Your Manners And Competence Are Deeply Problematic
Kenin M Spivak on the urge to level down:
During the last 18 months, supercharged by events after George Floyd’s death, the radical Left has… shifted its focus to the abolition of testing and standards, the evisceration of math curricula, and indoctrination in our K-12 schools. The following is a necessarily abridged summary of recent developments…
Under pressure from progressive assertions of test bias, over the last few years, many colleges decided that SAT and ACT testing would be optional. Then, to settle a lawsuit alleging racist disparities, in May 2021, the UC system announced it is ceasing the use of ACT and SAT scores. Other colleges promptly followed the UC’s lead. Without scores, there can be no disparities.
In April 2020, citing “equity” and its goal to restructure and dismantle “systems and institutions that create the dichotomy of beneficiaries and the oppressed and marginalised,” the Oregon Department of Education eliminated grades and proficiency in reading, writing, and math as requirements for graduation…
On September 9, 2020, Education Trust-West, an “advocate for educational justice,” announced its study and toolkit for K-12 math, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In Pathway, Trust-West characterised expecting the right answer, independent practice, teaching in a linear fashion, requiring procedural fluency, and requesting that students show their work, as “white supremacy.” Instead of offering a path for minority students to learn how to do math and come to the correct answer, Pathway instead advocates that schools use numbers to motivate anti-racist discussions of social justice.
On July 14, 2021, the California Department of Education issued a Mathematics Framework based on True-West’s Pathway. Chapter 1 of Framework rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for de-emphasising calculus and eliminating classes for gifted children in grades 6-12 to eliminate “inequity.” Chapter 1 specifies that “equity influences all aspects of this document.” The draft Framework directs teachers to use math for political discussions about “marginalised communities” and to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers.
At a time when, despite increases in school funding, almost 80% of black and Hispanic eighth graders have been deemed “not proficient” in maths or reading, it’s unclear how improvements might be made while simultaneously graduating high-school pupils regardless of their performance, or even their attendance, and while shying from the existence of such terribly oppressive things as correct answers.
But as we’ve been told, more than once, “suspending proficiency requirements” will – in ways that are somewhat unobvious – “benefit” those on whom these things are inflicted.
And parents will doubtless take comfort in the feats of mental contortion performed by those to whom their children are entrusted – including the self-satisfied insistence, by high-school teacher Josh Thompson, that behaving in class is “white supremacy.” You see, paying attention and not being disruptive, so that things might actually be learned, if only by some of those present, is “passive” and a product of “white culture.” And expecting basic standards of behaviour – say, respecting other pupils who are trying to hear what’s being said – is “the definition of white supremacy,” and therefore very, very bad.
A position, incidentally, that’s more common that one might think. As illustrated by assistant professor Albert Stabler, who confessed his innate wrongness – “I am a white teacher” – before denouncing the “white feelings” of teachers who object to being assaulted in class – as when being punched, for instance, or when a female teacher had her hair forcibly cut by a black student in an attempt to humiliate and dominate her. Objections to such things are, we’re assured, merely “white supremacist violence.”
And then there’s the spectacle of Virginia Tech educator Dr Crystal Duncan Lane apologising to her class for the sin of being white – in itself, we’re told, proof of “innate racism.” A claim that not only constitutes a kind of racial gaslighting, but which, in the name of progressive piety, also manages to insult any students with pale skin, and from whom, a pantomime of pretentious collective guilt is evidently expected.
Such, then, are the ways of the woke.
Update:
In the comments, Richard asks, “Who is helped by this arrangement?” Prompting a quote from an earlier post,
Readers will note that the retreat from clear metrics into euphemism and pernicious fuzzwords – chief among which, “equity” – not only makes it difficult to determine pupils’ academic progress and actual competence, but also has a secondary effect of making it more difficult to identify the shortcomings of left-leaning educators and administrators. A coincidence, I’m sure.
A coincidence that doubtless suits over-promoted mediocrities such as Valeria Silva, whose “equity” policies – and their awful, inevitable consequences – are mentioned at some length here. It’s worth bearing in mind that, say, grading papers, while not exactly statusful or exciting, does require a level of attentiveness and diligence. And of course, probity. Qualities that don’t exactly leap to mind when picturing the creatures mentioned above. Including Ms Silva, who, rather than addressing the concerns of parents, or pausing to entertain the possibility that her policies may have downsides, simply doubled down and dismissed her critics, even those with brown skin, as befuddled by “white privilege.”
The woolly, circuitous claims that abandoning academic and behavioural standards will “benefit” children, especially minority children, don’t appear to be load-bearing. The word fatuous comes to mind, and the word perverse. It’s hard to imagine how an inability to string together thoughts and express them comprehensibly can be an advantage in life, or a path to employment. Likewise, being encouraged to expect immunity from normal consequences and proprieties, and being handed endless off-the-peg excuses for one’s own thuggery and spite, doesn’t generally foreshadow functional adulthood.
