4 ms·

Can you explain the bit about the NAIS losing the plot?

rayiner 5y ago
See: https://freebeacon.com/culture/why-private-schools-have-gone-woke/ https://freebeacon.com/culture/why-private-schools-have-gone... The teachers at our school are pretty level headed, but the NAIS-approved curriculum sources are pretty wacky. For example: https://pollyannaincrlc.org/ https://pollyannaincrlc.org/ For example for Grade 4: > The full collection of Racial Literacy Grade 4 lessons are designed to help students understand how geography influenced the emergence of civilization. Humans are the only animals to build vast civilizations,* and geography provided or denied the resources that allowed some groups of former hunter-gatherers to become farmers and herders and eventually develop some of the world’s first civilizations. Students will explore the various engineering, technological, scientific, and mathematical innovations of such civilizations, tracing cross-cultural patterns in order to develop a more informed and eclectic worldview––enhancing their own cultural competency. A goal is for students to realize that humans of a given time and place created similar structures and/or inherited ideas to establish a common pattern that was dictated by geography.* With such a lens, students will be able to analyze history and other social assertions that fabricate myths of racial superiority, including the ability to critique and dispel Eurocentric perspectives that favor a myopic view of race. As a Bangladeshi who has spent a lot of time reading about development economics this is egregiously bad. It mixes up race with culture—a common error caused by projecting American racial politics onto other countries—and reduces the question of why some countries are rich and others are poor to “geography.” Bangladesh is so bountiful in terms of resources that fish literally jump out of ponds into your net: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dziriaxG1Fk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dziriaxG1Fk. It’s paradise compared to anywhere in Northern Europe. Resources aren’t why Europeans pulled ahead. That’s an absurd claim. Which isn’t surprising, because nobody involved with this Pollyanna curriculum is actually a developmental economist or historian. It’s a curriculum that’s formulated by working backward from the premise of cultural equality.
- lolinder 5y ago
  Geography is more than resources. Geography includes navigability, disease, and factors that would have encouraged and/or forced expansion. Further, that paragraph only mentions race as a problematic myth. I don't see it mixing up race and culture so much as pointing out that Europe didn't expand because Europeans are somehow better. I fail to see a problem with teaching that.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    > Geography is more than resources. Geography includes navigability, disease, and factors that would have encouraged and/or forced expansion. Sure, but it excludes culture, which is the most important factor. > Further, that paragraph only mentions race as a problematic myth. I don't see it mixing up race and culture so much as pointing out that Europe didn't expand because Europeans are somehow better. I fail to see a problem with teaching that. You’re embracing the same ambiguity: when you say “European” are you talking about race or culture? “Eurocentric” narratives are mainly about culture, not race. There’s nothing wrong with saying Europeans were more successful because their cultures are better: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henrich-explores-weird-societies/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henric... Indeed, the “Eurocentric” narrative largely refers to the fusion of Christianity and Roman/Greek thought. The European “race” (Germanic people) assimilated into that culture. Nobody is talking about how great Germanic Paganism was. Teaching that societal success is explained by “geography” rather than culture is bad for two reasons. One it’s false. Two, it encourages an external locus of control. It teaches people that success is the product of factors outside the control of an individual or group.
    - lolinder 5y ago
      But culture itself has a large geographical component to it. Human cultures do not evolve in isolation from their geography. Rather, geography shapes culture as it develops. Yes, geography is not the only factor in cultural development. There's a certain element of random chance, there's human agency, and then there are feedback loops. It's a super complex system. You're probably right that reducing it to geography is mistake. But I'd no sooner see a curriculum reduce something as complex as the history of industrialization to culture than to geography. Yes, over emphasizing geography would tend to teach an external locus of control. But overemphasizing culture gives students a misguided sense of cultural superiority, which, while better than racial superiority, is just as likely to lead to discrimination and misunderstanding. The discrimination would just be based on the language that someone speaks or the country that they come from rather than the color of their skin. Slightly more rational? Maybe. Just as devastating? Certainly.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Thank you that was very informative. Every organizing body that centralizes functions (like curricula) is an opportunity for a lot of good (like sharing resources), but also an opportunity for a lot of bad (like institutional capture). Do you have any thoughts on what a fix is? Is it simply greater decentralization?

