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DeSantis’s Lost Cause

TragicMonkey said:
I'm sure there's some of that behind it, but there's also just a lot of people who cannot grasp the concept of critical thinking: they think to talk about something is to endorse it. They can't understand the difference between teaching children what something is and persuading children that thing is good. Like teaching what various religions believe is inseparable from proselytizing. Intellectual rigor is not widespread.
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I had a conversation like that with an elderly aunt once. She was very indignant that her grand daughter's state college was "teaching Islam". I said I was 100% sure that they weren't, and that it was certainly a class teaching students about Islam from a secular perspective. I said such comparative religion classes are common. I then asked her if she wouldn't rather know what followers of other religions actually think. When it came up that she thought that Muslims believe that all the non-Muslims in the world have to be killed before the Muslim version of Jesus can come, I pointed out that that was exactly the sort of falsehood that such a class could eliminate. But she was becoming visibly upset, doubling down on that delusion because her Evangelical pastor had told her congregation that "fact" about Islam, and he would never lie. The last thing I pointed out was that it needn't be a lie if he actually believed it, but that it was still wrong.

She doesn't live in Florida, but if she lives long enough and DeSantis is the GOP nominee for POTUS, I could totally see her voting for him.
 
Looking back at my own education, and later that of my kids, I readily agree that I encountered some instances of what I could consider liberal bias along the way. I also encountered conservative bias, for example a teacher concluding a lesson on evolution with "On the other hand, is it possible some Power just made it look that way?" Another warned her class that money was about to become worthless, because Obama was about to erase the national debt by simply printing a trillion dollars worth of paper currency and pay it off with that.

In all honesty, I'd say the single biggest impact on education came from the conservative side, in the form of the neutering of science topics such as evolution and cosmology -- seriously, the lessons I got on those subjects as a kid decades ago were probably more definitive and accurate than the mealy-mouth equivocation my daughter and son later received, as if the subjects are unpleasant family secrets that have to be handled at arm's length, if at all.

My point is, biases creep in from all sides in the educational process and always have. To say it's largely a liberal issue is disingenuous at best. But I think everyone involved already knows that. Instead, conservatives want to make "liberal bias" the label they slap on huge chunks of inconvenient reality that involve science, history, biology, and many other subjects. Don't want students learning about this country's checkered racial history? Just stamp "liberal bias" on it and eliminate it from the curriculum. Problem solved! Gay rights, global warming, pollution, non-Christian religions? Same treatment. That way you get to politicize reality itself, and raise a generation of ignorant and deluded kids whom you can more easily fool with your political lies.

As I've said before, in the long run it won't work, because ultimately the truth will out, even if it's a 10-steps-forward, 9-steps-back process. But a lot of people will likely be damaged in the process, not to mention the USA's prestige and influence around the world. And I suspect that history will be very, very harsh on those who are doing this now.
 
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Stellafane said:
Looking back at my own education, and later that of my kids, I readily agree that I encountered some instances of what I could consider liberal bias along the way. I also encountered conservative bias, for example a teacher concluding a lesson on evolution with "On the other hand, is it possible some Power just made it look that way?" Another warned her class that money was about to become worthless, because Obama was about to erase the national debt by simply printing a trillion dollars worth of paper currency and pay it off with that.

In all honesty, I'd say the single biggest impact on education came from the conservative side, in the form of the neutering of science topics such as evolution and cosmology -- seriously, the lessons I got on those subjects as a kid decades ago were probably more definitive and accurate than the mealy-mouth equivocation my daughter and son later received, as if the subjects are unpleasant family secrets that have to be handled at arm's length, if at all.

My point is, biases creep in from all sides in the educational process and always have. To say it's largely a liberal issue is disingenuous at best. But I think everyone involved already knows that. Instead, conservatives want to make "liberal bias" the label they slap on huge chunks of inconvenient reality that involve science, history, biology, and many other subjects. Don't want students learning about this country's checkered racial history? Just stamp "liberal bias" on it and eliminate it from the curriculum. Problem solved! Gay rights, global warming, pollution, non-Christian religions? Same treatment. That way you get to politicize reality itself, and raise a generation of ignorant and deluded kids whom you can more easily fool with your political lies.

As I've said before, in the long run it won't work, because ultimately the truth will out, even if it's a 10-steps-forward, 9-steps-back process. But a lot of people will likely be damaged in the process, not to mention the USA's prestige and influence around the world. And I suspect that history will be very, very harsh on those who are doing this now.
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I'd like to believe that, but history is written by the winners. And the way things are going, there might not be any winners. The ship called Earth is sinking and there's no lifeboats.

