The destruction of America's public education system

[HRSchenker 2266]

My brother in law pretty much said the same thing. Low pay, high stress, incredibly difficult parents, and zero safety. School district can't reward good teachers due to unions and mandatory pay scales so he's now working for a software company.

[Snake Diggity 4615]

People overuse the word “crisis” but that’s exactly what our public education system is experiencing.  Teachers have been underpaid for decades, but they dealt with it because of the fulfilling work, short days, solid pensions, and summer breaks.  Then they started having administrative tasks piled onto them such that the days were no longer short, but teaching positions were still filled thru a combination of a bad economy and people who held a real passion for the work.  Well, now the economy is good and teachers are having their passion for the work overwritten by unsupportive parents.  The fact that getting shot in the face at work is a totally reasonable fear is only a straw on the camels back.

My biggest fear is that the breaking point is going to come, and the solution is going to be similar to what healthcare has done with replacing docs with nurse practitioners.  We are going to lower the credential requirements for teachers and lower the standards their performances are measured by.  Because sadly most people really don’t care if all kids are receiving a quality education.  All they really want is some place kids can go for free while their parents are at work.  It’s a fucked up situation.

Edited August 24, 2022 by Snake Diggity

[CTC2 2781]

On 8/17/2022 at 9:56 PM, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

"Patriot Mobile"  wtf. How does this company have all these spare dollars to throw around?

Guess it's a nice distraction from the fact that internet porn is more easy and likely to be accessed by minors and way more egregious than words in a book 

Funny how I have started using "Patriot" in place of red neck, dumb ass, or fucktard in my vernacular.  

[tchookem 3900]

My brother in law pretty much said the same thing. Low pay, high stress, incredibly difficult parents, and zero safety. School district can't reward good teachers due to unions and mandatory pay scales so he's now working for a software company.

Is your brother in law in Texas?

[HRSchenker 2266]

11 minutes ago, tchookem said:

1 hour ago, HRSchenker said:

My brother in law pretty much said the same thing. Low pay, high stress, incredibly difficult parents, and zero safety. School district can't reward good teachers due to unions and mandatory pay scales so he's now working for a software company.

Is your brother in law in Texas?

No. Wife has tried convincing him to move here and he laughs it off. 

[tchookem 3900]

No. Wife has tried convincing him to move here and he laughs it off. 

I was going to say he's not in Texas, because Texas teacher's unions are powerless. Blaming them is like blaming a box fan for the wind in a tornado.

[Fastbreak 3971]

Step 1: make being a teacher almost impossible through low pay, crazy rules and banning books.

Step 2: claim there is a teaching “crisis”. Blame the left.

Step 3: remove teaching requirements so you can stack the schools with maga and QDP followers as “teachers.”

Step 4: we’re all fucked.

[tx 3 putt 76801]

horrible parents ?

a parent filed a criminal complaint over a book in a katy isd high school. i guess this is the new tactic ?

[crash_davis 23091]

Fuck "christians" and their book banning bullshit. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5v55j/oklahoma-teacher-resigned-brooklyn-library-banned-books

Just one day into the school year, Summer Boismier was told she was required to attend a disciplinary hearing after she shared a QR code with her students linking to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned site, which provides digital and audio access to censored books. (Boismier’s story was first reported by FOX 25 in Oklahoma City.) 

Boismier, a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma who’s been teaching for nearly a decade and previously signed a public pledge against such bills, says she was almost immediately put on paid administrative leave and was forced to miss school Monday and Tuesday.

[Willfully Horn 7985]

On 8/22/2022 at 10:18 PM, speed817 said:

Watch them rename the school lol....

 

 

It amazes me that Surly conservatives, ostensibly better educated than most conservatives, are mum on the thought control taking place. Those folks can never admit a single fact that runs counter to Republican dogma.

