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Mom in Va. who lived through Cultural Revolution addresses school board regarding Critical Race Theory


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16 minutes ago, KSera said:

But all the bans being brought up and enacted in response to the amplified stories of personalizing oppressor and oppressed (which I think the majority agree are not helpful or appropriate) are acting on the much wider scale of prohibiting all kinds of discussions about racism and definitely about ongoing systemic racism. The focus on the specific most egregious cases is to distract from the actual goal. 

I talked specifically about ‘here’ because of the straw man issue that keeps on coming up.  

People HERE keep stipulating that they believe that education about racism (and sexism, BTW) is needed, people HERE have stipulated that THEY THEMSELVES TEACH IT TO THEIR CHILDREN AND OTHERS, and people HERE have said, “But some of these other ways of approaching this are wrong, and are counterproductive, and are inappropriate, and should not be done.”  

Honestly, if I wanted to ban teaching about racism, I’d go about it just the way that some idiotic educators appear to be doing—I’d make it so extreme and so personalized that it would be vomited up by the communities in recoil.  Letting this kind of inept teaching be representative of how this is approached is counterproductive at best and actually damaging at worst.

Most people in this thread are in material agreement that:
1.  Racism exists
2.  Racism is part of history and part of our present
3.  Kids need to learn about this in age appropriate ways

But if anyone questions any portion of how this is actually being taught all the sudden it’s like they are wearing confederate flags and carrying pitchforks.  We can do better than this.

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2 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

ere is Pennsylvania's new bill, rolled out in response to "CRT" and covering any secondary or post-secondary institution that receives *ANY* amount of public funding (see definition of terms, lines 3-5 on page 1).

That hamstrings the sociology departments among others.  

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On 6/11/2021 at 3:47 PM, Sneezyone said:

THIS. ALL OF THIS. It’s why I’m skeptical of the schools’ ability to do it successfully and disdainful of parental complaints about the effort but willing to, at least, TRY. I seriously don’t want to be helping my grandkids read these folk for filth but I will if I have to.

You mean this part? There’s more. I expressed a laundry list of concerns AND possible solutions. You may have missed it. None of those included encouraging my side to ban or require explicitly anti-racist teaching or encouraging roving hordes of antifa members to bang drums in school hallways.

Edited by Sneezyone
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32 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I don’t think anyone is arguing here that ‘systemic racism exists’ shouldn’t be taught in the classroom.

It seems like some people here are arguing that it does NOT exist and therefore of course shouldn’t be taught in classrooms.  

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1 minute ago, HeartString said:

It seems like some people here are arguing that it does NOT exist and therefore of course shouldn’t be taught in classrooms.  

I have not seen that, and I think you might be mistaken.
What I have seen, and think is reasonable, is people saying that it should not be taught in such a way that young students are personally identified as victims or villains of it.  

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2 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I have not seen that, and I think you might be mistaken.
What I have seen, and think is reasonable, is people saying that it should not be taught in such a way that young students are personally identified as victims or villains of it.  

I am indeed seeing it differently. 

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32 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

It’s more philosophical than religious, and deserves an airing.

Besides, I don’t think conservatives here would argue that ‘communism is evil’ should be taught in the classroom.  I think that they would argue that the results of communism should be taught along with the ideals that fostered it.

I don’t think anyone is arguing here that ‘systemic racism exists’ shouldn’t be taught in the classroom.  What is being argued against is doing so by the personalizing of oppressor and oppressed, applied to young students, instead of objectively teaching how systemic racism (and sexism, for that matter) can play out, without demonizing students or forcing them to identify into groups.  

You keep going meta and setting up these straw figures and by and large they are inaccurate.  

Exactly == I didn't say use the word evil in the classroom.  How about just talk about how many died in Stalinist USSR or in the Cultural Revolution in China and other times too, etc.   And I also think that talking about how structural racism works is something left for advanced high school classes or colleges.  Furthermore, much of what is considered systemic racism that exists today is not actually racism but issues of poverty so that it isn't only blacks who suffer the problems, although they may be the largest group.  Things like poor maternal outcomes due to less prenatal care in my state is directly tied to rural counties with no hospitals--something that poor whites in counties also have as well as poor Latinos, etc.  Same with the burden of high fines placed on poor defendants- again - all poor defendants suffer from this.  

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1 minute ago, HeartString said:

That hamstrings the sociology departments among others.  

Language (lines 3-5, p 1) defining

Quote

"Post-secondary institution." A post-secondary institution that receives funding, in any amount, from the Commonwealth

would hamper virtually every college and university in the state.  T

 

(Again: language this crazy-broad, at the state level, cannot stand scrutiny, and its legislative proponents know that. This is a big hurl of red meat to a whipped-up manufactured outrage, to maintain whipped-up "momentum" against the manufactured bogeyman du jour.  Not real legislative action in response to a real issue.

If these handful of incidents really were real, and really were locally-sourced, real conservatives who really value 1A and decentralization would want them handled at the local school board level.  The fervor to take it to headline-garnering, state level, blanket bans, in ~30 states in a matter of weeks, is a.... tell.)

