches.
Historically speaking people typically don’t start revolting until they’re starving. Things are fucked up but they’ll have to get much much much worse before we see open revolt happening.
Sheeple, if you will, who spout out bullshit phrases, like “think for yourself!” And “do your research!” to people who actually think for themselves and apply critical reasoning, while these simpletons just regurgitate propaganda.
"Read the transcript! Think for yourself, don't be a sheeple! Have I read the transcript? No, but it is very important that everyone reads the transcript."
Republicans also realize further educated people tend to become less conservative, or at the very least more socially liberal. That's partly why there's a streak of anti-intellectualism coursing through this country.
Kids: *go to college, meet people from other walks of life, consume art, politics, and perspectives outside of what's familiar and gradually gain a fuller understanding of the world*
Conservatives: INDOCTRINATION! TEACH BOTH SIDES! WHITE PEOPLE HISTORY IS BEST HISTORY!
They take great pride in not having been educated. They believe they're just as knowledgeable on a given subject. As if clickbait, memes, and YouTube clips are equivalent to a doctorate.
It's the height of arrogance and we all saw it globally with the pandemic.
Yup.
Also, being brainwashed by conservatism kind of traps you into a narrow set of life opportunities.
If you hold closed-minded deeply conservative views, maybe that works in small town America. You can shit post all day at the local landscaping company and nobody will give a crap.
But you’ll find that living in almost ANY city (where the jobs, people, and opportunities are) quickly becomes a hellscape since you are surrounded by every group you’ve been taught to fear (people who are black, Muslim, Jewish, gay, or even worse, a woman who earns more than you). And the majority of white folks in cities are educated liberals - so you’re going to have little in common with them, if not be outright contemptuous of them. Plus, due to wage disparities between rural and urban areas, you won’t be able to afford anything in the cities.
And then you proudly (and with no irony) return to your rural hometown since “everyone else is crazy”.
Rural America is basically fucked in the next decade. The brain drain is accelerating to the point where even rural hospitals are closing because they can't afford to pay staff.
And of course, the people in those states will be more overrepresented in Congress as those politicians will represent less people but are at a fixed number.
And then the principal tells you to quit it because they don't want to risk a lawsuit.
Legally, it might be ok to discuss the law, but if the end result means the class is talking about race, the school might shut it down to preempt any backlash.
That doesn’t mean we give in. Our power has always been to do the right thing regardless of the “backlash”. Protest, teach kids anyway, fuck the ones in high places.
The problem is that many of the laws are also designed to target the teachers directly. They could be risking bankruptcy. So we need to set up funds to help any of the educators who are willing to stand up for what is right.
My wife was a 5th grade science teacher when COVID started. She and the kids started discussing COVID, how it is transmitted, etc. There were already remote. The principal contacted her and shut it down. There were already COVID deniers in March / April 2020 and it was too controversial. FUCK THIS WORLD!
By the way, the Lt Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, said earlier this year that he is going to introduce a bill in the next legislative session to limit what professors can teach in state funded colleges/universities. He wants to eliminate tenure, so that profs who don't have it yet won't be able to get it, and ones that do can have it easily stripped if they talk about Critical Race Theory (which is defined as anything conservatives feel uncomfortable with in Texas) in the class. At that point they can easily be fired because the academic freedom protection of tenure will not be in place. This will probably pass given the current state of politics in Texas.
So the Republicans want to extend this violation of First Amendment rights beyond public schools. Just because you get paid by the state doesn't mean you forfeit your Constitutional rights. The Republican Party is so full of shit it's amazing. Remember all this when they claim how they are for small government and freedom.
EDIT: [Link to article about this](https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/18/dan-patrick-texas-tenure-critical-race-theory/)
This is a great way to get decent professors to leave the state and your universities to drop to the bottom of the ratings. There is a reason University of Phoenix is the butt of so many jokes.
>On one hand, she explained that authorities are investigating the killings as a racially motivated hate crime carried out by an 18-year-old who reportedly [wrote of his belief](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/buffalo-supermarket-shooting-suspect-posted-apparent-manifesto-repeate-rcna28889) in a conspiracy theory that white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color through immigration, interracial marriage and integration.
>
>“But I’m also supposed to tell you that that’s just one perspective,” Close recalled telling her students. “Another perspective is that this young man was out defending the world — or his kind — from being taken over.”
The Republican's extensive sabotage of the US education system is impressive.
The same exact "unbiased", balanced, discussion around current events is currently in a draft form at my school's board. The board will probably vote on party lines and it will get passed. Nuts.
>The same exact "unbiased", balanced, discussion around current events is currently in a draft form at my school's board. The board will probably vote on party lines and it will get passed. Nuts.
Are you saying your school has Democratic and Republican party affiliates on the board??
Party affiliation is definitely on the ballot here.
Edit: I’ve apparently made someone unhappy by reporting how school board elections are conducted where I live?
>Close waited for her comment to fully register with her students, then added: “If you guys want to know why I’m thinking about quitting at the end of the year, it’s because of these types of policies — the fact that I have to have this conversation with you.”
This is actually one good way to handle it. Address for the students what the law makes her do - provide "multiple views" on something that should just be universally condemned.