See: https://freebeacon.com/culture/why-private-schools-have-gone-woke/ https://freebeacon.com/culture/why-private-schools-have-gone... The teachers at our school are pretty level headed, but the NAIS-approved curriculum sources are pretty wacky. For example: https://pollyannaincrlc.org/ https://pollyannaincrlc.org/ For example for Grade 4: > The full collection of Racial Literacy Grade 4 lessons are designed to help students understand how geography influenced the emergence of civilization. Humans are the only animals to build vast civilizations,* and geography provided or denied the resources that allowed some groups of former hunter-gatherers to become farmers and herders and eventually develop some of the world’s first civilizations. Students will explore the various engineering, technological, scientific, and mathematical innovations of such civilizations, tracing cross-cultural patterns in order to develop a more informed and eclectic worldview––enhancing their own cultural competency. A goal is for students to realize that humans of a given time and place created similar structures and/or inherited ideas to establish a common pattern that was dictated by geography.* With such a lens, students will be able to analyze history and other social assertions that fabricate myths of racial superiority, including the ability to critique and dispel Eurocentric perspectives that favor a myopic view of race. As a Bangladeshi who has spent a lot of time reading about development economics this is egregiously bad. It mixes up race with culture—a common error caused by projecting American racial politics onto other countries—and reduces the question of why some countries are rich and others are poor to “geography.” Bangladesh is so bountiful in terms of resources that fish literally jump out of ponds into your net: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dziriaxG1Fk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dziriaxG1Fk. It’s paradise compared to anywhere in Northern Europe. Resources aren’t why Europeans pulled ahead. That’s an absurd claim. Which isn’t surprising, because nobody involved with this Pollyanna curriculum is actually a developmental economist or historian. It’s a curriculum that’s formulated by working backward from the premise of cultural equality.

lolinder 5y ago
Geography is more than resources. Geography includes navigability, disease, and factors that would have encouraged and/or forced expansion. Further, that paragraph only mentions race as a problematic myth. I don't see it mixing up race and culture so much as pointing out that Europe didn't expand because Europeans are somehow better. I fail to see a problem with teaching that.
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Geography is more than resources. Geography includes navigability, disease, and factors that would have encouraged and/or forced expansion. Sure, but it excludes culture, which is the most important factor. > Further, that paragraph only mentions race as a problematic myth. I don't see it mixing up race and culture so much as pointing out that Europe didn't expand because Europeans are somehow better. I fail to see a problem with teaching that. You’re embracing the same ambiguity: when you say “European” are you talking about race or culture? “Eurocentric” narratives are mainly about culture, not race. There’s nothing wrong with saying Europeans were more successful because their cultures are better: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henrich-explores-weird-societies/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henric... Indeed, the “Eurocentric” narrative largely refers to the fusion of Christianity and Roman/Greek thought. The European “race” (Germanic people) assimilated into that culture. Nobody is talking about how great Germanic Paganism was. Teaching that societal success is explained by “geography” rather than culture is bad for two reasons. One it’s false. Two, it encourages an external locus of control. It teaches people that success is the product of factors outside the control of an individual or group.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    But culture itself has a large geographical component to it. Human cultures do not evolve in isolation from their geography. Rather, geography shapes culture as it develops. Yes, geography is not the only factor in cultural development. There's a certain element of random chance, there's human agency, and then there are feedback loops. It's a super complex system. You're probably right that reducing it to geography is mistake. But I'd no sooner see a curriculum reduce something as complex as the history of industrialization to culture than to geography. Yes, over emphasizing geography would tend to teach an external locus of control. But overemphasizing culture gives students a misguided sense of cultural superiority, which, while better than racial superiority, is just as likely to lead to discrimination and misunderstanding. The discrimination would just be based on the language that someone speaks or the country that they come from rather than the color of their skin. Slightly more rational? Maybe. Just as devastating? Certainly.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Thank you that was very informative. Every organizing body that centralizes functions (like curricula) is an opportunity for a lot of good (like sharing resources), but also an opportunity for a lot of bad (like institutional capture). Do you have any thoughts on what a fix is? Is it simply greater decentralization?