However, a cynic might note that such measures may be to the advantage of educators and administrators who would prefer not to be held accountable for their own ideological fixations and personal shortcomings. If one can no longer measure success, and no longer measure failure and repeated negligence – if even the idea of such efforts is rendered unfashionable or taboo – then people who should never have been employed in the first place, especially in positions of authority over children, can flourish unmolested. Indeed, they can become ascendant, precisely because of their inadequacies and dogmatic narrowness, now framed as woke piety.
And of course, the abandonment of standards and expectations can be to the advantage of those who wish to create alienated misfits whose resentments can be exploited politically.
it’s unclear how improvements might be made while simultaneously graduating high-school pupils regardless of their performance, or even their attendance, and while shying from the existence of such terribly oppressive things as correct answers.
Mass firings would be an improvement.
As noted following this,
So, the situation seems to require more than a proverbial lick of paint.
And remember, dear reader,
The declarer of the above, Ms Alison Collins, is of course an educator, and a Board of Education Commissioner for San Francisco public schools.
Harrison Bergeron was meant to be a warning, not an inspiration.
Huh, funny how certain private schools are doing okay in my area.
{laughs in Catholic}
“School” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Same for the word “teacher”.
“The draft Framework directs teachers to use math for political discussions about “marginalised communities” and to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers.” I do not understand how such discussions will feed and shelter a family. Can someone explain?
Children who spend time in these places and follow such a program also interfere with students attending school who are trying to learn how to be adults. Who is helped by this arrangement?
{laughs in Catholic}
From The Times:
Parents have complained after a top girls’ school invited American researchers to give a talk to their children about changing sex.
They worry that some girls may now want to take puberty blocking drugs to stop their periods or start wearing binders to flatten their breasts.
The complaints about St Paul’s Girls’ School in west London, which regularly tops exam league tables, follow a talk by two researchers from Princeton University’s human diversity lab, which parents learnt about from the school newsletter. It included a discussion of research showing relatively positive outcomes for young girls living as boys and vice versa.
The newsletter said that the university’s research findings into the mental health of children living as the opposite sex “is of the utmost importance …
St Paul’s Girls’ School charges around £27,000 (c. $37,000 US) per year for the privilege.
And not to be outdone by all girl’s schools (from The Times):
The teacher dismissed from Eton over an anti-feminist video could be banned from teaching permanently after the school referred him to the watchdog.
Will Knowland, 35, will learn from the Teaching Regulation Authority (TRA) whether he has a case to answer. It can impose a lifetime ban.
And from the BBC:
Eton College has upheld its decision to fire a teacher over a lecture which defended male aggression as a biological fact.
English master Will Knowland was sacked after posting a lecture he had been told not to give on YouTube.
His video, entitled Patriarchy Paradox, breached Eton’s legal obligations, the school said. [ … ]
The lecture suggested that “saying smash the patriarchy amounts to saying smash human nature and biological reality”.
Eton charges around £45,000 a year (c. $62,000).
Who is helped by this arrangement?
From an earlier post,
A coincidence that doubtless suits mediocrities like Valeria Silva, whose “equity” policies – and their awful, inevitable consequences – are mentioned at some length here.
And it’s worth bearing in mind that, say, grading papers – a job I’ve done – while not exactly statusful or exciting, does require a level of attentiveness and diligence. And of course, probity. Qualities that don’t exactly leap to mind when picturing the creatures mentioned above. Including Ms Silva, who, rather than entertain even the possibility that her policies may have downsides, simply slandered her critics as “racists.”
’ You see, paying attention and not being disruptive, so that things might actually be learned, if only by some of those present, is “passive” and a product of “white culture.”’
I’m sure I remember, back in the late Seventies/early Eighties, Afro-Caribbean and African parents dissatisfied with comprehensive education’s perceived permissiveness, sending their children back to their homelands to be educated where they were much stricter?
Is my memory failing me? Because these schools can’t possibly be said to be ‘acting white’. Can they?
Mass firings would be an improvement.
Possibly the only way to avoid the need for mass shootings later.
The left continues to tell us that diversity enriches our culture and that all cultures are equal.
Not sure that the West should welcome these sorts of people.
The implicit assumption in all of this is that blacks particularly simply can’t 1) do math or spelling or 2) behave. In other words, they are dumb savages. And yet, charter and catholic schools do a great job educating even all black student bodies. No wonder public school teacher unions hate them.
So we should just give out dental degrees, pilot licenses, engineering degrees, air traffic control jobs to random people with no proof of competence? “London bridge is falling down…”
What this boils down to is a hatred of civilization. It isn’t just about racism. They want to tear it all down. This turns out to not that hard.
“The draft Framework directs teachers to use math for political discussions about “marginalised communities” and to move away from focusing on correct methods or answers.”
I’m so old I remember when people, even people here, assured me that this PC non-sense would meet its demise at STEM. Yes by God, STEM will be the great firewall that will turn the tide. STEM professors and such simply won’t stand for it! How’s that working out for ya?
And nobody told them to fuck off?
Okay, let’s play that game. Since this “framework” is promoted by the Department as the correct method, there is surely no requirement to follow it. Right?
They never think this shit through. Of course, they don’t think they need to. They just expect you to obey. But don’t call them fascists.
And nobody told them to fuck off?
That does seem to be a problem in many areas of life.