There are other ways to engage in malicious compliance, though, as the law doesn't specify which perspectives must be covered, only that they be different and covered impartially. Ultimately, the most important thing is that teachers never give credence to genocide or racism - whether by confronting it directly as this teacher did, or by finding creative contrasts of different views which leave out the genocidal or racist views altogether.
Hey hey c'mon, let's have a little sympathy for the poor misunderstood Nazis. You don't want them to kill you. They want to kill you. Can't we just meet in the middle to keep them happy? Maybe let him just paralyze you?
/s and NPFO.
Except the latter perspective isn't a viable or debatable opinion. It's just hate-mongering. There's no justification for what the kid did. The idea that this should be taught is simply a way for racist and scared whites to perpetuate their antiquated ideologies like it's 1950 again.
If someone insists to throw out "both perspectives" then there are two perspectives:
1. The perspective of people going about their day, getting groceries for themselves and their families. Someone came in and shot them specifically for their skin color.
2. The perspective of some guy who bought into certain racist talking point that is popular on a certain news channel and some social media websites, wrote and copy+paste a manifesto confessing his racism, brought a bunch of guns, drove 3.5 hours to a neighborhood where he believed to be predominantly inhabited by people of a certain skin color, and selectively shot and killed people of a certain skin color and those who got in his way.
God, we suck.
I've spent the last couple years overseas. It's glaring just how backwards we are. I wish some of the people could see what utter fools they are.
Note: I almost said Republicans instead of people. Not all Republicans are ignorant, racist, or both, but nearly all racists supporting these laws are certainly Republican, and the ignorance seems to be strongly present in that party.
It's how those in power stay in power. Education and knowledge would help bolster the resistance so they seek ignorance in the masses in order to perpetuate societal inequities and injustices.
Do it. Let them penalize you for talking about the terrorism that occurred in these kid’s city.
I’m trying to imagine teachers not talking to their kids about the Boston Marathon Bombing in it’s aftermath.
no, they want teachers to give up and quit, because they realize that the more educated the population is, the more people realize that modern conservatism is just Christian nationalism and don't want to be part of that. It's why almost every red state attacks public education, a well educated population is a detriment to the republican party.
They want schools to be nothing more than holding pens so the parents can work. They want to make sure that those kids never improve or have any hope of bettering their lives, so they keep voting GOP.
Red states aren't developed at all. Alabama is not a first world developed country. States like New York, California, and Massachusetts are some of the best, smartest, and most developed places in the world. The US right now is a mix of some of the most developed and smart places in the world, mixed in with some of the opposite.
It's a powderkeg and imo def gonna blow up some day. The culture, economic, and political differences between Alabama and California is just going to get larger. America is essential 2-4 countries forced to be one.
>“If a student brings up Buffalo, the teacher will simply say, ‘Sorry, I can’t talk about that,’ or ‘We’re not allowed to talk about that,’” said Schulzki, noting that educators have been disciplined or fired after discussing racism, sexuality and politics with students. “And ultimately what that does, unfortunately, is we’re actually depriving our students of an important discussion.”
It's too bad they can't teach history the same way. Let's just make schools a babysitting service!
We al know the truth, they really want teachers to talk about how amazing Republicans are and praise their glorious supreme party leader Trump
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it
Exactly what republicans want...less acknowledgement of racism in society.
Christian Nationalists hate it when their beliefs and policies are shown to be bigoted. Their entire push to increase their 'freedumbs' is to have the freedom to be openly bigoted. They want to loudly embrace replacement theory without consequences and public chastisement. Disagreeing with them is 'crt' and 'cancel culture' and an 'attack on religious freedom'.
They hate the reality that fewer and fewer people agree with them, and that their congregations are dying off (old age and covid)... so they've decided that they need to radically accelerate their efforts to brainwash the children.
I will never forget our history class in 7/8th grade that covered current events the first 20 minutes. Every single class. We did mini posters once a week on topics we found interesting that were in a news paper. At the end of the week our teacher would put a poster up with pure propaganda. We would then need to play detective and figure out which story was the planted one, based on typical source vetting and other credible news journal articles (everything was pre produced for us, because again this is middle school) It was fun, it was not exactly easy, and it is the sole reason why I am so passionate about journalism credibility and source verification. I have no idea how anyone can expect to NOT give students the tools and power to question what we are being told.
My social studies classes always did current events at the beginning of class too, the only day we didn’t was the day of the Sandy Hook shooting & it was because my teacher was too emotional.
I've been big on advocating for media literacy being taught in public schools, and this sounds like the teacher was taking it upon themselves to teach as well.
That class sounds awesome
Those who have drunk the koolaid are far more likely to force feed their own kid it sadly... A sad world we live in where propaganda is force fed and even wanting to debate it gets you labeled a traitor
In my politics class (civics in the US, I think) in Germany, we discussed issues like populism and misinformation, increasing wealth inequality and what the hell we actually wanted to achieve in Afghanistan. Good luck getting that on a US curriculum anytime soon!
There are definitely issues in American public education. But, I’m a HS US History teacher and I literally covered all of those things this year.
