Hacker News Search

tombert 3y ago

> actively retaliate against students who try to stand up for their faith. Outside of chain emails and the movie "God's Not Dead", has this really happened? Anecdata, but when I took an intro to philosophy course my professor was pretty open to religious people talking about their justification for stuff. For that matter, I took a "religious ethics" class, which spent a not-insignificant time talking about Christian ethics (in addition to a lot of other popular religions). It was actually a pretty interesting class. This was at a public school, evidently.

natpalmer1776 3y ago
[deleted]
drstewart 3y ago
>Outside of chain emails and the movie "God's Not Dead", has this really happened? As often as the OPs scenarios have happened, which you were strangely quiet on questioning the validity of. Just an oversight, I'm sure.
- tombert 3y ago
  Ok, so are you saying that “never” is the answer to both?
  - drstewart 3y ago
    Yes
    - bsder 3y ago
      You would be wrong. I chose those scenarios specifically because I know the teachers and professors who had gadflies coming after them. My own father used to have to deal with things as a high school English and history teacher due to a local Catholic priest. Tiny-ass town, practically all Caucasian population, rural as hell. And even he had to deal with these kinds of idiots. Tenure meant he could effectively tell them to pound sand. I can't imagine the number of nitwits that college professors have to fend off. I guess we're about to find out.
      - tombert 3y ago
        I teach CS, so I haven’t had any threats or disputes with local churches or anything. However, I have had to deal with angry parents screaming at me because they just don’t understand why their kid is failing. One of them even pulled up my LinkedIn and tried to tattle on me to the chairperson [1]. If I’m getting complaints like that from parents in a pretty un-controversial thing like programming, I suspect people teaching evolution or history have it way worse. [1] They seemed to think it was some smoking gun that I had another job, in addition to teaching, and thought that the chairperson should be informed. The chairperson called me into their office and asked what it was about, I showed them the previous email correspondence, and they laughed, since I had already been pretty straightforward about my current work.

ghufran_syed 3y ago

Can you help me understand what aspect of teaching biology in grades k through 3 would be against the provisions of the law in Florida? I studied biology to age 16 in England (“o-levels”) and don’t recall anything even up to that age that would be covered under this law? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Parental_Rights_in_Education_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Parental_Rights_in_E...

tombert 3y ago
Because it's not just grades K through 3 anymore [1]. The law is pretty broad and moreover the legal costs default to the defendant. Even if my wife didn't do something that was officially illegal, we'd be stuck counter-suing to reclaim legal costs. [1] https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-education-board-approves-expanding-parental-rights-law-through-12th-grade https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-education-board-ap...
- ghufran_syed 3y ago
  Thanks for the info - but this implies that following the state curriculum would be a pretty easy defence, wouldn't it? So if a teacher wanted to teach about "sexual orientation and gender identity", even outside of the "existing state standards", they could still do so as part of "reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take" [1] [2]. The closest reference I can find for the legal stuff is here: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/PDF https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/er/... Everything in that text talks about the parent taking legal action against the school district, not the teacher [3] - same as when citizens sue "the cops", they are usually suing the city that runs that police department, not the individual police officer. So if a teacher is following the rules laid down by their employer (which one assumes would be in accordance with state law), they would presumably be provided counsel by their employer in order to ensure that the employer can actually mount a legal defense? So it sounds no different to being a state employee in a lot of places. Or am I still missing something? [1] "The rule change would ban lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity through 12th grade unless required by existing state standards or as part of reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take" [2] "Educators have said they don’t expect a major change in lesson plans given that teachers adhere to state education curriculums" [3] "If a concern is not resolved by the school district, a 129 parent may: ... (I) [elided] (II) Bring an action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment that the school district procedure or practice violates this paragraph and seek injunctive relief. A court may award damages and shall award reasonable attorney fees and court costs to a parent who receives declaratory or injunctive relief. "
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > they could still do so as part of "reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take" Wait, so it’s okay to teach about sexuality in the class where it’s most likely to be a relevant topic of discussion?
  - tombert 3y ago
    Sure, but when there’s zero repercussions to a frivolous lawsuit, there’s likely to be a frivolous lawsuit. If a parent can easily lie and try and extort money, it can still be an awful, expensive, exhausting process for my wife. Even if it doesn’t cost us any money directly (which to be completely honest I don’t buy), there’s still the exhausting and awful process of having to defend herself in court. Edit: I would also like to point out that even if you were right on the technicalities, you understand why this would be an immensely unappealing thing for a prospective teacher. It would be much easier to simply move to a state that doesn’t have a vague, poorly defined, conspiratorial law that is likely to make our lives unpleasant.
    - ghufran_syed 3y ago
      that makes sense - in my line of work, lawsuits are an occupational hazard, I imagine it should not be the case for teachers! But I also think both that it’s easy to overstate the risk of some of these things and it would completely suck to be on the receiving end It’ll be interesting to see if the pay rate generally goes up for teachers in florida if they end up with many other teachers making that same decision
    - skissane 3y ago
      > you understand why this would be an immensely unappealing thing for a prospective teacher Does how it is experienced depend on which “tribe” the teacher is more aligned with? I imagine a teacher who feels closer to the “blue tribe” is going to experience this as an attack on them and their profession, while a “red tribe” teacher is more likely to feel that the target is someone other than them, and may even agree with the law (or at least the intention behind it). I know US teachers (and public school especially) tend to skew more “blue” than “red”, but I think the latter group are likely a larger percentage of them than many would think, especially in “red states”.
currymj 3y ago
a lot of the fear is not so much not what the law says, but how a local school administration or local judge decides to interpret it after arbitrary complaints by parents. even if you’re eventually ruled to comply with the law it could make your life pretty miserable.
vkou 3y ago
It's K-12 now. But, of course, when they started going down that road, we were all assured, on this very forum, that it's not going to get to this point.