 

 

[Hefeweizen 5307]

The craziest thing about this movement is that the American public school system was once considered a model.   I grew up overseas and American schools, set up for expat businessmen and diplomats, were the most prestigious schools, and were modeled on public schools here with sports and extra curricular activities, plus a strong English based curriculum.

 

 Now we have it being set on fire in front of us.  It’s strange that groups like Eanes Kids First are so anti teacher because you would think that they understand without them the school is a shell.  But I don’t think these are rational actors.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13496]

On 8/22/2022 at 8:09 PM, crash_davis said:

In God We Trust, but in Arabic. Fucking lulz. This dude deserves a donation or 50.

https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/atheist-to-send-texas-schools-in-god-we-trust-signs-written-in-arabic/?rss=1

...the rules only allow the words “In God We Trust” and the U.S./Texas flags.

So the atheist from Florida created a version of the poster with “In God We Trust” written in Arabic in order to send them to Texas schools. Stevens told me, “I followed their ridiculous law, both in spirit and intent.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Abbott creates a special session to eliminate non English posters.

Since the schools are required to display donated posters, it would seem that someone could easily make a mockery of the law by donating enough posters to cover every wall. If the school failed to display any of the donated posters, they could find themselves fighting it in court.

this just demonstrates that when we have real problems to deal with (electric grid, underfunded Texas pensions, flooding, droughts) our leaders want to focus of school posters.

[High Plains Drifter 11018]

On 7/27/2022 at 9:38 AM, CooterBrown said:

We sent our oldest to one of the top Austin private schools from K-4.  We also regret it.  I will give them props on that the education was very good. We did not get to evolution at that age yet so science instruction was fine.  I have always wondered if performance was due to student selection. She had to interview going into K, alone with a teacher, to test her aptitude.  In hindsight, the education probably wasn't any better, it was just a pool of higher performing kids.

 

qft.

 

 

[crash_davis 23091]

23 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Abbott creates a special session to eliminate non English posters.

Since the schools are required to display donated posters, it would seem that someone could easily make a mockery of the law by donating enough posters to cover every wall. If the school failed to display any of the donated posters, they could find themselves fighting it in court.

this just demonstrates that when we have real problems to deal with (electric grid, underfunded Texas pensions, flooding, droughts) our leaders want to focus of school posters.

GQP only cares about social values and limiting free choice in lieu of a "christian" theocracy. They will preach about The Constitution while wholly ignoring the whole separation of Church and State shit. This the same idiotic bullshit in their reading of the bible. Pick and choose what's important to inflict on others and what to ignore while claiming the holiness of the sources as indisputable. 

[speed817 19222]

 

 

[Texas Jeff 1940]

7 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

 

The law is clearly not limited to just one poster, right?  And it gives the school district no discretion to choose which posters to display and which ones not to display?
Text of the law:

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/SB00797I.htm

Here's the chuckleheads accepting the original posters a few weeks ago, complete with photo op in the middle of a board meeting (Item 4):

https://carrollisdtx.swagit.com/play/08162022-550

Also, if "a sign" in the law means "one sign", then the Patriot mobile donated signs are illegal, because the law specifies that signs must have "a representation of the state flag", which would mean "one representation of the state flag" ... and the Patriot mobile signs have two depictions of the state flag.

[CooterBrown 17980]

GQP only cares about social values and limiting free choice in lieu of a "christian" theocracy. They will preach about The Constitution while wholly ignoring the whole separation of Church and State shit. This the same idiotic bullshit in their reading of the bible. Pick and choose what's important to inflict on others and what to ignore while claiming the holiness of the sources as indisputable. 

I can’t remember the name of the organization (Rafael Cruz’s dad is one of the main guys) preaches that separation of church and state is one way. Basically, the state can’t interfere with the church but the church should run the state. It’s the overriding philosophy of the religious right.

[Francisco 2.0 32379]

 

 

[SydneyCarton 47999]

29 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

Holy fuck. Straight to nuclear weapons. 