 

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6 hours ago, WildflowerMom said:

That's kinda gross, btw.   I doubt you meant that as it it sounds, but we all (worldwide) are trying to figure this stuff out and frankly, I want to hear other voices from outside the US because I personally don't think us Americans have figured out a whole hell of a lot.    

It is kinda gross, but I'm used to it. And it is meant as it sounds. It's ok. I know my voting record. It's a pretty funny accusation. 

There's a direct pipeline, via the internet and social media, from what happens culturally in the US, especially in 'progressive spaces', and my loungeroom. These attitudes impact my family. 

The price you, as citizens, pay for your global, cultural hegemony, is that outsiders will have strong opinions on what you do. 

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5 hours ago, Sneezyone said:

In my senior year of high school in Arkansas, I had an elective called Film. It was only open to seniors (parental permission required) and it consisted of sitting on comfy couches, watching movies with snacks, and critiquing them from a variety of angles. We watched Deliverance, Imitation of Life, Clockwork Orange, a bunch of stuff. That would be impossible today, I guess. It was one of my most memorable and interesting classes. 

Introduction to film was my youngest collegian's favorite gen ed fine arts course. They watched a lot of films and had amazing discussions about many controversial topics. I credit his professor with having a big hand in ds's personal growth and maturity. I hope that professor never changes his approach to teaching the subject. I fear that if the state legislature attempted to pass legislation similar to Penn and Fla, he would be forced to change the curriculum. Why adult students cannot be confronted with uncomfortable truths, I will never know. We seem to want young adults to be infantilized and mature at the same time. Really not sure how that is supposed to work!

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9 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

Black American non-Trump voting leftist Professor of Political Science:

https://daily.jstor.org/adolph-reed-jr-the-perils-of-race-reductionism/

For those who need their critiques coming from the correct identity group. 

And he is saying the same thing as I am-- that many of the structural problems are problems of poor people- poor people of any race.

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1 minute ago, TravelingChris said:

And he is saying the same thing as I am-- that many of the structural problems are problems of poor people- poor people of any race.

Any by extension, many of the most fervent white advocates of 'all whites are racist' thinking/educating are exhibiting a form of luxury belief, arising out of their own socio-economic privilege. Better to scour their own guilt by generous donation, I think. 

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1 hour ago, Melissa Louise said:

It is kinda gross, but I'm used to it. And it is meant as it sounds. It's ok. I know my voting record. It's a pretty funny accusation. 

There's a direct pipeline, via the internet and social media, from what happens culturally in the US, especially in 'progressive spaces', and my loungeroom. These attitudes impact my family. 

The price you, as citizens, pay for your global, cultural hegemony, is that outsiders will have strong opinions on what you do. 

One thing I realized quickly in Australia was that as soon as people figured out that we were American, they had questions and comments on US Politics, and were far more informed than most in the US. It was both humbling, since often the questions I was being asked were ones that I really had to think about, and I THINK I'm fairly well informed, and fascinating because the idea of being that aware of international politics just generally doesn't happen in the USA, except for maybe the focus on the British royal family. 

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When people argue that the concept of white privilege should form a core part of instruction, K-12, when white privilege instruction is shown to weaken liberal and progressive commitment to alleviating poverty, as mediated through negative attitudes to the poor, they are engaging in a project that is reductionist. 

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4 hours ago, Carol in Cal. said:

What I have seen, and think is reasonable, is people saying that it should not be taught in such a way that young students are personally identified as victims or villains of it.  

People keep agreeing with that, but when the discussion moves on to the blanket bans of race discussions, others want to bring it back to these fringe cases where students say they were required to personally identify as oppressor. Why focus on that when we agree on that and the bigger problem is the people trying to legislate us away from schools being able to discuss racism at all? I don't know why we keep returning to talking about students being made to personally identify as victim or oppressor. It can't help but feel like deflection in this context.

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6 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

I certainly believe in the evils of communism.  Socialism is a different matter because you can even say that parts of our country are socialistic- public schools, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.

Having grown up in such a society (authoritarian, communist, full of propaganda) I believe individual rights must always be what we safeguard the most in this world. I firmly believe that individual rights should take precedence over group rights. 
I understand that my perspective is based on my experiences. I respect ideas of others and ask for equal respect.

 

Anyway, a friend sent me an article to read about identity in America - How America Fractured into Four Parts. It’s an excellent read if anybody is interested.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619012/

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1 minute ago, KSera said:

People keep agreeing with that, but when the discussion moves on to the blanket bans of race discussions, others want to bring it back to these fringe cases where students say they were required to personally identify as oppressor. Why focus on that when we agree on that and the bigger problem is the people trying to legislate us away from schools being able to discuss racism at all? I don't know why we keep returning to talking about students being made to personally identify as victim or oppressor. It can't help but feel like deflection in this context.

I don't think everyone does agree on that ( it's wrong to frame K-8 instruction as between the oppressed and the oppressor).

 

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10 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Anyway, a friend sent me an article to read about identity in America - How America Fractured into Four Parts. It’s an excellent read if anybody is interested.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619012/

That looks interesting. I've opened it to read later, since Atlantic articles tend to be pretty in depth.

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1 hour ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

This article is a good example of some of the weirdness of this thread. Packer says all 4 parts deserve condemnation. We keep being told on this thread about illiberalism of the Left, those terrible wokesters. Both sidesism is very tempting. 

