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If you look at everything from "Monicagate" (not the Clinton one!) to the recent moderator strike over AI-generated answers, StackOverflow is not as apolitical

If you look at everything from "Monicagate" (not the Clinton one!) to the recent moderator strike over AI-generated answers, StackOverflow is not as apolitical as you suggest? But to engage with your main point - I agree, and we can take Germany as an example here. During the Nazi period, everything was put in service of politics, so in math class you'd answer questions like "calculate how many extra hard-working German families we could support if we the state didn't have to spend so-and-so-many Reichsmarks per Jew". Since 1945, there's been a strong tradition to keep politics out of math and science education in Germany, and this seems to be mostly holding even in face of "social justice" pressure. Keeping politics out of "is Phonics a good teaching method?" would also have been a great idea in the English-speaking world.

atoav 3y ago
I teach at a German University and I have never in a decade perceived even the slightest scintilla of any student creating "social justice pressure" in any of my or the classes of my collegues. Whenever there was a social justice topic that made the waves, it was typically about some prof who legitimately acted like full blown asshole and thought everybody else has to put up with their ego — if anything disrupted education in that case, it was them, and the student's demands were basically a totally understandable demand to not have that guys ego get into the way of their education. As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't. Concerns about "social justice"-people putting pressure on us always come from people who got no idea and are out of the educational field for a while. As of now I am nearly convinced that this is probably a collective mind virus that is 99% fiction (and the 1% where it is true has so little impact it doesn't even matter).
- adolph 3y ago
  > As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
  - atoav 3y ago
    No worries, I am aware of my biases. What I said is: the stories right wing truth warriors tell me are "constantly" happening at universities like mine, aren't happening, period. This is not about fish and water, this is about people who aren't there telling me that my floor is wet and every day I check it is dry as a bone. As someone who grew up rurally I always hated it when the city folk told me how it is to grow up there — they had no idea. This is the same. Btw.: your username doesn't inspire neutrality on that topic, as it reminds me of a certain political figure that ran my country into the ground with his megalomania and insanity in the first half of the past century.
eru 3y ago
> If you look at everything from "Monicagate" (not the Clinton one!) to the recent moderator strike over AI-generated answers, StackOverflow is not as apolitical as you suggest? Sure, and Wikipedia also has its own politics. Yet, it's relatively easy to avoid both of them, if you want to. It's hard to avoid the political pressures on government-run and/or government-funded education.

atoav 3y ago

I teach at a German University and I have never in a decade perceived even the slightest scintilla of any student creating "social justice pressure" in any of my or the classes of my collegues. Whenever there was a social justice topic that made the waves, it was typically about some prof who legitimately acted like full blown asshole and thought everybody else has to put up with their ego — if anything disrupted education in that case, it was them, and the student's demands were basically a totally understandable demand to not have that guys ego get into the way of their education. As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't. Concerns about "social justice"-people putting pressure on us always come from people who got no idea and are out of the educational field for a while. As of now I am nearly convinced that this is probably a collective mind virus that is 99% fiction (and the 1% where it is true has so little impact it doesn't even matter).

adolph 3y ago
> As I am working at a liberal art school you would think I probably have witnessed the worst already, but I didn't There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/ https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
- atoav 3y ago
  No worries, I am aware of my biases. What I said is: the stories right wing truth warriors tell me are "constantly" happening at universities like mine, aren't happening, period. This is not about fish and water, this is about people who aren't there telling me that my floor is wet and every day I check it is dry as a bone. As someone who grew up rurally I always hated it when the city folk told me how it is to grow up there — they had no idea. This is the same. Btw.: your username doesn't inspire neutrality on that topic, as it reminds me of a certain political figure that ran my country into the ground with his megalomania and insanity in the first half of the past century.

eru 3y ago

> If you look at everything from "Monicagate" (not the Clinton one!) to the recent moderator strike over AI-generated answers, StackOverflow is not as apolitical as you suggest? Sure, and Wikipedia also has its own politics. Yet, it's relatively easy to avoid both of them, if you want to. It's hard to avoid the political pressures on government-run and/or government-funded education.