[SimonBolivar 10957]

This will help

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

 

[Aqua Buddha 14581]

Something, something, indoctrination, something, something:

 

[HRSchenker 2266]

On 8/31/2022 at 7:44 PM, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

 

If there was an issue that could transcend the Republican v Democrat debate it has to be censorship, right? Growing up I was taught that if the government doesn't want you to read something, you definitely need to read it and share it with all your friends. Now those people are trying to revoke teaching certs if you dare bring up "banned" information. Isn't this the time for Alex Jones and Info Wars to shine? Nope. They're pushing for censorship too. Bizarre world we're in right now. 

[MC Fresh Breath 4074]

Girls Who Code founder speaks out after Pennsylvania school district bans her books: 'This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls'

Quote

 

Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani is speaking out after her company's book series was banned from a Pennsylvania school district. 

The books were just added to PEN America's Index of School Book Bans, a list of restricted literature around the country.
"This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls and what info they have access to," Saujani told Insider. 
Girls Who Code founder Reshma Saujani was enjoying a quiet Saturday morning with her two young children when a news alert hit her phone — her company's book series had been placed on a list of banned books in schools. 

The series, which chronicles a group of young girls and their adventures as part of a coding club at their school, was just added to PEN America's Index of School Book Bans, a comprehensive, nationwide list of restricted literature. The index is updated annually by the organization, which advocates protecting free expression through the advancement of literature and human rights. 

"I was just shocked," Saujani told Insider. "This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls and what info they have access to." 

The Girls Who Code books were banned specifically by Pennsylvania's Central York School District, located in a critical political swing region where Saujani said the organization has an active club. But she said the move is part of a larger effort by Moms for Liberty, a conservative organization that advocates for parental rights in schools, including oversight of educational material.

"In some ways we know that book banning has been an extreme political tool by the right — banning books to protect our kids from things that are 'obscene' or 'provocative' — but there is nothing obscene or provocative about these books," she told Insider. 

Moms for Liberty did not immediately respond to Insider's request to comment on the ban. 

The books were joined by other recent additions to the list — several of which tackle racial, women's, and LGBTQ+ rights issues — including "The Handmaid's Tale," "Speak," and "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic." 

"We use these stories to teach kids to code," she said. "It felt very much like a direct attack on the movement we've been building to get girls coding. Especially in districts that don't have the technology or have disparate Wi-Fi, books are a great way to learn to code and a way to equalize access to coding." 

Saujani added that removing the books not only hinders visibility for women in technology fields, but also diversity in the industry, as many of the protagonists in the series are young girls of color. 

"You cannot be what you cannot see," she said. "They don't want girls to learn how to code because that's a way to be economically secure." 

The authors of the Girls Who Code books — Stacia Deutsch, Michelle Schusterman, and Jo Whittemore — joined Saujani in speaking out about the ban.

"Yep. I've been banned. Because some people choose not to focus on how awesome and empowering and inspiring these books are but instead choose fear," Whittemore wrote on Twitter on Saturday. 

Since learning of the ban, Saujani said she has reached out to the Central York School District president and several teachers in the area to understand why the books ended up on the list and to get the series back into schools.

The Central York School District did not immediately respond to Insider's request to comment.

"This is an opportunity to realize how big this movement is against our kids and how much we need to fight," Saujani told Insider. "This is opportunity to start more clubs, get more girls to code, and get more girls to become economically free."

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/girls-who-code-founder-speaks-out-banning-books-schools-2022-9

 

[tchookem 3900]

Using a political cartoon depicting Reconstruction racism to call a black woman racist.

Round Rock ISD may be fucked

[Willfully Horn 7985]

Any R voters reading this, remember, you made this shit possible Schools can’t accept dictionaries. You fucking fucks.

. 

 

[Biff Tannen 45651]

1 hour ago, Willfully Horn said:

Any R voters reading this, remember, you made this shit possible Schools can’t accept dictionaries. You fucking fucks.