And nobody told them to fuck off?
Why would they? Why be that guy? Why stick your neck out when you know you will be canceled as a result? When you know that at best, maybe…maaaaybe someone else who agrees with you may come along later, long after it would do you any good, and quietly whisper to you that they agree? That and five bucks won’t even get you a cup of coffee if you’ve been canceled. I hated the band Devo. Mostly because I was afraid they were right. We are not men after all.
Readers will note that the retreat from clear metrics into euphemism and pernicious fuzzwords – chief among which, “equity” – not only makes it difficult to determine pupils’ academic progress and actual competence, but also has a secondary effect of making it more difficult to identify the shortcomings of left-leaning educators and administrators.
The importance of such fuzzword goals as “equity” is that they are superficialities. Being superficialities, they possess the minimum of substance. Possessing the minimum of substance, they require only the minimum of substance to bear their weight. This describes the perfect building material for creating a facade that will stand until the structure it was applied to has been so thoroughly given over to rot, wreckers, and looters that it collapses entirely.
‘Tis a bit funny to see that some hold to the idea that “skrool” is about edjumikation.
It ‘taint. It’s taxpayer paid babysitting. Frees up both (or the single) ‘rents to have “meaningful” jobs and such.
Laughs in Catholic …
… I’m sure I remember, back in the late Seventies/early Eighties, Afro-Caribbean and African parents dissatisfied with comprehensive education’s perceived permissiveness, sending their children back to their homelands to be educated where they were much stricter?
When I was going to school in Ireland at the time, it was common for emigrants to gripe about the quality of the schools in the UK and the US, and for the children of returning emigrants to be held back a year to catch up.
We were spared the worst of the 1960’s innovations in education not because we were particularly wise, but because the people running our schools were incurious and conformist. Also, a lot of the 60’s fads were about inflating the child’s self-esteem, whereas a Catholic education is based on the premise that none of us are particularly good and we all have to work hard not to be a nuisance or a burden or a waste of space.
But these days anti-white principles have taken over the establishment, so the tendency towards conformity in teachers operates in the other direction. And when deflating the self-esteem of white children is seen as a noble aspiration and a goal worthy of our efforts and sacrifices, it doesn’t necessarily trigger the immune system of Catholic educators for whom systemic sin and “doing the work” aren’t novel or alien concepts.
If you haven’t an uneducated peasantry, make one.
We were spared the worst of the 1960’s innovations in education not because we were particularly wise, but because the people running our schools were incurious and conformist. Also, a lot of the 60’s fads were about inflating the child’s self-esteem, whereas a Catholic education is based on the premise that none of us are particularly good and we all have to work hard not to be a nuisance or a burden or a waste of space.
But these days anti-white principles have taken over the establishment, so the tendency towards conformity in teachers operates in the other direction. And when deflating the self-esteem of white children is seen as a noble aspiration and a goal worthy of our efforts and sacrifices, it doesn’t necessarily trigger the immune system of Catholic educators for whom systemic sin and “doing the work” aren’t novel or alien concepts.
This. Again, it’s not about the politics. It’s not even about the edjumikation. It’s about the culture. All of this is downstream from culture. Andrew Breitbart (whose own name has been culturally repossessed by the RINOs) pointed this out a decade ago. Odd I don’t remember him having lunch with me when I pointed it out a decade before that…but I digress…Culture is a collective/aggregate reflection of the ideas, morals, mores, tastes, religious generalizations of what the individuals of that society publicly express. Intellectually, philosophically those individuals may privately hold very, very different opinions or perspectives. But if they don’t express them publicly, not just inbreeding those ideas amongst those with whom they disagree, when appropriate, their beliefs are meaningless to the greater society. Until, of course, the Gods of the Copybook Headings wake up.
The implicit assumption in all of this is that blacks particularly simply can’t 1) do math or spelling or 2) behave. In other words, they are dumb savages.
This.
I’ve been trying to say for awhile now, that the underlying premise of all this Equity crap is racist in the extreme. And that blacks seem to go for it – well, black leaders and blacks who already have had their spirits broken by intergenerational welfare – boggle my mind. That these parasites then try to pull down normal black people and their families who just want to be human citizens, held to standards like everybody else, and strive toward goals and dreams – pisses me off the most, though.
Until, of course, the Gods of the Copybook Headings wake up.
Part of me wants to paraphrase Nietzsche and say that the Gods of the Copybook Headings are dead. But then another part remembers a quote from someone I forget who said that there’s a lot of ruin in a country (or was it a company?), and this lot of looters and losers can coast for quite awhile on what was built up for them by the civilization they are trying to tear down.
Back in the 70s I knew a lot of US hippies who wanted to drop out. They wanted a low-effort life, natural, no haircuts, smoke dope, work a little, have a garden. I have read that such people existed back in Greek and Roman times, so I suspect it is with us always. BUT they were mostly not trying to tear society down, just to escape it.
A society today without standards, without hard work, will simply collapse. You can’t even be a carpenter or waitress if you can’t add.
…this lot of looters and losers can coast for quite awhile on what was built up for them by the civilization they are trying to tear down.