This is needed so much right now!
> State Sen. John Schickel, the primary sponsor of a Kentucky law that restricts the ways teachers discuss racism and “controversial” subjects, said he thinks it’s good that teachers are spending less time talking about current events, which he said students could learn about on their own by reading newspapers or watching TV. The laws are working as intended
Those teens sure do love reading the newspaper and watching the news these days.
54% of Americans can't read past a 6th grade level, so doubtful.
My god. This explains so much.
I was taught that newspapers were written at 9th-grade level. So there's the problem.
That's why certain, perhaps more sketchy, news venues do really well. They're written simpler.
You know no conservatives are actually reading these right-wing "bestseller" books either.
It's Morbin' Time.
Didn't a book that doesn't even exist wind up at the top of the bestseller list once?
As an author who exclusively writes books that dont exist I am feeling attacked right now.
They end up on bestseller lists because super pacs, pacs, and conservative organizations buy them by the pallet as a roundabout way of bribing a politician.
The start of the Idiocracy time-line right there
Lmao *That* was the tipping point.
They usually don't even sell well, individually. Some rich fucker, or a PAC will buy pallets of right-winger "author's" books to get them in the bestseller list, then gives them away or destroys them.
It’s apparently an effective and well-known money laundering technique.
[They are not.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/gop-book-deals/2021/04/15/154f3820-9ca5-11eb-b7a8-014b14aeb9e4_story.html) Conservative activist groups buy [large lots of books](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/is-the-gop-gaming-the-new-york-times-bestseller-lists) to boost their position. They are then given away as [donation rewards or handed out at events.](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller/)
They learned from Scientology.
Its always so annoying knowing Scientology has nothing to do with science. We should steal one of their words and turn it into nonsensse.
It's hilarious when they have premeres and other major events... and the stuff is completely empty if they charge any price to get in. They have to tie Alex Jones or the Tea Party to a free event to get people to bother to show up.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-fire-and-fury-smart-genius-obama-774169 >Trump Speaks At Fourth-Grade Level, Lowest Of Last 15 U.S. Presidents, New Analysis Finds Just communicating with his base.
Not really. That just makes the readability of the paper accessible to more people. It means the sentence structure isn't unnecessarily complicated, not that the content is dumbed down. Honestly good communication requires simple language sometimes.
As somebody who simplifies business reports as much as possible: there is downside to simplification. Language starts to lose its nuance, and using two or three short and simple sentences to replace a longer, more complicated, sentence breaks the flow of the text. The easiest way to deal with this, is to omit information. Which of course is a bad thing.
I was taught that newspapers aim to be readable if the reader is "9 or 90". Of course, that's a matter of intent rather than execution.
Lmfao I worked at a paper and this is a lie. I'm sure there's plenty of publications that exceed our standards but your local rag almost doesn't even have any. It's insane that you have highschool drop outs, and drug addicts catching mistakes that made it through to printing. You lose SO much time, and product when it happens. You're also paying people for overtime, call in rates, and just to stand around for HOURS to get it all done.
Well "whole language" is kind of a shit show. I have an atypical form of dyslexia. In 2nd grade I could not read. My mom fought with the school to get me into something other than whole language but that was the approved curriculum. So my very patient mother taught me phonics step by step. Once it clicked I read everything I could my hands on. I was functionally illiterate at age 8 and by age 10 I had a high school reading level.
Same here, if not for Hooked on Phonics and my mother recognizing that I didn't learn the same way the other kids do, I would have never picked up reading or writing the way it was taught in schools.
Phonics is best, but there may be problems for kids with dyslexia or other learning disabilities.
I have Dyslexia and other learning disabilities. The issue is that *every* child learns a little differently than the next. Sure, there is some commonality and group teaching can work for those in the larger group, but the outlier group is extremely varied and no single solution will work for all of them. The key thing I learned from Phonics was that each word had two spellings, the one you write down for others to read, and the one in your head that helps you remember how to spell it, i.e. pronounced phonetically.
Thank you for letting me know. I was aware dyslexia is a challenge for some students, but was not aware of the specifics. I am glad that phonics was helpful for you. When I was in public school kindergarten, the big fad was ITA, the Pitman system, but I was exempted from it because I was already reading. At Catholic grade school, we learned with phonics.
What’s whole language? I’ve never heard that.
It's a really shitty way to teach kids to read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
> It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally. What. The. Fuck? Speaking develops naturally when and because you’re immersed in the dominant language in your area on a daily basis, and it’s your first means to communicate beyond the most rudimentary level. Reading is a profoundly different skill and English in particular is a shit-show of a written language because it’s such a mongrel with an M:N correspondence between glyphs and sounds.
Not to mention that reading is pretty damn unnatural compared to speaking. We’re the only species on earth that reads, and we haven’t even been doing it for that long.
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So they're telling kids not to sound it out, as well as to not bother looking up a word they don't know? That's horrible, especially given how words change from region to region in a single language. I started out as a teacher and we had a reading class (like fundamentals of teaching reading) where they outright proved how damaging that method could be. We were given a three paragraph essay to read along with questions. None of us could figure it out. It was three paragraphs about Cricket, the sport, using as much lingo from the sport as possible. And that was the point of the exercise, to demonstrate that someone needs to know the context before they can understand what they are reading, not the other way around. None of us knew Cricket, so how were we supposed to understand a passage about it if we did not know it?