. 

 

Quote

Keller Independent School District, near Fort Worth, was forced to remove 41 "challenged" books, including the Bible and an adaptation of the Diary of Anne Frank.

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Biff Tannen

[WhatTheBuck 28764]

10 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Any R voters reading this, remember, you made this shit possible Schools can’t accept dictionaries. You fucking fucks.

. 

 

Well, it’s not that they can’t accept the dictionaries, it’s just that they have to go through a lengthy review process thanks to cumbersome new rules. But Rawstory gonna Rawstory. Even in their tweet they reference reporting by Axios. Here’s the Axios article:

https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2022/12/13/north-texas-schools-donated-dictionaries

The Axios article links to original, local reporting from NBC5 in DFW (the raw story, if you will):

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/carter-in-the-classroom/charity-has-difficulty-donating-dictionaries-to-students-due-to-new-board-book-policy/3144962/

Quote

The Rotary Club is known for spreading peace and goodwill. For the past 15 years, Southlake's chapter has gone to schools, introduced themselves to kids and handed them a gift. 

"It's a Webster's Student Dictionary, same book we've always used, you know they come out with a list of new words every so often, the school district told me, somehow they know there's 22 new words that have been added to the most current edition of the dictionary," said Sean Cerone, a member of the Rotary.

Thanks to those 22 new words, the longstanding tradition in Southlake was put on hold. The district's new book policy requires the district to review all book donations, even the dictionary.

Among other things the article goes on to say how they like to hand out the books in person so they can promote the Rotary Club and they need assurances that they can still do that.

What I’d like to know is, who are the people assigned to read and approve books for the schools in this review process? What are their names? Where do they live? Where do they work? What are their qualifications? What are their histories? Do any of them have a criminal record? I’m not saying anyone should make death threats against them and their families like right-wing election deniers do to election workers, nor that people should demonstrate outside their homes. But I think concerned parents have a right to know who’s deciding what little Johnny can read. If their names aren’t already made public, perhaps they should be. Then if people want to use that information to dig into every little detail about their personal lives, it should be their right to do so.

Is that too much to ask? Surely only the most decent, upstanding people who are fully qualified for the job should have that kind of power, right? There ought to at least be some minimum educational requirement. Like, say, a degree in science before they can review a science book.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13496]

Instead of hiding materials from the students maybe the school could perhaps educate the students to decide for themselves. Nah, education is not the core objective of the schools.

 

[horn4life 3758]

The most dangerous thing to the GOP now is smart people.  For years Colleges have been deemed liberal brain washing institutions.  Mainly because there are not enough far right teachers in the system.  Well fuck when you don't want to pay teachers and your party is based on make money and fuck everything else and you are surprised that there are not right wing Republicans taking lower paying jobs as professors?  As if water is wet is some breakthrough discovery!

What you see most from today's Republican party is most similar to the early days of the rise of nazism in Germany pre WWII.  You have intellectuals attacked, you have the banning and then burning of books to feed the fervor of those who feel educationally inferior (which is true).  So the solutions to all the STOKED anger is simply to attack, attack, attack.  Destroy, Destry, Destroy.

Texas for example hasn't increased school funding in years despite a rising population.  The Republicans simply do not care about education.  They do however like using education to make the uneducated angry.  Which is what we have today at School board meeting around the country. Folks complaining about books they have never read, and would never read. Thus nobody should be allowed to have access to anything but what the uneducated think should be available for the children should read. Their fucking kids were NEVER going to read these books anyhow.  But now they have a reason to be angry.  Which is the whole point of the GOP's politics, make folks mad and keep them as uneducated as possible.  What the GOP is for is school choice.  Where people sending their kids to private schools (that don't have to worry about protests of ignorant Republicans wanting to ban books) be able to have the government pay for their private school choices.  