I’ve said before that I believe the engine powering our little civilization has already coughed itself to death, and we’re just coasting on momentum for the time being.
On the plus side, my best mate and I are flying out to Annapolis in a few weeks to look at sailboats. I reckon that whatever is new this year will be coming up on the used market when we’re ready to retire.
Sunsets and rum drinks, guys! All I ask is that the system keep rolling along for another few years so I can cash out and move away before everything burns down.
Off topic but cheers to this guy who faught the police…
Just realized i misstated this…”not just inbreeding those ideas amongst those with whom they disagree”
That should be “with whom they agree”. Otherwise it wouldn’t be inbreeding…obviously?
Not requiring rigorous methods or correct answers, ceasing to teach higher math and the like seems to virtually guarantee that only the exceptional, gifted students will succeed. Perhaps the schools will not make distinctions among the gifted, the mediocre, and the abysmal, but life will.
{laughs in Catholic}
Here in Soviet Canuckistan, the “separate” (i.e. Catholic) school boards are indistinguishable from the public ones, I’m afraid.
this PC non-sense would meet its demise at STEM
Well, it will, just not in academe. The laws of physics are stubborn things, and no amount of Critical Race Theory will keep a suspension bridge aloft. What will happen – what is already happening, according to people I know in conventional engineering – is that although every engineering company will have to pay lip service to this PC nonsense, the ones who keep it away from the actual engineering work will gain a quiet reputation for producing things that don’t fall down. People are learning to look for small independent engineering companies run by old white men and staying away from the larger conglomerates that have been hobbled by the diversity agenda.
Unfortunately, a lot of bridges are going to fall down anyway because not everyone knows the secret handshake, and government projects will be contracted out by True Believers.
The debate about Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka provides a neat example of the trouble here. Of course they are entitled to take time to look after themselves and their mental health. They are only human, after all. Their downside is other, tougher champions come along who don’t need to do that and will ultimately make these young ladies footnotes in their sports. See: Serena Williams, Allyson Felix.
Sacrificing discipline in favor of therapy will never end well; not for an elite athlete, not for a generation of schoolchildren. Removing the tools necessary for success doesn’t just lead to fallen bridges, it leads to fallen cultures. See: the US, 50 years hence, maybe less.
Instalanche…
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/474813/
OT…but given the Convergence Of All The Things is anything really? Thinking of writing a WTP’s Devil’s Dictionary…though this is probably as far as my lazy ass will go with this…especially given my language skills…but whatever…sooo…for future reference…
faught
noun
1. a boring or contemptible academic or intellectual.
“he was such an old faught”
=====
thaught
noun
1. an idea or opinion produced by overwrought thinking, or occurring suddenly like gas passing through the anus.
“Dr. Fauci had a thaught”
verb
1. the action or process of regurgitating what you think everyone in your peer group or aspiring peer group is thinking.
“Andy Tiffa thaught his pink shirt would intimidate the police.”
People are learning to look for small independent engineering companies run by old white men and staying away from the larger conglomerates that have been hobbled by the diversity agenda.
I see you’ve been tooling around SE Texas (or not, but your assessment is spot on). The sheer number of small scale firms boggles the mind – until one realizes that costs, not diversity, matters.
Instalanche…
Hmm. Where are those pants again…
The debate about Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka provides a neat example of the trouble here.
Inclined to agree for the most part here but there’s a significant difference in that if Biles makes a mistake in gymnastics she could easily break her neck and/or die. If Osaka makes a mistake, maybe an official gets a seem and the word “Wilson” tattooed on his forehead. And really, would that be such a bad thing? Johnny Mac wouldn’t think so.
I didn’t realize it at the time but Biles was also one of the girls molested by that Larry Nasser scumbag. Who knows if she wasn’t subsequently mentally abused by whatever therapist she was using to get over that? I’d put the odds at higher than 50/50.
Re: Simone Biles: If you saw the early events, she was making mistakes like stepping out of bounds. She herself thought it was nerves or something, but then realized it was vertigo. I’ve had vertigo and it makes you powerless–you can spin right down to the ground like a leaf. So it was not some psycho mumbo-jumbo she was undergoing but something medical.
“Sunsets and rum drinks, guys! All I ask is that the system keep rolling along for another few years so I can cash out and move away before everything burns down.”
Amen. I already have one foot out the door and hope to drag the other behind it by this time next year.
And I’m already well, well down the rabbit hole of premium dark rums. I shan’t go on about it though as I shouldn’t like to be considered a boor.
Or a Boer either for that matter. Poor buggers are having a rough go of it right now.
Off topic but cheers to this guy who faught the police…
But did he faught straight at them or in their general direction?
What’s worse?
Americans having their election stolen in front of their eyes, with the victor shambling around victoriously?
or
Britons slaying the EU dragon and electing Boris, only for him and the rest of the conservatives to enact despicable authoritarianism?
Off topic but cheers to this guy who faught the police…
He faught the law, and the law won?
I’ll see myself out.
What’s worse?
Large fractions of the populace cheering on each further infringement of our liberties.
Massive Antifa riot in Leipzig, because one of their thugs is on trial for violent crimes.