I know, I'm just a complete Pollyanna. :D
 
shemp said:
I'd like to believe that, but history is written by the winners. And the way things are going, there might not be any winners. The ship called Earth is sinking and there's no lifeboats.

I know, I'm just a complete Pollyanna. :D
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No fear...any day now our cyber overlords will arise and take over, and all this puny human political stuff will become moot anyway.
 
"Sane reality" winning in the long term is inevitable. At the end of the day reality cares not what you think and WILL make you live in its world.

The United States still existing at all, to say anything of it still existing as a major power, is far less inevitable.

And I get that like 90% of people outside the US and about 50% of people in it see the United States as nothing but a grave to one day dance on, but a world with a sane, functioning US is better than one with an insane US or no US at all.
 
Stellafane said:
Looking back at my own education, and later that of my kids, I readily agree that I encountered some instances of what I could consider liberal bias along the way. I also encountered conservative bias,
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I remember being taught that the Confederacy was about states' rights, which I didn't know any better at the time. I also remember having one class where a local minister came in to talk to us about intelligent design, which I did know better at the time.

My crazy conservative uncle once asked me about all the liberal politics I was learning in college. I pointed out that I was a physics major. The closest we ever got to discussing politics was when Congress cancelled the Superconducting Super Collider in '93. He kept insisting I was being indoctrinated but couldn't quite articulate how.
 
My goddamn high school biology teacher told me dinosaurs never existed and the holocaust didn't happen and neither of those things were even close to the topic he was supposed to be teaching at the time, which was the circulatory system.

Like I'm not kidding. It was like "The aortic valve is the primary connection between the aorta and the left ventricle oh and by the way did you know dinosaurs didn't actually exist and all the Jews in WWII really went to live with relatives in other countries..."
 
JoeMorgue said:
My goddamn high school biology teacher told me dinosaurs never existed and the holocaust didn't happen and neither of those things were even close to the topic he was supposed to be teaching at the time, which was the circulatory system.

Like I'm not kidding. It was like "The aortic valve is the primary connection between the aorta and the left ventricle oh and by the way did you know dinosaurs didn't actually exist and all the Jews in WWII really went to live with relatives in other countries..."
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So you can obviously see how off-the-rails teaching and influence is unacceptable.
 
Republican Strategy: Be intentionally insane, wrong, and evil about literally everything while assuming the persona of someone who's only goal is to be the literal worst possible human being anyone has met.

Claim reality is just "a bias."
 
JoeMorgue said:
Republican Strategy: Be intentionally insane, wrong, and evil about literally everything while assuming the persona of someone who's only goal is to be the literal worst possible human being anyone has met. Claim reality is just "a bias."
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Certainly there is no bias presented in the highlighted. We must get all educators onboard with this, promptly. :thumbsup:
 
Okay let's do an experiment.

You: Provide a non-troll example of something that Republicans want to teach in school that they cannot.

I will explain it why it is wrong.
 
JoeMorgue said:
My goddamn high school biology teacher told me dinosaurs never existed and the holocaust didn't happen and neither of those things were even close to the topic he was supposed to be teaching at the time, which was the circulatory system.

Like I'm not kidding. It was like "The aortic valve is the primary connection between the aorta and the left ventricle oh and by the way did you know dinosaurs didn't actually exist and all the Jews in WWII really went to live with relatives in other countries..."
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Warp12 said:
So you can obviously see how off-the-rails teaching and influence is unacceptable.
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I think he is pointing out just how unacceptable off-the-rails teaching is.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Okay let's do an experiment.

You: Provide a non-troll example of something that Republicans want to teach in school that they cannot.

I will explain it why it is wrong.
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Yawn. There is that word again. Also, isn't the core really more about what Republicans don't want forced on their children?

Don't answer if it involves the word "troll", "evil", "insane", "wrong", etc...because that is not worthy of civil debate.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Okay let's do an experiment.

You: Provide a non-troll example of something that Republicans want to teach in school that they cannot.

I will explain it why it is wrong.
Click to expand...

Warp12 said:
Yawn. There is that word again. Also, isn't the core really more about what Republicans don't want forced on their children?

Don't answer if it involves the word "troll", "evil", "insane", "wrong", etc...because that is not worthy of civil debate.
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"The witness is non-responsive."
 
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