It's sad really.  But hell I probably read more books by the end of Elementary school than the average Republican I know read perhaps by the end of their college days. They were not curious.  They are not curious today.  This is why Fox News is so effective.  They can easily influence this demographic, the less educated and well rounded the better.  You see it's a lot harder to convince educated people to form an angry mod.  The uneducated? Not so much.

In a nutshell the "Freedom" the GOP espouses nearly always infringes on the freedom of others.  Whether it's the ability to spread covid because you don't like masks, or whether you want to protect your children from books by preventing others access to the reading material.  The freedom to own assault weapons is worth the price of stacks of dead school children.  The dead kids are just a cost of their freedom.

Again I just wish for one fucking time in my lifetime the GOP could fix a problem of any magnitude. Instead it's just get the mob angry and onto the next false outrage.  It's of course a LOT easier to foment anger than solve problems.  It's an elevate the stupid as if they are the smart people.  Better to have a mob of stupid angry people than a thoughtful group of educated people.  So let's elevate the stupid, or worse the well educated Ivy leaguers who pretend they are not well educated.  Because they have demonized the well educated.  Hypocrisy is truly the seminal foundation of the Republican party. 

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

53 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

What I’d like to know is, who are the people assigned to read and approve books for the schools in this review process? What are their names? Where do they live? Where do they work? What are their qualifications? What are their histories? Do any of them have a criminal record? I’m not saying anyone should make death threats against them and their families like right-wing election deniers do to election workers, nor that people should demonstrate outside their homes. But I think concerned parents have a right to know who’s deciding what little Johnny can read. If their names aren’t already made public, perhaps they should be. Then if people want to use that information to dig into every little detail about their personal lives, it should be their right to do so.

Is that too much to ask? Surely only the most decent, upstanding people who are fully qualified for the job should have that kind of power, right? There ought to at least be some minimum educational requirement. Like, say, a degree in science before they can review a science book.

What I’d like to know is, who are the people assigned to read and approve books for the schools in this review process?

It's been awhile since that has come under my purview but it often varies by state, then school district. In Wisconsin, for example, school librarians must also have a teaching certificate and many of them use the *CCBC at the UW Madison's library school if they have questions or concerns or someone has raised a challenge.

Some areas will have a standing committee to address reviews. Every library from coast to coast should have a policy manual which directs patrons to the mission statement and other policies such as challenges, weeding, donations, and where books are shelved (i.e. cataloguing a book as Young Adult that has slightly more mature content).

What are their names? Where do they live? Where do they work? What are their qualifications? What are their histories? Do any of them have a criminal record? I’m not saying anyone should make death threats against them and their families like right-wing election deniers do to election workers, nor that people should demonstrate outside their homes. But I think concerned parents have a right to know who’s deciding what little Johnny can read.

You shouldn't be surprised to discover that most parents have never set foot into their child's school library even during Scholastic Book Week, but talking to the librarian and (if the librarian is lucky enough to have an assistant) one will usually discover it is the librarian who does initial reviews and once again, depends upon various state and/or local district policies but names are usually not a problem. With respect to criminal history, I wouldn't have been able to volunteer in the district anywhere w/o a background check and most people I have been around on committees have had their names put forward by teachers/admins or thought they had the skillset to do whatever committee tasks were needed. I did volunteer for many years in an elementary library (the upper grade schools used student volunteers) and there are a lot of parents who really do not know how to shelve a book., what books are available, or how wide the reading ability can be on a K-4 campus. And that is the clincher right there. You have nine year olds that can read at a HS level but most librarians I interacted with knew that it is difficult to navigate (in the short time they have with the children each week) age appropriate topics for advanced readers. Then again, the parents back in the day that wanted to BAN Harry Potter but hadn't read the series can form a line out the door.

