5 ms·
It's probably time to stop letting people in our society that are not building up systems terrorize the rest of us with scarcely hidden threats of slandering yo
by nscalf 4y ago
It's probably time to stop letting people in our society that are not building up systems terrorize the rest of us with scarcely hidden threats of slandering your name as a racist. There is nothing racist about having a merit based system within education. If the problem is that it is not entirely merit based, the solution comes from improving the on ramp, not from destroying the program. We should treat people who want to tear down systems like this as radicals trying to cause harm, not well-meaning individuals trying to build equality. We have been increasing equality for decades by building up systems, and to act like everything in existence now is racist and invalid is absurd.
My experience with public school gifted programs was simple. The gifted program was not significantly better in what they taught, or how they taught it. The gifted programs only major advantage was that the people who were there wanted to be there, and worked to do well. This allowed us to move faster, and go deeper into topics. In non-gifted classes, students could not care less about what the class was doing that day and hated that they were trapped there. Some students definitely worked hard in non-gifted classes, but in my experience, that was the exception.
- scarmig 4y agoThere are plenty of students (more than some) in non-gifted classes who genuinely want to learn and work hard. But there are two issues that make those classes terrible: 1) Teachers dedicate 80% of their instructional time to the 20% worst performers, and every incentive pushes them in that direction. 2) More than that, it only takes one or two kids with behavioral issues to reduce teachers' instructional time from near 100% to near 0%, and there's no way to move them out of regular classrooms to classrooms focused on their needs. So if you're a regular student in a cohort with a couple students with behavioral issues, you're pretty much screwed.
- jmull 4y agoThe general issue with merit-based systems is the definition of merit. In practice there are strong cultural aspects to it, favoring characteristics the dominant group likes. So merit-based programs end up conferring the most advantages to those best conforming to the ideals of the dominant culture, strengthening the dominant culture. It's debatable (at least) whether that's a good thing... if you consider the dominant culture racist (or bad in some other way) then it's natural to consider the merit-based programs that support that culture a form a systemic racism.
- vorpalhex 4y ago> In practice there are strong cultural aspects to it Study, do your homework, behave? What "strong cultural aspect" do you see?
- mjburgess 4y agoThat's quite funny... do you really not see it? Study the topics we think are important in the ways we think are important behaving in the ways we think are important. No schooling in human history looks like the schooling you're describing, yet you treat is as some concequence of nature.
- nscalf 4y agoNo schooling looks like study, do your homework, and behave? So any selection of topics to study is unacceptable by your criteria. We live in a society, we have to have some form of education. In order to give students an education, we have to pick curriculum for them to learn. Some topics are not very important, so we shouldn't focus on teaching them. What system would you prefer to have in place? Or would you rather jut pick the topics that are taught?
- vorpalhex 4y agoEnglish, math and history? Like liberal arts educations aren't THAT newfangled. I realize it's not sophist philosophy but maybe a bit more well rounded.
- 4y ago
- mpalmer 4y agoI always have the same question for people like this. What do you want the world to look like 10, 20, 50 years from now, and how would the changes you're pushing for making immediately get us all closer to that?
- thegrimmest 4y agoI want the world to look look like a place where superficial racial difference is no more importantly regarded than differences in hair and eye colour are today. It seems rather clear to me that emphasizing these differences is taking us farther away from this world. How well-represented are blondes in executive leadership or government? Well, no one cares and no one is really counting, are they? That's the world I want to live in.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- unethical_ban 4y agoI have a question for people like you. Your comments sounds challenging to the parent comment. Why? The person is making pretty benign observations and opinions. Your comment seems to question their motives. We should all be asking the question you posed.
- mpalmer 4y agoIn the very first sentence, the parent comment refers to "people in our society". Those are the people I'm talking about.