Who were/are known for their natty black uniforms?
Is it (a.) The SchutzStaffel or (b.) Antifa?
Frankly I think the SS uniforms had more style, but both groups were/are evil.
Frankly I think the SS uniforms had more style, but both groups were/are evil.
Also evil: the liberals who make excuses for Antifa, protect them, and fund them. They all deserve the sort of fate that Antifa intends for us.
Orwellexicon.
Only jailed for 12 weeks. A punishment should be severe enough to eliminate the likelihood of a repeat offense.
A punishment should be severe enough to eliminate the likelihood of a repeat offense.
Now do female teachers who have sex with their students.
assistant professor Albert Stabler, who confessed his innate wrongness – “I am a white teacher” – before denouncing the “white feelings” of teachers who object to being assaulted in class
What the actual f*ck?
What the actual f*ck?
Yes, it’s quite a thing. The mental contortion is hard to top, really. An inversion of reality, and a new benchmark in neurotic contrivance. Such that we’re expected to believe that thugs and budding sociopaths will be morally improved by being granted ever-greater indulgence and race-based exemptions from normal consequences.
This is wokeness. This is what it does to you.
Removing the tools necessary for success doesn’t just lead to fallen bridges, it leads to fallen cultures.
And the clock is ticking.
The woolly, circuitous claims that abandoning academic and behavioural standards will “benefit” children, especially minority children, don’t seem to be load-bearing. The word fatuous comes to mind, and the word perverse. It’s hard to imagine how illiteracy, innumeracy, and an inability to string together thoughts or express them comprehensibly, can be an advantage to those on whom these policies are inflicted. Likewise, being encouraged to expect immunity from normal consequences and proprieties, and being handed endless off-the-peg excuses for one’s own thuggery and spite, doesn’t generally foreshadow functional adulthood.
However, a cynic might note that such measures may be to the advantage of educators and administrators who would prefer not to be held accountable for their own ideological fixations and personal shortcomings. If one can no longer measure success, and no longer measure failure and repeated negligence – if even the idea of such efforts is rendered unfashionable or taboo – then people who should never have been employed in the first place, especially in positions of authority over children, can flourish unmolested. Indeed, they can become ascendant, precisely because of their inadequacies and dogmatic narrowness, now framed as woke piety.
And of course, the abandonment of standards and expectations can be to the advantage of those who wish to create alienated misfits whose resentments can be exploited politically.
I read this article and was appalled. Even in the Soviet Union, really bright children were creamed off to specialist schools which built on their natural talent. We did this in the UK by the means of a test at age 11 and if you passed, you went to a grammar school for high powered teaching. Sadly all but destroyed by socialist governments when ever they were in office.
It sounds to me like you need some high powered private schools that will actually teach quadratic equations and integral calculus regardless of dermal melanin or the lack of it. Maths is always cited as the universal language we would use to speak to Aliens from another world. That proves it to be universal and has no racial connotations. These curriculum setting boards are grade a morons. Parents must protest this utter nonsense. We are NOT all equal in intelligence and academic ability.
Parents must protest this utter nonsense.
Parents want this nonsense. The majority of people are below average intelligence (trust me on this… I did the research and the math), thus the dragging down of smarty-pants math kids is viewed either favorably or indifferently. Because who would want their peers to think that they like icky math. There are legions of people out there who truly feel they were harmed by algebra. They don’t understand it, they don’t want to understand it, and they’ve never has a use for it. And now their supposed to bother with people pushing this qudroon calculus and integration equations stuff? Get real.
Frankly I think the SS uniforms had more style, but both groups were/are evil.
TBF, the SS had Hugo Boss, and at around $800 for the cheapest all black outfit*, antifa can’t afford him.
*(hats and umbrellas sold separately)
Even in the Soviet Union, really bright children were creamed off to specialist schools which built on their natural talent.
Yes, but then the Soviet Union was committed to building a civilisation, such as it was, not dismantling one.
Sadly all but destroyed by socialist governments when ever they were in office.
Many of those grammar school graduates moved almost seamlessly from sometimes really quite deprived backgrounds to university and then on to professional middle class careers.
As many of them had learned to change the way they spoke, after a few short years it would have been impossible to pick out the ones who had more humble origins from a line up.
Presumably this made them appear to be class traitors in the eyes of ardent socialists. At the very least, they must have felt that these ex-grammar school boys were strengthening the very system socialism wanted swept away.
It reminds me a little of a story about Lenin who one occasion as a young man had refused to donate money to famine relief. When asked why, given his commitment to socialist ideals, he replied that he thought the threat of starvation would motivate the peasants to revolution and should therefore be encouraged.
@ComputerLabRat:
As Timmy has noted the statement all economics is either footnotes to Adam Smith or wrong is, if not entirely accurate, a good rule of thumb.
How do the left reconcile asians? They are minorities, foreigners, varying degrees of melanin but absolutely crush results across the western world.
They really have the lowest of expectations for black people, they would probably make the KKK blush
And the clock is ticking.