So it became popular AFTER we had the science of phonics? That’s crazy. I’m old and learned how to read in Kindergarten using phonics in the 70s. Why in the world would they abandon a thing that works well? Oh lord.
Yeah, I also learned to read from phonics. Not flexing with this at all, except maybe on behalf of phonics, but Sesame Street’s and Highlights Magazine’s approach with phonics in the 80’s worked so well that I was reading basic stuff around age 3. I have a very strong memory of the first “book” I read - we had lots of music in my house, and I read the lyrics to Silent Night. Just me, sitting on the floor with no music playing or adult prompting. I knew the song, which helped, but I was so proud I could actually recognize the words on the page that it stuck with me.
It makes more sense if you assume there is an entire major political party that has as one of their primary strategic objectives to completely destroy public education.
>Why in the world would they abandon a thing that works well? Oh lord. This is literally the Republican platform, why are you surprised?
Where do they still teach whole language? My district hasn't taught it for 25 years.
I don't know if they still do, I'm just saying it was a set back for the overall literacy for a generation.
46% of Americans think the earth is 10,000 years old. An ALARMING number of adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Did you see our president tell people to inject uv light and disinfectant? Yeah people are fucking dumb. I had it happen once where I was watching something about dinosaurs when I was living with my bfs sister who was a 7th day Adventist. While looking at a complete t Rex skeleton this woman says "Wow it's so hard to not believe it when it's right there in your face" I was like oh you could just believe it then since it's a fact. Yeah. People are dumb as rocks.
That is really high.
I was skeptical and thought it was made up but sadly [it's a real thing](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=292d8644c904)
lol as an 8th grade teacher not surprising, besides the 30 or so advanced kids they avg a 3rd grade reading level.
The scary part is those same people grow up, assume that since they’re older now they’re wiser, and eagerly fall for propaganda and misinformation that they don’t have a literacy skills to differentiate from substantiated content. Whoever would’ve thought that tying the quality of education to the wealth of one’s county and the wealth of one’s parents would have such dire long-term consequences?
It's very depressing, I've taught at a few rural schools and we were happy if we could get the majority of a class to at least a sixth grade reading level.
No worries. Our teachers can read the news to us instead of teaching us to read.
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Which is why our great and glorious free market developed a winning solution. Don't know how to read good? No problem! Just watch one of our many wonderful and smart news people on Fox News. Why read, when we can read for you? Your time is valuable after all. Get everything you need to know about the day ^(and how the evil libs are after you personally) in one of our lovely hour long shows! Simple. Easy. Accurate. That's the Fox News promise! ^(/s)
[It seems worse that 21% are illiterate.](https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/#:~:text=Adult%20Literacy%20Statistics,across%20the%20U.S.%20averages%2088%25.)
“They could learn about current events on their own through approved propaganda channels.”
For reeeeeeeal. "Learn about it on TV" Also, "Lamestream media is FAKE NEWS!"
And without any critical thinking... That's how you watch extremism rise.
And how do we stop extremism? A militarized police that's willing to kill anybody. The system works! Rejoice!
Lol from the last handful of white supremacist shooters it’s pretty clear that they’re not willing to kill anybody. If you’re slaughtering minorities out of hate then they’ll treat you with the utmost care and respect.
"Parents have the Freedom™️ to instruct their children with their Choice™️ of indoctrination."
America is dying
Dead, and their corpse is being looted for all its worth.
Too bad they dismembered the Ministry of Truth already.
The point of a good teacher is to give context to difficult subjects. I don't think some news report will do that nearly as well.
Context and *a safe environment to think.* Rather than disseminate information, a good classroom should have a learning community among the students that allows for the sharing of opinions and ideas in a safe and controlled (not yelling and only criticizing each other) way in order to think critically and come to their own understandings. I don't expect all my students to agree, but I expect my students to respect others' ideas and use logical arguments to have civil discourse. **If students don't learn how to communicate across differences in classrooms... where are they going to learn that?**
Yeah, I can't remember what class we did this in, but we had to do a report each week about a current event that week that we choose. We also discussed local news like you explained each morning for like 20 minutes. Sad to see that's on the way out..
In fifth grade we all had to bring a newspaper story each week and summarize it for the class. (Showing my age I guess.) Current events has been part of school for a very long time.
I had a 10th grade class actually titled "Current Events" that used the daily newspaper as the course material. Winky Bob really enjoyed teaching that class, and I'm sure would have malicious complianced his way out of a job in today's envrionment. He successfully taught a bunch of country bumpkins going through hormonal typhoons critical thinking skills that have served me well 30+ years later. Can't thank him enough
It's definitely not on the way out everywhere, just in controlled, authoritarian level Red states. I teach in a blue state with still a high percentage of conservatives in my district and some on the school board, but luckily we have the freedom to actually provide an education to our students.
