Florida to teach slavery was good for black people and self-defense by them was "acts of violence"

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“Much of the drop in average scores can be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, have earned a disproportionate number of the school's $10,000-per-year merit-based scholarships.”

That's a nice story except that test scores are down everywhere due to schools being closed during the COVID epidemic.

 

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That's a nice story except that test scores are down everywhere due to schools being closed during the COVID epidemic.

Sure, won’t argue with that. And I’ll drop the subject here. It’s off topic, thread was not created to discuss higher education in Florida. And what one person sees as needed reforms, another sees as regrettable developments. And you and I won’t be able to see eye to eye, which is fine.

I’m likely a bit overly idealistic about higher education. Whether teacher or student, it’s like Plato’s Academy, learning for its own sake, learning as its own reward, learning for the sake of learning, no goal beyond that. Of course, most students are more practically oriented, and that too is as it should be.

 

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I’m likely a bit overly idealistic about higher education. Whether teacher or student, it’s like Plato’s Academy, learning for its own sake, learning as its own reward, learning for the sake of learning, no goal beyond that. Of course, most students are more practically oriented, and that too is as it should be.

Do you think teaching hate has a practical application? That is a serious question. Nearly every High School has a rival that coaches and administrators use to push engagement. Trophies are created for that one game and pep rallies are held to hype the student body. There is a happy, wholesome face on it but the whole thing is tribalism.

Was the United States a more unified entity when the USSR was seen as a rival? Was it a benefit to the United States for its people to hate the Soviets?

Is it beneficial for young women and men to be taught to view each other as rivals, as something approaching malevolent, by the college feminists and Andrew Tates of the world? There is power in it for sure and money to be made, but is our social fabric better for it?

Is it beneficial for young women and men to be taught the color of the skin they were born with binds them to a debt from events and actions involving people they never knew and had no connection to other than the skin color of a person involved was kinda, sorta, if you squint and are fine with broad brush strokes, like the color of the skin they were born with?

Maybe teaching hate has a practical application. The college feminists, Andrew Tates, Robin DiAngelos, and Ibram X Kendis think it does. I think the modern variant teaching gender and racial grievance is doing real damage to the social fabric and I'm against it.

 

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Maybe teaching hate has a practical application. The college feminists, Andrew Tates, Robin DiAngelos, and Ibram X Kendis think it does.

The first is too large a group to define so narrowly. The second certainly leaned hard into the social structures that you support, revealing the man behind the curtain. You have already demonstrated that you know nothing about the teachings of the third and fourth.

I think the modern variant teaching gender and racial grievance is doing real damage to the social fabric and I'm against it.

It is unsurprising that you would be against dismantling a system that favored your parents, favors you, and will favor your children.

 

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Do you think teaching hate has a practical application? That is a serious question. Nearly every High School has a rival that coaches and administrators use to push engagement. Trophies are created for that one game and pep rallies are held to hype the student body. There is a happy, wholesome face on it but the whole thing is tribalism.

Was the United States a more unified entity when the USSR was seen as a rival? Was it a benefit to the United States for its people to hate the Soviets?

Is it beneficial for young women and men to be taught to view each other as rivals, as something approaching malevolent, by the college feminists and Andrew Tates of the world? There is power in it for sure and money to be made, but is our social fabric better for it?

Is it beneficial for young women and men to be taught the color of the skin they were born with binds them to a debt from events and actions involving people they never knew and had no connection to other than the skin color of a person involved was kinda, sorta, if you squint and are fine with broad brush strokes, like the color of the skin they were born with?

Maybe teaching hate has a practical application. The college feminists, Andrew Tates, Robin DiAngelos, and Ibram X Kendis think it does. I think the modern variant teaching gender and racial grievance is doing real damage to the social fabric and I'm against it.

From personal experience, certainly never taught hatred of human beings. Did not see it from any of my own teachers. Seeing much more hatred preached by political leaders at the moment, and I’ve been out of the classroom for quite awhile.

I’ve never seen much sense at all in making present groups of people feel somehow guilty for events that happened before they were born. Certainly nothing wrong with being as factually accurate as current understanding permits in describing historical events, personages, trends. Of course written history is interpretive, and as time passes, as generations change, so do interpretations of the past. We can know that enslaving blacks in colonial America was wrong. That does not require telling white students that they need to feel guilty about that. Why would they need to feel guilty?

I think we can look at history, and really, at least this is something I believe, the greatest benefit to studying history is to better understand the present. I believe at least a part of my background, namely my education in the history of Europe since 1789, was of tremendous help in seeing to it that I recognized what Trump represented the day he descended the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015. Decades after my education, and it still is proving useful in interpreting our present moment. And for me at least that’s the most useful aspect of understanding the past.

Anyway, if you’re sitting in on classes somewhere and discovering a lot of hatred being spread, well, that’s your experience. It wasn’t mine, years ago, when I was in the classroom.

But this “war on Woke” confuses the hell out of me. I do not think it helps at all, labeling as enemies of some really good people, culturally sensitive people, intelligent people. Is it just another dirty word to label people by? If I call MAGA a cult, amI doing the same thing? Cultist just another dirty word. Is everyone of liberal temperament “guilty” of being Woke? I’ve said, quite a few times in the past that there are psychological differences, maybe even brain wiring differences, between liberal temperaments and conservative temperaments. I believe simply understanding that can go some way toward each side being way less inclined to “demonize” the other. It’s simply differences in our natures.

Well, you know, we see what we see, and at least a few reasons why the gulf is so very hard to close at the moment.