But what side is passing these laws? What side passed laws requiring professors to register their political opinions? But we hand-wring about the illiberalism of the Left and how conservatives are discriminated against in academia. 

One of these things is not like the other. 

This is a good criticism of Packer's latest book (related to the Atlantic article). 

American Fables

 

And I am not going to call you names because you have a different perspective. What I believe is happening around me is anybody who doesn’t line up behind the new left is being labeled as backward and/or racist. 
 

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39 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

And I am not going to call you names because you have a different perspective. What I believe is happening around me is anybody who doesn’t line up behind the new left is being labeled as backward and/or racist. 
 

I think it's complicated, because sometimes that's what's happening, but other times it's just true. So many people seem to have lost their capacity for nuance. It's not always all the way one way or all the way the other, and people are so defensive that few people stop to really consider why they might be coming across as racist to some people and if there might be something they should change there.

eta: I want to make clear that wasn't a veiled way of calling you personally a racist. I don't know if there has been anything that would make you come across that way, or not. I only see your last couple posts here right now and don't remember if you participated earlier in the thread.

Edited by KSera
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11 minutes ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I keep hearing people make this claim but really? 

The new left is what? How many people? Are your neighbors members of the new left? What institutions do they control? Your employer? Your kids' schools? 

What are you supposed to do to line up behind the new left? 

People are jerks on Twitter. Okay, stay off Twitter. 

Labeled backward and/or racist? What does that mean? Will you lose your job? Will people scream at you on the streets? 

Let's get a sense of perspective here. 

It doesn't matter what you think or do - someone will label you as racist or backward, homophobic, or whatever. Someone else will label you as a socialist or a communist or a heretic, etc. People disagree about issues. 

 

I think the reason I linked the article is somebody articulated how the other side sees this movement (whatever he called Just America). I don’t have a gift of speech. I don’t articulate things well, but I think what he says is the way people around me (just regular not politically savvy ) see it. 
To me the new left is most definitely anti capitalist. I think this is a new development. I was more of an old Clinton democrat, so I find the new economic trends to be “new left.”  I think woke liberalism is very much a new left to me. I find I was able to discuss a lot freely in my college days that my kids can today. 

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7 hours ago, KSera said:

People keep agreeing with that, but when the discussion moves on to the blanket bans of race discussions, others want to bring it back to these fringe cases where students say they were required to personally identify as oppressor. Why focus on that when we agree on that and the bigger problem is the people trying to legislate us away from schools being able to discuss racism at all? I don't know why we keep returning to talking about students being made to personally identify as victim or oppressor. It can't help but feel like deflection in this context.

I don’t know that people do agree about that, and actually it is the subject of the OP.  Granted, that was pages back, but it’s the legislation that is the deflection.

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3 hours ago, Roadrunner said:

And I am not going to call you names because you have a different perspective. What I believe is happening around me is anybody who doesn’t line up behind the new left is being labeled as backward and/or racist. 
 

What demographic are you experiencing this in? Because I live in a progressive neighborhood in a very blue state and work primarily with progressives and I’ve never experienced this. I’m also involved with local politics. Sure, I read about some of the stuff happening on college campuses or statements of some far left politicians, but my real life lived experiences is nothing like that. No one is calling anyone names at all. People are discussing, debating, agreeing, and disagreeing like adults.

Edited by Frances
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6 minutes ago, Frances said:

What demographic are you experiencing this in? Because I live in a progressive neighborhood in a very blue state and work primarily with progressives and I’ve never experienced this. I’m also involved with local politics. Sure, I read about some of the stuff happening on college campuses or statements of some far left politicians, but my real life lived experiences is nothing like that. No one is calling anyone names at all. People are discussing, debating, agreeing, and disagreeing like adults.

It’s like that here in many parts of Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area.

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3 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

I keep hearing people make this claim but really? 

The new left is what? How many people? Are your neighbors members of the new left? What institutions do they control? Your employer? Your kids' schools? 

What are you supposed to do to line up behind the new left? 

People are jerks on Twitter. Okay, stay off Twitter. 

Labeled backward and/or racist? What does that mean? Will you lose your job? Will people scream at you on the streets? 

Let's get a sense of perspective here. 

It doesn't matter what you think or do - someone will label you as racist or backward, homophobic, or whatever. Someone else will label you as a socialist or a communist or a heretic, etc. People disagree about issues. 

 

I live in an area where one end of the political spectrum is definitely in control of local government and schools. New left or woke left or latte liberals- pick your term because I don’t care which one is used.  We can pretend this isn’t real or isn’t happening but it rather amounts to trying to convince me to say 2+2=5.  I know that it is happening because I see it with my own eyes.  There are many well intentioned laws here that are resulting in very negative outcomes.  
 

I’m not even a little bit conservative and have been extremely politically active and I find what is going on on the left to be darn near insufferable.  I’m not getting this opinion from astroturf articles or from carefully following, I dunno, the Manhattan Institute.  The left ignores criticism to our own peril on a host of issues around critical theory and the seeming erasure of class matters from what is considered important enough for affluent woke people to give a flying fig about.  The left’s autopsy of the 2020 election was super disingenuous and full of the same wishful thinking that has seen us continually lose or underperform.  We can (rightfully) point to those rules being unfair (EC, DC not having statehood, gerrymandering) but we can’t pretend that we didn’t know the rules before the game started.  At the end of the day, we have to confront that while voters support what we are selling, they really don’t like how we have been selling it.  And we have to respect and understand why they don’t like how we are selling it.  
 