stainablesteel 3y ago

you should definitely move to a state that suits your political background, its fair to say you might not like florida. but that "don't say gay bill" is really just a "don't teach sex ed til 4th grade" bill. i'm understanding of people who don't like it nonetheless but there's other place for you to go, there's plenty of blue states and big cities that support left-wing agendas over right-wing ones, just go there instead, no?

frob 3y ago
It's not just through 3rd grade anymore. It's all the way through the end of high school. https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-education-board-approves-expanding-parental-rights-law-through-12th-grade https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-education-board-ap...
tombert 3y ago
I think this is a pretty stupid argument; I think this is an idiotic law, and I would even if I did agree with the bizarre LGBT grooming conspiracies. It’s poorly worded, likely to be abused, and also not just K-3 anymore like people keep incorrectly asserting. Even if I did think that there was some grooming conspiracy, I wouldn’t want to teach in Florida because I don’t want to be sued by some parent who has a relatively risk-free way to get free money by claiming I mentioned some LGBT agenda. Also, you understand that “move to a blue city” only gets you so far right? This will (and to some extent already has) lead to a shortage of decent teachers in Florida, because a lot of teachers who can move to a more hospitable state have (or will).
- stainablesteel 3y ago
  that's not exactly steel manning what i said, a lot of the modern lgbt craze is crossing religious boundaries, i don't want my kids to be taught anyone else's religion, i'm supposed to have this right granted to me and my kids under law people who like what's going on in florida will move to florida, its a win-win
  - tombert 3y ago
    It's actually not a win-win, because even if I agreed with your beliefs about the "lgbt craze", I wouldn't move to Florida. The law is so vaguely worded, and the plaintiffs in these lawsuits have virtually zero consequence for lying. Most parents are probably fine (liberal or conservative), but it only takes one dishonest parent to make a teacher's life very unpleasant. I suspect a lot of teachers see the writing on the wall and are getting the hell out of Florida.
    - stainablesteel 3y ago
      the same can be said about a lot of communities and it has more to do with crime and violence than about gender opinions, there's tons of people who get off with lying everywhere, i think you're fooling yourself into believing florida is somehow special. there's probably been more florida on your feed lately in order to get people to be anti-desantis, it a real thing
      - tombert 3y ago
        Those communities don’t have a special law tailor-made to make it is easier and risk-free to sue.