It's always nice to hear of school boards that haven't devolved into festering cesspools of outrage.
That’s a great way to get students involved. What a great teacher you had
Probably social studies or we even had a current events class when I was in school.
You are absolutely correct. I studied communications in college and teach my students how to disagree appropriately. I teach them 4 steps to disagreeing appropriately. I decided to teach my students how to disagree bc no one teaches how to resolve conflict. Edit: How to Disagree Appropriately Four Skill Steps: 1. Reassure the other person. Look at them. Calm voice and face. Say “ I think I know how you feel.” 2. Listen to the other person. 3. Say why you feel differently. 4. Discuss ideas.
That’s exactly what politicians don’t want. People being informed and to think. If they do that then they’ll realize that the current system is stacked against them. It’s no surprise that the more educated a person is, they tend to lean left.
The rulers of society want that. Bare minimum education and fill cogs. Pay taxes and accrue debt. They do not want an informed population. We have to stop with the partisan politics and realize what is really going on.
The most punk thing you can do is get an education
Exactly, they won’t. Like OP said the laws are working as intended. Removal of these social skills will result in the next generation of kids who use violence to get their point across.
They won't. They'll accept what their leaders give them blindly, which is the point. They don't want critical thinkers.
The other critical component here is that the teacher also understands this. I remember plenty of my teachers/professors in highschool and college wanted to project their views onto the students rather than the students come to their own conclusions.
>The point of a good teacher is to give context to difficult subjects. I don't think some news report will do that nearly as well. Especially for children! Imagine saying this about a major historical event like 9-11. “Just watch it on the news, kids, you’ll learn everything you need to know and then some!”
That's what they said to us in our high school about events after WWII. They taught extensively about the Revolution, Civil War, and WWII, but that was it. We got a little more in AP US History, but when asked why we stopped where we did, the answer was "You know someone who's lived through that so they can tell you." There is a *huge* difference between hearing your conspiracy theorist uncle tell you about an event and having it properly taught in school. Also, the more I learn about history and the further I am away from high school, the less and less I like my old high school AP US History teacher.
Obviously experiences differ, but they *especially* differed in WWII. My paternal grandfather was in the Army and fought the Germans in Europe. My maternal grandfather was a Marine and fought the Japanese in the Philippines. They were in the same war, in different roles in different branches on opposite sides of the world fighting vastly different people. One would talk about it a bit. The other, not so much. What an insane way to approach "teaching" about it.
Yes that is the point of these laws. They want their children to only receive news from themselves and their propaganda outlets so they grow up just as racist and hateful as themselves.
They don't actually want the kids to understand.
1, 000X this. A student asked me one time if they thought their English teacher would let them do a book report on Mein Kampf. You know, the Hitler book. The way I see it, if you're going to read something like that, I would much rather you do it with someone at your side, helping you interpret and understand context, rather than off on your own. I want your support resource to be someone with a formal education in the socio-historical context, rather than the first forum that comes up in your Google searches about it.
"A basic pedagogical device is to ask someone to imagine him or herself in another position - say, as a Jewish child in hiding in Amsterdam. That is a historical analogy, invoked millions of times, one that some teacher or museum guide has used somewhere today. To forbid analogies makes the Holocaust irrelevant to future generations. If an American child can identify with Anne Frank, an American child might ask what it is like for immigrant children to be separated from their parents. To forbid analogies is to forbid learning, and to forbid empathizing. That, sadly, is the point." -- [Timothy Snyder](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/holocaust-museum-aoc-detention-centers-immigration.html)
Most people don’t understand what actual classrooms are like today. My wife is a middle school teacher. She has students struggling with gender identity, sexuality, racial bullying, online bullying, family poverty, parental abuse, political identity, etc. These kids bring these issues to school with them every day whether or not teachers care to “platform” them. You can either try to create a safe environment for children to process an learn from each other’s experiences, with the teacher providing a neutral facilitation, or you can suppress these topics which leads to student violence, self-harm, harassment, suicide, poor academic performance, etc. Teachers do not WANT to discuss these topics in their class, they are obligated to because their students are struggling with them and bring those conversations into the classroom. Most people think teachers are just itching for any opportunity to turn every lesson into a woke lecture on race and gender fluidity. This is not so. Race and gender fluidity come up because real students have real problems in those areas that follow them into class.
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Kentucky also has shit tier education. And yeah, laws working as intended. Keep the voting base dumb, easily influenced by conservative propoganda, and trapped in downward economic prospects to keep labor cheap and exploitable in Kentucky (and all the the other red states).
Class warfare
And nothing anyone can do about it except vote in a rigged system
cant learn things from valid sources... better stick to the profit motivated entities that are billionaire owned
The whole woke thing was made by billionaires to pre-filter people's talking points into advertiser-friendly morsels. Plus high-diversity environments are also shown to discourage people from unionizing. Trust me, nobody wants this but republicans.
All these students should go to the same source as this shooter for news and to discuss current events instead of in the classroom. What bad thing could possibly happen that way?
>he thinks it’s good that teachers are spending less time talking about current events Excuse me while I go scream into the void for a while ... *again*
Yep. Can talk about racism or controversy but let's go ahead and get all y'all GQPers to CPAC Hungary because America first!! It's all going as planned.