“Ugh. Son, go get big rock from place” (Audric of Gor to his Son, 550 AD, in the shadow of the Roman Aqueduct at Clausonnes)
@TomJ
Thank you for the full quote! I knew I’d read that it or seen it alluded to either here or at Tim’s.
What keeps me up at night is the thought that we are about to see just how much ruin there is in a nation. And that old as I am, I may live to see it.
“A man/nation goes broke slowly, then all at once.”
– Mark Twain
– Ernest Hemingway
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
For good measure and to cover all my bases I like to throw in
– Benjamin Disraeli
– Otto von Bismarck
From the evidence, Britain has not only given up on policing crime but also on punishing it.
Adam said the current woke would make the KKK blush. He is right. The KKK believed that if you did not keep blacks down with laws and violence, they would succeed. The woke think they cannot succeed.
I’ve connected the dots. The same impulse of defunding police and not punishing crime can be seen in the current admin telling terrorists and their gov allies (Iran) that we are no longer going to police you.
Yes, but then the Soviet Union was committed to building a civilisation, such as it was, not dismantling one.
This, this, a thousand times this.
the Soviet Union was committed to building a civilisation, such as it was, not dismantling one.
Well, it was for a while but then decided things weren’t going too well, at least compared to the West. To make things better, they introduced the magic incantations of “glasnost” and “perestroika”. Glasnost led to a wholesale attack on Soviet history, the crimes that had been committed in the name of the communist revolution, with which the previously docile media joined enthusiastically. Inevitably this became very personal, leading to in-fighting, score-settling, retribution and public humiliation. Perestroika led to economic chaos as central planning was supposed somehow to be merged with private enterprise at warp speed. The obvious conflicts between the two systems, with people trying to simultaneously manage the competing claims, undermined the entire economy.
The combination fatally damaged morale as the people were being told that the system they’d lived with and supported for 70 years (and for which tens of millions had died), which had been created so as to oppose tyranny, was morally rotten, politically corrupt and economically pitiful. The final collapse was swift and almost unresisted.
Instead of glasnost, to demolish what had previously been taken by almost everyone as the qualified but nonetheless definite progress of their culture’s history, the West has “wokeness”; in place of perestroika, the “net-zero” frenzy.
Oh, and of course the eventual dramatic failure of the SU followed its military defeat and retreat from Afghanistan. At the time it happened, it all seemed quite sudden as “no one saw it coming” but, as noted above, it was really “gradually and then all at once”.
Britons slaying the EU dragon and electing Boris, only for him and the rest of the conservatives to enact despicable authoritarianism?
My understanding is that the Brits are quite comfortable being subjects; they just prefer to be crushed by Her Majesty’s Government and not some garlicky bureaucrat from the Continent.
‘Chapter 1 of Framework rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for de-emphasising calculus and eliminating classes for gifted children in grades 6-12 to eliminate “inequity.”’ I will note that not much could make primary school worse than making it less challenging and less interesting as this will do. Further, aggressively lowering standards while claiming lofty ideals is a sign of dishonest sociopolitical maneuvering -I posit this is not about children’s welfare, but the feelings of the policy-makers.
I call this Common Core government. Let’s disable all the able down to the level of the disabled so no one feels bad about sucking at things. Same thing with most large corporations these days.
JulieM: I’ll have to disagree with you here and ask ‘how much does this pretentious crap add to the price of the meal?’
I call this Common Core government.
Heh.™ Also: No Drone Left Behind.
David did not write “share links and bicker” but I don’t see any other way to extend this thread to over 600 comments. Come on, folks, do your part!
…how much does this pretentious crap add to the price of the meal?
If you can afford the Spam Wellington on the right side, you don’t have to ask.
rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for… eliminating classes for gifted children… to eliminate “inequity”
How do they think precociousness comes about? Do they imagine it’s theirs to distribute and bestow as they see fit?
When I was going to school in Ireland at the time, it was common for emigrants to gripe about the quality of the schools in the UK and the US, and for the children of returning emigrants to be held back a year to catch up.
We were spared the worst of the 1960’s innovations in education not because we were particularly wise, but because the people running our schools were incurious and conformist. Also, a lot of the 60’s fads were about inflating the child’s self-esteem, whereas a Catholic education is based on the premise that none of us are particularly good and we all have to work hard not to be a nuisance or a burden or a waste of space.
But these days anti-white principles have taken over the establishment, so the tendency towards conformity in teachers operates in the other direction. And when deflating the self-esteem of white children is seen as a noble aspiration and a goal worthy of our efforts and sacrifices, it doesn’t necessarily trigger the immune system of Catholic educators for whom systemic sin and “doing the work” aren’t novel or alien concepts.
In addition: teaching was regarded as one of the most prestigious jobs and so was dominated by men with very good Leaving Cert results.
Most of these men were also sons of farmers or teachers or policemen or small town shopkeepers and publicans, so conservatism was in their DNA.
Most of these men were also sons of farmers or teachers or policemen or small town shopkeepers and publicans, so conservatism was in their DNA.
Both of my maternal grandparents were teachers. One grew up on a small family farm in the Midwest. The other was the son of a railway station agent in the nearby town. Both grew up poor, and appreciated the value of hard work and of education.