Why is the GOP funding state bans on CRT?  Because they know they can win by focusing on culture wars over bread and butter issues.  And frankly, it’s not so much that they win on culture war stuff…it’s that the left is really remarkably excellent at losing on culture war stuff.  and they know this.  Anyone paying any real attention to the data knows this.  Our entire attitude seems to be summed up of late in “jam it down their throats/wack them upside the head”- I have heard this coming from my friends; I’ve heard it while sitting in on local and state level party meetings and I’ve read it from lefty political strategists and even heard it verbatim from a lefty political operative on national TV.  I actually rewound it and listened to her say it again because it sounded so much like what I was hearing locally.  This attitude doesn’t serve us well.  People don’t like to be hit over the head with sanctimony and repeated denials that *what they see happening* is actually happening.  We have to start treating people like people instead of monolithic constituencies who owe us their votes.  We have to stop pretending that people who are concerned about crime or shitty messages their kids are getting at school or who think defund the police is crazy pants are idiots or racists or people who would just “vote the right way” if only they could be wacked up the side of the head enough to think the right way.  

Edited by LucyStoner
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52 minutes ago, Frances said:

What demographic are you experiencing this in? Because I live in a progressive neighborhood in a very blue state and work primarily with progressives and I’ve never experienced this. I’m also involved with local politics. Sure, I read about some of the stuff happening on college campuses or statements of some far left politicians, but my real life lived experiences is nothing like that. No one is calling anyone names at all. People are discussing, debating, agreeing, and disagreeing like adults.

I live nearish to you?  I definitely see/experience this.  Perhaps I just live closer to the epicenter or have more  extremist friends.  There are definitely issues I wouldn’t speak about in a work setting and within the last year I have had disagreements with friends who presumed that my divergence from the party line on a handful of issues meant I was falling for right wing propaganda (because, you know, as an NPR junkie who subscribes to The Nation and Mother Jones, I am really super immersed in conservative media).  One friend even accused me of being classist because I criticized the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the local services to address homelessness.  FFS, I’ve been homeless more than once as a child.  I’ve had family members (plural) experience homelessness in the last few years.  I’ve worked in the sector for the better part of two decades.  I know the issue. I don’t need to be lectured about classism by a really affluent person eager to lecture me about my class privilege.  🤣 There have been other examples.  It’s a bit of a madhouse.  Like I said before in this thread, I come by my political positions authentically enough that I don’t become unmoored but this or flee from the left over it.  But I really do understand the inclination to run screaming from the building at this point.   ETA- I do get that this kind of behavior is nothing new or nothing that is the exclusive provenance of the left.  
 

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11 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

When people argue that the concept of white privilege should form a core part of instruction, K-12, when white privilege instruction is shown to weaken liberal and progressive commitment to alleviating poverty, as mediated through negative attitudes to the poor, they are engaging in a project that is reductionist. 

 

Yes - this.  And while I have no research to back this up, I'm not convinced it even creates an attitude that is desirable around poverty and problems in non-white communities. CRT typically very reductionist even in terms of the problems it claims to be elucidating. And there is some interesting research that tells us that when people are told problems are in systems beyond their control, it makes them less likely to try and fix them, and in some cases it also seems to make them more wary of the people being affected by the problem.

I really don't understand why people keep saying that without the lens of teaching being CRT it means not teaching about racism, historical slant, bias, and so on. Those ideas are not confined to CT approaches.

 

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42 minutes ago, SlowRiver said:

 

I really don't understand why people keep saying that without the lens of teaching being CRT it means not teaching about racism, historical slant, bias, and so on. Those ideas are not confined to CT approaches.

 

Because of the wording of the laws being passed.  They are *saying* they are banning CRT, but the language they are using in the laws being passed actually ban any discussion of anything that could make a child uncomfortable.    

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On 6/24/2021 at 6:33 PM, Harpymom said:

I agree, I'm talking about educators, school admins, curriculum directors, gatekeepers.

 

It took us 400 years to get here, it will take a while to get out.  An equitable society will need to encompass both ending personal bigotry and structural, generational oppression.  Reparations, a re-working of the economy away from capitalism, ending for-profit health care, replacing the current prison system are specifics.

This reads like no progress has been made in 400 years. 

That’s not even close to being accurate...every year, every generation has made social progress in terms of treatment of people of color, women, children, and  vulnerable populations.

 

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re what are we even discussing here: "CRT" or "legislation"?

6 hours ago, Carol in Cal. said:

I don’t know that people do agree about that, and actually it is the subject of the OP.  Granted, that was pages back, but it’s the legislation that is the deflection.

I dunno, Carol.

The very legislators who are ramming these bills through are saying, in their own words out of their own mouths, that the bills are in response to "CRT" being rammed at the children.  Some of the preludes of the bills expressly reference CRT. 