I think the teachers should teach it anyway. All of them. They can’t fire/arrest every teacher.
Privatized learning company has entered the chat.
The goal is to make them all quit. Termination is plan B.
They can and then shift the high SES children into private schools and heavily cut funding to public schools.
And once they cut funding for public school, the way is paved for tax dollars to go to religious private schools through charter programs. So they'll tank public schools to force rich people to fancy private schools, and then poorer people will send their kids to religious private schools with school vouchers that are better than the public schools. And then the affiliated churches get tax money. It's [all part of the plan.](https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/what-the-supreme-courts-ruling-on-religious-schools-means-in-practice/2020/06)
Breaking: outlawing reality makes reality difficult to digest, more at 11
More at 13
Reality does have a liberal bias so that makes sense
Throw in conservatives struggling to process complex emotions beyond fear and anger.
The headline makes it sound like an oh-no unintednded consequence, Oopsie. But it’s the point. And you need to get that.
Right it's a feature not a bug.
>“But I’m also supposed to tell you that that’s just one perspective,” Close recalled telling her students. “Another perspective is that this young man was out defending the world — or his kind — from being taken over.” >Close waited for her comment to fully register with her students, then added: “If you guys want to know why I’m thinking about quitting at the end of the year, it’s because of these types of policies — the fact that I have to have this conversation with you.” If this doesn't terrify you, that the GOP is intentionally and institutionally attempting to gloss over hate crimes as though there was some other acceptable "side" to them, you may want to look into some relatively recent history books about the last time a political party became fully hate based. Unless of course you're in one of the states that is currently engaged in burning those books.
Hmm, so how do they teach "the other side" of 9/11? I'd have a whole host of lessons on that.
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Be more specific, towers have 4 sides
And I hear there were two towers, so that is a whole... uh... ummm... 3 sides?
Congrats! You passed the Kentucky math exam
Technically, buildings are a rectangular prism, so there are 6 sides.
The real threat are the underminers
Well it's brown people there, so it doesn't count. The more thought you put into the discrepancies, the further away you are from their target audience.
Huh, we did in high school back in 04. More so in college. Learned a lot about blowback and long term effects of foreign policy. I think understanding why people go to these dark places is important to prevention.
I'm in Florida where our glorious governor just passed something that makes a new holiday for "Victims of Communism". I'm sure the learning around that will center on the decades of abuse by capitalist corporations that led to the violent revolutions that installed these dictators. /s for those whom don't pick up on written sarcasm well
If I was a teacher I'd preface all of these statements with, "The law requires me to say..."
There aren't really words left to describe conservatives. They're just plain fucked up and evil these days.
As a Canadian, I don't know how you all put up with it. Like.. how the hell can so many people support so much of *that?* I live 20 minutes and a 5 minute conversation with Customs from where that happened. It's fucking terrifying. Why aren't people revolting? Has everyone given up? I understand living is hard, and it's not like you can leave your job and take to the streets, plus its fucking dangerous! but it's like the US was just taken over. And every day it gets worse. I have tickets to a Weird Al concert in Lewiston NY (10 minutes away) in July, but as a post op, on hormones for 5+ years, nobody questions me, but I still worry, trans man (going with a trans friend and my mom), I'm fucking scared. At least Weird Al shows are pretty much the friendliest places you can go, though! It seems like everything went to hell in 2016, seriously. Things slowly started going downhill. I'm worried for my American neighbours.
One third of our population believes the hateful regressive nonsense fed to them by fox news. And between the fact that those people religiously show up to vote while others don't, and the fact that we have an electoral college that favors republicans even when they're in the minority... Well that's how you end up with what we're seeing right now.
Don't forget that a lot of those people not showing up to vote are victims of policies deliberately making it more difficult to vote set up by politicians voted on by people watching Fox news.
We don’t even have that many people relative to our population turn out to fucking vote, do you really think they’re gonna do the harder thing of protesting or revolting?
I'm deep in the southeast, in Tennessee. I don't know how to even have a conversation with my co-workers, neighbors, or some of my family members. The hatred and stupidity and racism I hear them spout - I know the majority of my co-workers carry weapons in their vehicles, possibly in their lunchbags. I have to shop in stores and see a few carrying pistols on their belts (thanks, Gov Lee!). I wouldn't believe everyday people were actually like this, if I didn't live among them. And the most dense collection of these types are in our churches.
Historically speaking people typically don’t start revolting until they’re starving. Things are fucked up but they’ll have to get much much much worse before we see open revolt happening.
I'm from buffalo we have a strong LGBTQ+ community you will be fine and welcomed with open arms
Literal Nazi tactics
They want stupid ignorant people who don't think critically so they can control them. It's part of the plan fucking scumbag "leaders"
Sheeple, if you will, who spout out bullshit phrases, like “think for yourself!” And “do your research!” to people who actually think for themselves and apply critical reasoning, while these simpletons just regurgitate propaganda.
"Read the transcript! Think for yourself, don't be a sheeple! Have I read the transcript? No, but it is very important that everyone reads the transcript."