In contrast, most of today’s teachers seem to come from prosperous, urban, middle class families and never lacked for luxuries.
Bit of a palette cleanser
As background – Inderkum High School has just suspended (on full pay) predatory communist revolutionary teacher Gabrile Gipe recently filmed by Project Veritas boasting about radicalising his students by “scaring the fuck out of them”.
Some parents attend the school board meeting to express their thoughts on the matter.
Incidentally, the video ends abruptly because the school board called for a 5 minute recess during which they ran away.
Oops. Cleansed the wrong palate 🙂
Also, his name is Gabriel Gipe.
‘… eliminating classes for gifted children in grades 6-12 to eliminate “inequity.”’
Perhaps each child should be giving an intelligence and aptitude test at entry to school and any child scoring a Full Scale IQ [FSIQ] above 100 +/- 6 points should be sent for intrusive brain surgery to reduce that child’s innate intelligence by causing damage to the appropriate sections of the brain thought to be the site of ‘advantage’, i.e. superior aptitude. I’m reminded that Jordan Peterson has reported that the US Military services has tested recruits for many decades and established that any one in the FSIQ range under 85 points, i.e. one standard deviation below the ‘norm’, is unsuitable for any role/job/task in military service. So the current aim of the woke to reduce the overall functional intelligence of the population to a level of mediocrity, i.e. ‘equity’, is very dangerous. It’s not rocket science to understand that Societies need very intelligent [and hard-working] people to be rocket scientists.
rejects “natural gifts and talents” and calls for… eliminating classes for gifted children… to eliminate “inequity”
No natural gifts and talents in math or writing, but there is in basketball and soccer?
Time to ban competitive sports, you know, because of the “inequity”.
It’s not rocket science to understand that Societies need very intelligent [and hard-working] people to be rocket scientists.
“Oh wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world. That has such people in ‘t!”
Miranda sees her warped world through the eyes of an innocent when she makes her ironic observation. While Huxley said that for a Brave New World to work you needed Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilon Semi-morons. I’m not sure there’s really that much difference between the two views.
So, my father was born in 1929 (a middle child whose parents had favorites; he wasn’t in either short list), joined the Navy, took the GI Bill to go to Vanderbilt University to get a EE degree, and worked on various aerospace projects which included Apollo and SkyLab. (He had died of Parkinson’s disease in 2005; some of his last memories were of boot camp.)
He thought that there was a point in time where rather intelligent women were not welcomed to the business world but were valued in the education world. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but my formative educational years were in the last half of the 1960s.
While working under a grant in the education portion in a rather large state college in the US in the early 1990s, I did observe that those students were a particularly dim lot. The department was willing to fund me and one other guy, so I didn’t see a need to piss them off.
@WTP, I was channeling my I’m alright, Jack after leaving the US Army after 12 years with nobody willing to hire me. I don’t have any kids that lived, so while I really would like the country that allowed me to exist continue (which was one of the reasons I took my commissioning oath), I don’t have any blood relations to drive me to potentially destructive behavior.
Which, I believe, is pretty much your overall point.
‘The teacher “felt threatened and changed each student’s failing grade to a passing one.”’
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/474938/
‘Math proficiency is white supremacy, proclaims Deborah Lowenberg Ball, a mathematics professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Education. In the latest episode of the EdFix Podcast, Ball complains that math is a “harbor for whiteness” and “the very nature of the knowledge and who’s produced it, and what has counted as mathematics is itself dominated by whiteness and racism.” She groans that considering math proficiency to be a sign of intelligence is “raced.” In response, host, Michel Feuer, dean of the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, gushes, “Listening to you is the greatest positive reinforcement to be in this profession.”’
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-folly-of-woke-math/
“Listening to you is the greatest positive reinforcement to be in this profession.”
Again, the inversion of reality is often difficult to process. The thinking on display is so contrived and perverse, and so ruinous in its effects, that onlookers may assume that the fault is their own, that they’ve somehow misunderstood. Because, hey, it couldn’t possibly be that wrong-headed, could it…?
That, as they say.
And this evergreen quote came to mind.
The thinking on display is so contrived and perverse, and so ruinous in its effects, that onlookers may assume that the fault is their own, …
While I’d much rather know this was happening than not, and so thank you for bringing it to our attention, I’m not going to lie – it’s really quite dispiriting.
I’m not going to lie – it’s really quite dispiriting.
Sometimes, the gulf in thinking, the fundamental incompatibility, does make any hope of meaningful discussion, and thereby customary methods of correction, appear misplaced.
‘Math proficiency is white supremacy, proclaims Deborah Lowenberg Ball, a mathematics professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Education.
Not a real math professor: She has a bachelor’s in French and a doctorate in education. In other words, a head stuff with excrement in which are embedded a few tiny nuggets of real knowledge.
While working under a grant in the education portion in a rather large state college in the US in the early 1990s, I did observe that those students were a particularly dim lot.
It is common knowledge among the students of every university with an education department that the education professors and students are pretty stupid, and that if you want an easy A you can take an education class–as long as you are willing to parrot whatever bullshit the professor tells you.
a mathematics professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Education.
