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> The point is that there’s no reasonable - folks doing this have deeply expressed beliefs and if you disagree you’re evil. They only sound reasonable when spea

> The point is that there’s no reasonable - folks doing this have deeply expressed beliefs and if you disagree you’re evil. They only sound reasonable when speaking in general terms. This is such good point about why this conversation is so frustrating. Because in the abstract, if good faith could be assumed, there's a discussion to be had here. GP responded to me here being like "well what if they were Russian or Chinese schools" -- which does make you have to acknowledge "ok fine, if my kid were in North Korea maybe I would be really worried about what the local public school was teaching." And so you get duped into engaging on the merits. And then you dig just a tad deeper and find out that it's never a high-minded debate about pedagogy or state imposed perspective on like the role of the Federal Reserve or treatment of the Native Americans, it's always bat-shit stupid stuff about Creationism, banning woke books, and demagoguing over gays and trans people. It's so depressing.

Spooky23 3y ago
You’re right. Right wing mass movements are never about high minded anything. It’s all lizard brain stuff. Get people angry about blather and they don’t notice their pockets getting picked. The good news is that there’s a history of these type of trends through history, and these movements burn out.
- chrisdhoover 3y ago
  Just substitute left wing for right wing and read it back. Its still true
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Left wing usually has some other basis. But are equally dangerous and awful. Zealots suck.
whatshisface 3y ago
I will give you a concrete example if you want one. By focusing exclusively on the "great people" of the civil rights movement, the education most kids in the US are getting does not mention the roles in future movements which they are most likely to play. You get an "it's MLK and a handful of main characters, and thousands of extras in the crowd scenes" message from every textbook I've ever seen. No mention of the fact that there were, say, individual legal battles, much less what they were over or how they were won. Kids graduate high school thinking that their only two options are being an era-defining writer or passively reading tweets.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  That’s definitely a downside of K-12 education. I always found it depressing that you learned the survey level of US History a half dozen times, each time noticing the inconvenient details filtered out. My favorite whipping boy for this is the Pilgrims, who transition from guys with funny hats who liked turkey and wrapped dead fish around corn to… something else. One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t know what people actually know, and if they’ve been lured into nostalgia for some wonderful past that doesn’t exist, they get angry. The 1619 project controversy was a great example of that. The notion that people managed their human property like property and that people who escaped that system intermarried with runaway or released indentured servants is a “duh” concept. All of this underscores why education is important, and why academic freedom is a critical component of it.

Spooky23 3y ago

You’re right. Right wing mass movements are never about high minded anything. It’s all lizard brain stuff. Get people angry about blather and they don’t notice their pockets getting picked. The good news is that there’s a history of these type of trends through history, and these movements burn out.

chrisdhoover 3y ago
Just substitute left wing for right wing and read it back. Its still true
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Left wing usually has some other basis. But are equally dangerous and awful. Zealots suck.

whatshisface 3y ago

I will give you a concrete example if you want one. By focusing exclusively on the "great people" of the civil rights movement, the education most kids in the US are getting does not mention the roles in future movements which they are most likely to play. You get an "it's MLK and a handful of main characters, and thousands of extras in the crowd scenes" message from every textbook I've ever seen. No mention of the fact that there were, say, individual legal battles, much less what they were over or how they were won. Kids graduate high school thinking that their only two options are being an era-defining writer or passively reading tweets.

Spooky23 3y ago
That’s definitely a downside of K-12 education. I always found it depressing that you learned the survey level of US History a half dozen times, each time noticing the inconvenient details filtered out. My favorite whipping boy for this is the Pilgrims, who transition from guys with funny hats who liked turkey and wrapped dead fish around corn to… something else. One thing to keep in mind is that you don’t know what people actually know, and if they’ve been lured into nostalgia for some wonderful past that doesn’t exist, they get angry. The 1619 project controversy was a great example of that. The notion that people managed their human property like property and that people who escaped that system intermarried with runaway or released indentured servants is a “duh” concept. All of this underscores why education is important, and why academic freedom is a critical component of it.