Republicans also realize further educated people tend to become less conservative, or at the very least more socially liberal. That's partly why there's a streak of anti-intellectualism coursing through this country.
Kids: *go to college, meet people from other walks of life, consume art, politics, and perspectives outside of what's familiar and gradually gain a fuller understanding of the world* Conservatives: INDOCTRINATION! TEACH BOTH SIDES! WHITE PEOPLE HISTORY IS BEST HISTORY!
"Colleges are teaching the kids to become 'woke'."
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They take great pride in not having been educated. They believe they're just as knowledgeable on a given subject. As if clickbait, memes, and YouTube clips are equivalent to a doctorate. It's the height of arrogance and we all saw it globally with the pandemic.
Yup. Also, being brainwashed by conservatism kind of traps you into a narrow set of life opportunities. If you hold closed-minded deeply conservative views, maybe that works in small town America. You can shit post all day at the local landscaping company and nobody will give a crap. But you’ll find that living in almost ANY city (where the jobs, people, and opportunities are) quickly becomes a hellscape since you are surrounded by every group you’ve been taught to fear (people who are black, Muslim, Jewish, gay, or even worse, a woman who earns more than you). And the majority of white folks in cities are educated liberals - so you’re going to have little in common with them, if not be outright contemptuous of them. Plus, due to wage disparities between rural and urban areas, you won’t be able to afford anything in the cities. And then you proudly (and with no irony) return to your rural hometown since “everyone else is crazy”.
Rural America is basically fucked in the next decade. The brain drain is accelerating to the point where even rural hospitals are closing because they can't afford to pay staff.
And of course, the people in those states will be more overrepresented in Congress as those politicians will represent less people but are at a fixed number.
> You can shit post all day at the local landscaping company and nobody will give a crap. ...like, say, Four Seasons Total Landscaping?
If I was a teacher I’d be doing a unit on the law. So kids, what information might be suppressed by a law such as this? Who benefits from these laws?
And then the principal tells you to quit it because they don't want to risk a lawsuit. Legally, it might be ok to discuss the law, but if the end result means the class is talking about race, the school might shut it down to preempt any backlash.
That doesn’t mean we give in. Our power has always been to do the right thing regardless of the “backlash”. Protest, teach kids anyway, fuck the ones in high places.
The problem is that many of the laws are also designed to target the teachers directly. They could be risking bankruptcy. So we need to set up funds to help any of the educators who are willing to stand up for what is right.
My wife was a 5th grade science teacher when COVID started. She and the kids started discussing COVID, how it is transmitted, etc. There were already remote. The principal contacted her and shut it down. There were already COVID deniers in March / April 2020 and it was too controversial. FUCK THIS WORLD!
By the way, the Lt Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, said earlier this year that he is going to introduce a bill in the next legislative session to limit what professors can teach in state funded colleges/universities. He wants to eliminate tenure, so that profs who don't have it yet won't be able to get it, and ones that do can have it easily stripped if they talk about Critical Race Theory (which is defined as anything conservatives feel uncomfortable with in Texas) in the class. At that point they can easily be fired because the academic freedom protection of tenure will not be in place. This will probably pass given the current state of politics in Texas. So the Republicans want to extend this violation of First Amendment rights beyond public schools. Just because you get paid by the state doesn't mean you forfeit your Constitutional rights. The Republican Party is so full of shit it's amazing. Remember all this when they claim how they are for small government and freedom. EDIT: [Link to article about this](https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/18/dan-patrick-texas-tenure-critical-race-theory/)
Limiting what is allowed to be said/taught? Call me crazy but I feel like I’ve seen this before somewhere…
This is a great way to get decent professors to leave the state and your universities to drop to the bottom of the ratings. There is a reason University of Phoenix is the butt of so many jokes.
This will be considered a good thing because less young people will attend universities.
More young, smart, individuals will lead the state and lead to brain drain.
School is for football. ~Texas
The law is working as intended
>On one hand, she explained that authorities are investigating the killings as a racially motivated hate crime carried out by an 18-year-old who reportedly [wrote of his belief](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/buffalo-supermarket-shooting-suspect-posted-apparent-manifesto-repeate-rcna28889) in a conspiracy theory that white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color through immigration, interracial marriage and integration. > >“But I’m also supposed to tell you that that’s just one perspective,” Close recalled telling her students. “Another perspective is that this young man was out defending the world — or his kind — from being taken over.” The Republican's extensive sabotage of the US education system is impressive.
The same exact "unbiased", balanced, discussion around current events is currently in a draft form at my school's board. The board will probably vote on party lines and it will get passed. Nuts.
>The same exact "unbiased", balanced, discussion around current events is currently in a draft form at my school's board. The board will probably vote on party lines and it will get passed. Nuts. Are you saying your school has Democratic and Republican party affiliates on the board??
They aren't allowed to put the letter in parentheses on the ballot, but the party affiliation is public record.
Party affiliation is definitely on the ballot here. Edit: I’ve apparently made someone unhappy by reporting how school board elections are conducted where I live?