And it’s this. Bigly. Culturally. This person didn’t become a mathematics professor overnight. She didn’t seize the job, for which she is certainly not qualified, through brute force. Other people, institutional people, a culture of similar thinking…”thinking” people brought this on over many years. The culture that made it possible was already there and growing for decades. No one spoke up to stop it then. OK, maybe a couple people, but they were marginalized not just by the leftist clown quarter but by those who knew better who lacked the backbone to support them, who remained silent or even joined in the criticism of those who may have objected.
as long as you are willing to parrot whatever bullshit the professor tells you.
And this. While I would say there was some justification for it before instant-access information, the emphasis on memorization over thinking skills has helped create our current problems. Supposedly Albert Einstein kept his phone number and address on a slip of paper in his wallet because he saw no need to memorize what could easily be referenced. Smart man that Einstein.
A decade or so back, I took a certificate course in a Big State U’s education department (it helped to get a big grant). It’s all make-work. All the actual information I got in a half month of course work could have been covered in a single lecture. Most of it was just gunk designed to sound “scientific” to morons — Google up “Bloom’s taxonomy” but keep away from sharp objects.
Apparently “educating” people by “scaring the fuck out of them” is not a reciprocal arrangement.
And it’s this. Bigly. Culturally. This person didn’t become a mathematics professor overnight. She didn’t seize the job, for which she is certainly not qualified, through brute force. Other people, institutional people, a culture of similar thinking…”thinking” people brought this on over many years. The culture that made it possible was already there and growing for decades.
Yes indeed. Think of all those supposedly moderate liberals who were willing to hire and promote creatures like her. The same liberals who saw Milton Friedman as beyond the pale but would happily hire Marxists.
No one spoke up to stop it then. OK, maybe a couple people, but they were marginalized not just by the leftist clown quarter but by those who knew better who lacked the backbone to support them, who remained silent or even joined in the criticism of those who may have objected.
Such as the many True Conservatives I’ve known who may quietly deplore the academic left’s systematic discrimination against conservatives and transformation of education into ideological indoctrination, but who, being Principled Conservatives, would strongly oppose any policy that excludes those malevolent Marxists from positions of power and influence. They are, in a way, like the liberal judges who keep freeing vicious criminals because incarceration is cruel.
WTP: I replied to you in the previous thread regarding Pidgin. I hope my reply was helpful and did not forget or misconstrue any of your points.
Apparently “educating” people by “scaring the fuck out of them” is not a reciprocal arrangement.
Ah, those who would rule over us. Titans, all.
‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked.
‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’
–The Sun Also Rises, by Earnest Hemingway
‘How did you realize liberals are scum?’
‘Two ways,’ pst314 said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’
I remember a point in my freshman orientation at which the Dean of the Physics department told us to look left and look right, because odds are that neither classmate would be graduating with us. In the early 90s, the Physics program had an attrition rate in the mid 60% range.
Being a curious lot, some of my classmates dug into the attrition rates of the different colleges and programs to see which were the most cruel. Unsurprisingly, we learned that the College of Education had an attrition rate of around -80%. Which is to say, for every 100 freshmen in the College, 180 would get a degree. Didn’t take much deduction to figure out where everyone wound up after they washed out of the load-bearing programs.
I remember a point in my freshman orientation at which the Dean of the Physics department told us to look left and look right, because odds are that neither classmate would be graduating with us.
I recall being told this for the first time by my AP history teacher in 10th grade. If there was a point where I would say my cynicism about education really started to get traction it was there. Now I’m not saying that the student doesn’t have considerable responsibility to learn, but for educators to announce such a thing was a clear indication to even my 15 year old juvenile mind that they themselves were not truly interested in education. When I got to college it was clear to me the contempt many, probably most professors had for the larger body of their students. Personally I found much of it sneering and off putting. Then when I heard it was worse in the pre-med and med schools (true or not, I personally wouldn’t know) because fewer doctors meant higher wages for the doctors who got through I was stunned. Why wouldn’t we want more doctors? Granted, we definitely want them to know their stuff (and that is one profession, especially in the ER sense, where memorizing is very important), but why make such things more difficult than they already are?
That high school teacher, an AP history teacher, I later came to understand had ZERO understanding of economics. She clearly had the perception that economics is a zero-sum game. Pathetic.
$&@!… to be clear, my high school teacher was telling us about the weed out course concept in the context of “this is what college is like”, not that she was running a weed-out course in high school.
I’m not sure that weed-out courses are a bad thing: It is impossible to perfectly predict which students will succeed, so entrance requirements are set high enough to exclude the clearly unqualified but low enough to include those whose numbers are at the lower end but who might do well. Part of the problem was that high school was far easier than college: students who got very good grades in high school might have done so only by pushing themselves to the limit but could not maintain that with the tougher college course loads. Other students might have been smart enough to do well in high school without working hard but when they got to college they failed because they did not have the necessary self discipline. Or college might just be where they hit their intellectual limits: I also recall one smart, hard-working individual who aced all high school math classes but struggled, largely futilely, with calculus.
The left half of the IQ bell curve.
Mere anecdotes? This is the far left end of the morality bell curve.