You can be sympathetic to the children faced with episodes like those posted in the early pages of this Mondo thread, or you can be sympathetic to concerns about the blanket bans with language like Missouri's, whose text literally bans the teaching of "divisive concepts."  Or you can see nuance.

But the legislation sweeping state legislatures across the nation is a DIRECT RESPONSE to the clarion cries that "CRT" has swept into schools across the nation. We know that to be true because the legislators promoting the bills themselves STATE it as the reason/need for the bills.

So talking about the bills isn't a "deflection" from talking about "CRT" in schools. It is two facets of the precise same thing.  A very straight, astonishingly fast, implausibly uniform line between outcry => legislation.

 

 

 

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30 minutes ago, HeartString said:

Because of the wording of the laws being passed.  They are *saying* they are banning CRT, but the language they are using in the laws being passed actually ban any discussion of anything that could make a child uncomfortable.    

This! It is insane. I guess that white kids are just too damn delicate to ever hear anything they don't like? WTH? We really need to just close the teacher education departments of every college and call it quits. What is the point? I don't even think it is possible to teach math without making some kids unhappy, uncomfortable. And stupid "happy messaging" legislation is just one more way the anti-education wing of the conservative approach to society dumbs the electorate down. We have been talking about this trend of "dumbing down" on this board for nearly two decades. Here is the ultimate assault on educating minds.

And while I understand what LucyStoner is saying about people being upset by constant messaging, being hammered by it if you will, all I can say is adults need to put their big people panties on. Nothing is going to change for the better while wringing our hands and worrying about ruffling feathers.

As for my lived experience, the only name calling going on has come from conservatives. What have I been personally called by the locals because we supported a democrat for county sheriff? If I had a quarter for every time I have been called a Libtard (and many other truly offensive terms) for daring to give a damn about any kind of basic human right, my next vacation would be well funded. Meanwhile, I have gone out of my way to not do the same in return, but I don't think it works well. I am not sure being the nice guy has any value anymore. It seems that on the rare occasions I let my temper get the best of me, and wrestle in the mud verbally, the conservative attacker backs down and leaves me alone, startled to think that they might actually reap what they sow (this is very true of the Christian attackers from.the fundie church because they truly think they have a right to be horrible humans to others and NOT have any consequence). If I am "the nice guy", I just keep getting hammered. Stand up to the bully.

Actually, if there is any kind of "silver lining" in the pandemic cloud (and there really isn't), it is that this past year has been personally lovely because I was able to shun the rest of the humans in my area. It is has been so nice not to be thrown in personally or professionally with the locals.

 

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6 hours ago, Frances said:

What demographic are you experiencing this in? Because I live in a progressive neighborhood in a very blue state and work primarily with progressives and I’ve never experienced this. I’m also involved with local politics. Sure, I read about some of the stuff happening on college campuses or statements of some far left politicians, but my real life lived experiences is nothing like that. No one is calling anyone names at all. People are discussing, debating, agreeing, and disagreeing like adults.

So maybe it’s our northern CA region. As Carol mentioned, greater Bay Area is like that.
 

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19 hours ago, TravelingChris said:

Exactly == I didn't say use the word evil in the classroom.  How about just talk about how many died in Stalinist USSR or in the Cultural Revolution in China and other times too, etc.   And I also think that talking about how structural racism works is something left for advanced high school classes or colleges.  Furthermore, much of what is considered systemic racism that exists today is not actually racism but issues of poverty so that it isn't only blacks who suffer the problems, although they may be the largest group.  Things like poor maternal outcomes due to less prenatal care in my state is directly tied to rural counties with no hospitals--something that poor whites in counties also have as well as poor Latinos, etc.  Same with the burden of high fines placed on poor defendants- again - all poor defendants suffer from this.  

I've been staying out of this thread for so many reasons. But I don't think this is the way you want to go with this, because then we should also talk about how many people have died because of capitalist-driven societies, how deregulation and/or corporation-favorable policies have led to deaths or financial ruins or whatever. Or how democracies or republics allow for corruption, with examples. Unless you're okay with covering these things as well, in which case carry on.

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5 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

I've been staying out of this thread for so many reasons. But I don't think this is the way you want to go with this, because then we should also talk about how many people have died because of capitalist-driven societies, how deregulation and/or corporation-favorable policies have led to deaths or financial ruins or whatever. Or how democracies or republics allow for corruption, with examples. Unless you're okay with covering these things as well, in which case carry on.

Too many members of my family were tortured in concentration camps in USSR. I will spare you gruesome details. My great grandma executed along with her 21 year old son for being too educated and therefore dangerous to the new proletariat. My dad’s friend arrested at 16 for asking a wrong question. He drove trucks at a gulag with executed bodies, some still alive going into grave. I don’t think we want to  draw parallels to deregulation. To slavery in America? Sure. 
This is the reason why individual rights and free speech need to remain at the heart of free society in my opinion. 