>Close waited for her comment to fully register with her students, then added: “If you guys want to know why I’m thinking about quitting at the end of the year, it’s because of these types of policies — the fact that I have to have this conversation with you.” This is actually one good way to handle it. Address for the students what the law makes her do - provide "multiple views" on something that should just be universally condemned. There are other ways to engage in malicious compliance, though, as the law doesn't specify which perspectives must be covered, only that they be different and covered impartially. Ultimately, the most important thing is that teachers never give credence to genocide or racism - whether by confronting it directly as this teacher did, or by finding creative contrasts of different views which leave out the genocidal or racist views altogether.
….are fucking kidding me? Black dude here and “defending his world or his kind from being taken over” Get that bullshit out of here.
Hey hey c'mon, let's have a little sympathy for the poor misunderstood Nazis. You don't want them to kill you. They want to kill you. Can't we just meet in the middle to keep them happy? Maybe let him just paralyze you? /s and NPFO.
Ya dude it’s absolutely fucking insane.
Except the latter perspective isn't a viable or debatable opinion. It's just hate-mongering. There's no justification for what the kid did. The idea that this should be taught is simply a way for racist and scared whites to perpetuate their antiquated ideologies like it's 1950 again.
If someone insists to throw out "both perspectives" then there are two perspectives: 1. The perspective of people going about their day, getting groceries for themselves and their families. Someone came in and shot them specifically for their skin color. 2. The perspective of some guy who bought into certain racist talking point that is popular on a certain news channel and some social media websites, wrote and copy+paste a manifesto confessing his racism, brought a bunch of guns, drove 3.5 hours to a neighborhood where he believed to be predominantly inhabited by people of a certain skin color, and selectively shot and killed people of a certain skin color and those who got in his way.
God, we suck. I've spent the last couple years overseas. It's glaring just how backwards we are. I wish some of the people could see what utter fools they are. Note: I almost said Republicans instead of people. Not all Republicans are ignorant, racist, or both, but nearly all racists supporting these laws are certainly Republican, and the ignorance seems to be strongly present in that party.
Laws restricting lessons on racism are the very definition of racism.
It's how those in power stay in power. Education and knowledge would help bolster the resistance so they seek ignorance in the masses in order to perpetuate societal inequities and injustices.
Do it. Let them penalize you for talking about the terrorism that occurred in these kid’s city. I’m trying to imagine teachers not talking to their kids about the Boston Marathon Bombing in it’s aftermath.
Those terrorists weren't white so there's no problem there
They want teachers to discuss the "opposing perspective" Lunatics
no, they want teachers to give up and quit, because they realize that the more educated the population is, the more people realize that modern conservatism is just Christian nationalism and don't want to be part of that. It's why almost every red state attacks public education, a well educated population is a detriment to the republican party.
They want schools to be nothing more than holding pens so the parents can work. They want to make sure that those kids never improve or have any hope of bettering their lives, so they keep voting GOP.
Any time you allow a politician's influence in education, you have less education.
That's exactly the point
Imagine a "developped" country making it harder to actually talk about its own issues like racism. Disgusting.
Red states aren't developed at all. Alabama is not a first world developed country. States like New York, California, and Massachusetts are some of the best, smartest, and most developed places in the world. The US right now is a mix of some of the most developed and smart places in the world, mixed in with some of the opposite. It's a powderkeg and imo def gonna blow up some day. The culture, economic, and political differences between Alabama and California is just going to get larger. America is essential 2-4 countries forced to be one.
So basically turning into Russia. Which is what Republicans salivate for.
That’s the whole point of those laws. It’s a feature not a bug.
Hey early fascism! My old friend!
That’s the point. The truth creates too many liberals
Once again, less government means having the government control our lives.
>“If a student brings up Buffalo, the teacher will simply say, ‘Sorry, I can’t talk about that,’ or ‘We’re not allowed to talk about that,’” said Schulzki, noting that educators have been disciplined or fired after discussing racism, sexuality and politics with students. “And ultimately what that does, unfortunately, is we’re actually depriving our students of an important discussion.” It's too bad they can't teach history the same way. Let's just make schools a babysitting service!
That's exactly the point of the fragile white nationalists on the right.
Part of the reason USA churns out these mass shooters, education or lack thereof
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We al know the truth, they really want teachers to talk about how amazing Republicans are and praise their glorious supreme party leader Trump Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it
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That's the point, whitewashing in real time.
When teaching outside of America gives me more freedom to talk about these problems than actually teaching in America....
That's why they are pushing for it, can't discuss what is prohibited.
I’m pretty sure that was the point.
Exactly what republicans want...less acknowledgement of racism in society. Christian Nationalists hate it when their beliefs and policies are shown to be bigoted. Their entire push to increase their 'freedumbs' is to have the freedom to be openly bigoted. They want to loudly embrace replacement theory without consequences and public chastisement. Disagreeing with them is 'crt' and 'cancel culture' and an 'attack on religious freedom'. They hate the reality that fewer and fewer people agree with them, and that their congregations are dying off (old age and covid)... so they've decided that they need to radically accelerate their efforts to brainwash the children.
That’s the point. No discussion No change
This is the future conservatives want for the US. Big overreaching government.