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7 hours ago, LucyStoner said:

I live nearish to you?  I definitely see/experience this.  Perhaps I just live closer to the epicenter or have more  extremist friends.  There are definitely issues I wouldn’t speak about in a work setting and within the last year I have had disagreements with friends who presumed that my divergence from the party line on a handful of issues meant I was falling for right wing propaganda (because, you know, as an NPR junkie who subscribes to The Nation and Mother Jones, I am really super immersed in conservative media).  One friend even accused me of being classist because I criticized the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the local services to address homelessness.  FFS, I’ve been homeless more than once as a child.  I’ve had family members (plural) experience homelessness in the last few years.  I’ve worked in the sector for the better part of two decades.  I know the issue. I don’t need to be lectured about classism by a really affluent person eager to lecture me about my class privilege.  🤣 There have been other examples.  It’s a bit of a madhouse.  Like I said before in this thread, I come by my political positions authentically enough that I don’t become unmoored but this or flee from the left over it.  But I really do understand the inclination to run screaming from the building at this point.   ETA- I do get that this kind of behavior is nothing new or nothing that is the exclusive provenance of the left.  
 

I think we live in different, but border states? My city is definitely not the heart of liberalism in my state, so maybe that explains our different experiences?

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7 hours ago, LucyStoner said:

I live nearish to you?  I definitely see/experience this.  Perhaps I just live closer to the epicenter or have more  extremist friends.  There are definitely issues I wouldn’t speak about in a work setting and within the last year I have had disagreements with friends who presumed that my divergence from the party line on a handful of issues meant I was falling for right wing propaganda (because, you know, as an NPR junkie who subscribes to The Nation and Mother Jones, I am really super immersed in conservative media).  One friend even accused me of being classist because I criticized the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the local services to address homelessness.  FFS, I’ve been homeless more than once as a child.  I’ve had family members (plural) experience homelessness in the last few years.  I’ve worked in the sector for the better part of two decades.  I know the issue. I don’t need to be lectured about classism by a really affluent person eager to lecture me about my class privilege.  🤣 There have been other examples.  It’s a bit of a madhouse.  Like I said before in this thread, I come by my political positions authentically enough that I don’t become unmoored but this or flee from the left over it.  But I really do understand the inclination to run screaming from the building at this point.   ETA- I do get that this kind of behavior is nothing new or nothing that is the exclusive provenance of the left.  
 

I’ve been pretty surprised and impressed by discussions here around homelessness. It’s a huge issue and people have lots of different opinions, but except on NextDoor, which like almost all social media devolves to the lowest common denominator, they seem to be generally welcome. Our neighborhood is directly affected and I’ve been to lots of meetings and forums and also been quite involved volunteer wise. 

I’m not at all discounting or denying your experiences. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before it arrives here.

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13 hours ago, Ordinary Shoes said:

And now we come to the strangest part of the debate when conservatives approvingly quote Marxists. 

Non-Americans know more about what happens in the USA than many Americans. However, America's very complicated racial history is hard to understand from outside. 

It is possible for Chris to hold the same idea of what the problem is as someone with whom she would disagree about the solution. 

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50 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

I've been staying out of this thread for so many reasons. But I don't think this is the way you want to go with this, because then we should also talk about how many people have died because of capitalist-driven societies, how deregulation and/or corporation-favorable policies have led to deaths or financial ruins or whatever. Or how democracies or republics allow for corruption, with examples. Unless you're okay with covering these things as well, in which case carry on.

Have you read The Gulag Archipelago? I read it for the first time recently.

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37 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

I've been staying out of this thread for so many reasons. But I don't think this is the way you want to go with this, because then we should also talk about how many people have died because of capitalist-driven societies, how deregulation and/or corporation-favorable policies have led to deaths or financial ruins or whatever. Or how democracies or republics allow for corruption, with examples. Unless you're okay with covering these things as well, in which case carry on.

Shouldn't that be exactly what we teach? I think high school students and definitely college students should learn all about the good and bad of capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. They are old enough for nuance and for learning that nothing we've come up with so far has been a perfect system. What economic system or government eliminates corruption? None of them. I think some are worse than others, however, and some have had better outcomes than others. There's no need to pretend that anything is perfect in order to see that something is better. 

That's ok. It's good to be a critical thinker. I don't think anyone would come out of those classes thinking that all things considered, communism has worked out better for anyone. 

I think we have learned some of the bad parts of capitalism in school and we learned about the Robber Barons, Gilded Age, rise of unions, and evils of factory abuses. The issue I see is that it tends to end there as if the problems of capitalism were solved. These kids will one day need to help solve their countries' problems and it's going to be a lot harder for them if they're taught not to question anything or that there are no problems. 

 

2 hours ago, pinball said:

This reads like no progress has been made in 400 years. 

That’s not even close to being accurate...every year, every generation has made social progress in terms of treatment of people of color, women, children, and  vulnerable populations.

 

History is not a straight line of progress. Sometimes things have gotten better for some groups, sometimes things get worse, sometimes it's a mixed bag. 

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3 minutes ago, Roadrunner said:

Too many members of my family were tortured in concentration camps in USSR. I will spare you gruesome details. My great grandma executed along with her 21 year old son for being too educated and therefore dangerous to the new proletariat. My dad’s friend arrested at 16 for asking a wrong question. He drove trucks at a gulag with executed bodies, some still alive going into grave. I don’t think we want to  draw parallels to deregulation. To slavery in America? Sure. 
This is the reason why individual rights and free speech need to remain at the heart of free society in my opinion. 

I'm sorry for what your family has been through. DH has similar family stories from Russia, China, and Cuba, so I'm not actually inclined to be rah-rah these -isms, but the blind eye we are willing to turn to our own faults because whataboutism seems to be a central and silent theme in this thread. Deregulation does kill people, I'm thinking specifically about pharmaceutical industry and chemical industries. You may say that's not as bad as having people dragged out of the houses at night and never seen again, or the state having the power to kill simply because it wants to, but I do think deregulation could be something to discuss in this context.

But that's besides the actual point I was going for. My entire point was that if you are saying you're only teaching to give the objective look at things we don't like, we should also give the objective look at things our bias says are good --> it doesn't have to be to show all things are equally bad, but to achieve the stated objective of no-judgement-just-facts the OP said they were advocating. 

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9 minutes ago, Paige said:

Shouldn't that be exactly what we teach? I think high school students and definitely college students should learn all about the good and bad of capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. They are old enough for nuance and for learning that nothing we've come up with so far has been a perfect system. What economic system or government eliminates corruption? None of them. I think some are worse than others, however, and some have had better outcomes than others. There's no need to pretend that anything is perfect in order to see that something is better. 

 

I agree, that was my entire point. I guess I did not express it correctly. I was addressing the idea that OP first said communism is evil, but would not teach it was evil [ie a value judgement about it], but would just teach about the facts about communism in the USSR and China. And that's fine with me, but from the phrasing I didn't think the OP would necessarily bring the same critical eye to the systems she doesn't see as evil. I could be wrong about that, hence the "carry on if this is ok with you" at the end. 

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39 minutes ago, Frances said:

I’ve been pretty surprised and impressed by discussions here around homelessness. It’s a huge issue and people have lots of different opinions, but except on NextDoor, which like almost all social media devolves to the lowest common denominator, they seem to be generally welcome. Our neighborhood is directly affected and I’ve been to lots of meetings and forums and also been quite involved volunteer wise. 

I’m not at all discounting or denying your experiences. Maybe it’s just a matter of time before it arrives here.

There’s a homeless encampment on a Seattle school ground now.  It’s actually a school that is where the district clusters the poorest and most marginalized students in NW Seattle- probably because richer parents would be able to get rid of it. Parents who are concerned (there has been a lockdown on campus plus there’s visible waste management and substance abuse issues) have been absolutely eviserated as being NIMBY racist types.  Many of the parents I see getting lectured about it are poor and working class and the people doing the lecturing are richer and usually white and don’t have to send their kids to that school and don’t have kids who relied on that park and community center because they don’t have yards in their small run down apartments.  It’s like suddenly it’s been decided that saying the city should pay for adequate indoor shelter is a racist dog whistle.  

My issue is that for as much money organizations are spending for tent cities and utility-less sheds rebranded “tiny houses” (it’s not a a house if you don’t have a place to use the toilet, shower or cook a meal), we could be providing actual inside inhabitable dwellings.  I know the budgets of these organizations.  A lot of money goes to lobbying for their org to get more money and to management.  A lot of money goes for data collection, consultants and studies.  A lot of money is spent on bandaid solutions that could be provided at a much lower cost.  We know what works- low barrier housing.  We keep spending money on shit that doesn’t work or is organization-serving rather than people-serving.  I dislike the “Seattle is dying” narrative but I also don’t think homeless people are well served by affluent activist types flattening the issue to it’s a civil right to live and sh!t anywhere you want, even if it’s on a kids’ schoolyard.  A friend of mine who incidentally makes his middle class salary off of this issue tried to tell me that it’s not the campers generating all the safety hazard garbage, it’s middle class people illegalling dumping.  Whatever he has to tell himself to rationalize support for a clearly failing system, I guess.  

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16 minutes ago, Paige said:

Shouldn't that be exactly what we teach? I think high school students and definitely college students should learn all about the good and bad of capitalism, communism, socialism, etc. They are old enough for nuance and for learning that nothing we've come up with so far has been a perfect system. What economic system or government eliminates corruption? None of them. I think some are worse than others, however, and some have had better outcomes than others. There's no need to pretend that anything is perfect in order to see that something is better. 

That's ok. It's good to be a critical thinker. I don't think anyone would come out of those classes thinking that all things considered, communism has worked out better for anyone. 

I think we have learned some of the bad parts of capitalism in school and we learned about the Robber Barons, Gilded Age, rise of unions, and evils of factory abuses. The issue I see is that it tends to end there as if the problems of capitalism were solved. These kids will one day need to help solve their countries' problems and it's going to be a lot harder for them if they're taught not to question anything or that there are no problems. 

 

History is not a straight line of progress. Sometimes things have gotten better for some groups, sometimes things get worse, sometimes it's a mixed bag. 

Out of the groups I listed, who is it worse for today than it was 400 years ago? Who is it worse for today than it was 20 years ago?

who is it worse for today than it was last year?... all the people getting murdered, most often in big and/or poor cities. That’s up, in a dramatic way. But that’s after decades of overall drops in murders.

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4 minutes ago, LucyStoner said:

There’s a homeless encampment on a Seattle school ground now.  It’s actually a school that is where the district clusters the poorest and most marginalized students in NW Seattle- probably because richer parents would be able to get rid of it. Parents who are concerned (there has been a lockdown on campus plus there’s visible waste management and substance abuse issues) have been absolutely eviserated as being NIMBY racist types.  Many of the parents I see getting lectured about it are poor and working class and the people doing the lecturing are richer and usually white and don’t have to send their kids to that school and don’t have kids who relied on that park and community center because they don’t have yards in their small run down apartments.  It’s like suddenly it’s been decided that saying the city should pay for adequate indoor shelter is a racist dog whistle.  

My issue is that for as much money organizations are spending for tent cities and utility-less sheds rebranded “tiny houses” (it’s not a a house if you don’t have a place to use the toilet, shower or cook a meal), we could be providing actual inside inhabitable dwellings.  I know the budgets of these organizations.  A lot of money goes to lobbying for their org to get more money and to management.  A lot of money goes for data collection, consultants and studies.  A lot of money is spent on bandaid solutions that could be provided at a much lower cost.  We know what works- low barrier housing.  We keep spending money on shit that doesn’t work or is organization-serving rather than people-serving.  I dislike the “Seattle is dying” narrative but I also don’t think homeless people are well served by affluent activist types flattening the issue to it’s a civil right to live and sh!t anywhere you want, even if it’s on a kids’ schoolyard.  A friend of mine who incidentally makes his middle class salary off of this issue tried to tell me that it’s not the campers generating all the safety hazard garbage, it’s middle class people illegalling dumping.  

Fortunately what you advocate for is now the primary focus in my city. 

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22 minutes ago, Meriwether said:

Have you read The Gulag Archipelago? I read it for the first time recently.

A very long time ago. I should probably revisit, but probably won't get back to it for many more years.

Interestingly, apparently since 2009 it's required reading in Russian schools. So they do seem to have at least some "critical" approach to their history in schools before post-secondary education. (wiki reference) Which seems just a interesting side note to this whole conversation.

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3 hours ago, HeartString said:

Because of the wording of the laws being passed.  They are *saying* they are banning CRT, but the language they are using in the laws being passed actually ban any discussion of anything that could make a child uncomfortable.    

Any kind of law like this would be impossible to write well, IMO. It's just too difficult to define what falls within the range of a theoretical system like this. It's always going to include a lot of overlap with other systems. So it would be easily badly applied and used.

However, I'm not reading many of the posts in the thread as saying that, quite a few seem to think that CRT is the only reflective way to study history, as if historians didn't understand how history can be political or biased, or people interested in sociology or law didn't understand systemic problems, before CT.

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3 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

re what are we even discussing here: "CRT" or "legislation"?

I dunno, Carol.

The very legislators who are ramming these bills through are saying, in their own words out of their own mouths, that the bills are in response to "CRT" being rammed at the children.  Some of the preludes of the bills expressly reference CRT. 

You can be sympathetic to the children faced with episodes like those posted in the early pages of this Mondo thread, or you can be sympathetic to concerns about the blanket bans with language like Missouri's, whose text literally bans the teaching of "divisive concepts."  Or you can see nuance.

But the legislation sweeping state legislatures across the nation is a DIRECT RESPONSE to the clarion cries that "CRT" has swept into schools across the nation. We know that to be true because the legislators promoting the bills themselves STATE it as the reason/need for the bills.

So talking about the bills isn't a "deflection" from talking about "CRT" in schools. It is two facets of the precise same thing.  A very straight, astonishingly fast, implausibly uniform line between outcry => legislation.

 

 

 

THIS PART. Yes, it’s appropriate to consider whether a) these are legitimate grievances, isolated incidents, regional issues, or nationwide ones; b) the laws being passed are responding to the issues being raised, particularly IN THE PLACES WHERE THE ISSUES EXIST, and c) the entire hysteria is being manufactured and amplified in order to enact a broader agenda that is principally concerned with mandating pro-‘patriotism’ messages and silencing criticism. They are all one and the same issue. There are a lot of assumptions being made WRT a, in particular, that I’m unwilling to subscribe to. It hasn’t been conclusively established in any way shape or form. How you leap from that (skipping b) to legislation is both problematic and, as you say, Pam, a tell about the true intent here. Whatever issues people here have, that is NOT what the PTB care about. That is NOT the agenda being advanced by the 24/7 drumbeat.

I, personally, believe Portland, Cupertino, Loudon and Seattle are jacked up and populated by paternalistic libs and also believe that doesn’t represent what is happening nationally, or in my Reagan Republican, defense-heavy community. I believe many teachers are ill-equipped to teach about race effectively and also that more training can and should be done to improve their work on the issue. I believe there are problems and also that the solution isn’t to abandon the effort but to revise, regroup, and reconsider some things. The solutions we’re seeing enacted do not, in fact, do anything to solve the problems being discussed here.
 

Meanwhile, real kids are going to be prevented from a) discussing their lived experiences in class, b) learning accurately about our shared history, and c) being physically safe and secure on college campuses THIS FALL.
 

The appropriate place to find out if this is an issue in your community is to get involved IN YOUR COMMUNITY, not leap into defunding and threatening colleges and banning/mandating speech.

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