 

 

Also, to add onto @horn4life's excellent post, if you've ever been around a lot of children's literature you do do not have to be particularly observant to notice just how startling the difference is between a quality children's book vs a cheapo GOP self-published or discount drugstore book. One will have a wonderful simpatico between the illustrations and the text, the others all have the same look and appearance of a paint by number I-just-threw-this-together and if the words rhyme it's probably good enough to sell. A **book with Caldecott Award worthy illustrations is often one a child will remember for years and years. (or the text, or the entire piece depending upon the reading level targeted). All I have to do is say kerplink-kerplank-kerplunk and my children know exactly to which book I'm referring. Those well written beautifully illustrated books and books in general are pricey, and that is why the pooled resource of a library as book center for all is so important. So of course the GOP hates them.

 

*CCBC is the Cooperative Children's Book Center.

https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/

I don't know if they have twitter, but they have Face: https://www.facebook.com/SOECCBC/

 

**Not all books have to be the fanciest in order to be considered good quality children's lit as much as the ability to engage the child's mind where they are and where they are headed (with respect to verbal/nonverbal and other intellectual milestones). For example, babies love board books, squeaky bath books, cloth books, and the little books that have things for them to do included in the story (always be careful with those because they sometimes have small parts that can detach.) Perfect for that age group because they can use all the senses while sitting on a caregiver's lap snuggled in a safe while they look, taste, listen, and feel.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13496]

Important to remember but the rise of expensive public universities lies with Reagan when he was governor of California. The California system was tuition-free at the time. There may have been some fees but regardless it was free or close to it.

Reagan and other conservatives were mad that taxpayers were funding the education of people that do not think like them. Thus we started a slow but eventual increasing world of higher tuition and student loans. 

We pay high tuition now because conservatives didn't want undesirables to learn certain topics. Add a high price tag, and the knowledge won't spread. 

[Captainant 27592]

2 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

We pay high tuition now because conservatives didn't want undesirables to learn certain topics. Add a high price tag, and the knowledge won't spread. 

As always with the southern strategy, the idea is to hide your racism behind classism and economic forces. It is known.

[Gap03 3298]

45 minutes ago, horn4life said:

Again I just wish for one fucking time in my lifetime the GOP could fix a problem of any magnitude. Instead it's just get the mob angry and onto the next false outrage.  It's of course a LOT easier to foment anger than solve problems.  It's an elevate the stupid as if they are the smart people.  Better to have a mob of stupid angry people than a thoughtful group of educated people.  So let's elevate the stupid, or worse the well educated Ivy leaguers who pretend they are not well educated.  Because they have demonized the well educated.  Hypocrisy is truly the seminal foundation of the Republican party. 

This will be the downfall of America.  The GOP is intent on increasing the base of stupid angry people that they can control (without ever doing anything to help them) by (1) increasing the number of stupid people and (2) making certain that there are no limits on their ability to foment anger (both by ensuring that the channels for rage (Twitter, Fox, etc.) stay open and ensuring there are no consequences for the constant stream of lies that they spread).  

[atomheartbevo 89603]

43 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

the others all have the same look and appearance of a paint by number I-just-threw-this-together and if the words rhyme it's probably good enough to sell.

[Neonmoon 38129]

Fascism 

Attack truth. Create your own truth

Attack media. Create your own media channel

Attack education. Create your own curriculum 

If you control what people know (Truth), how they know it (Media), the future of what people know (Education), you have control of people. 

 

 

[WhatTheBuck 28764]

22 minutes ago, horn4life said:

The most dangerous thing to the GOP now is smart people.  For years Colleges have been deemed liberal brain washing institutions.  Mainly because there are not enough far right teachers in the system.  Well fuck when you don't want to pay teachers and your party is based on make money and fuck everything else and you are surprised that there are not right wing Republicans taking lower paying jobs as professors?  As if water is wet is some breakthrough discovery!

What you see most from today's Republican party is most similar to the early days of the rise of nazism in Germany pre WWII.  You have intellectuals attacked, you have the banning and then burning of books to feed the fervor of those who feel educationally inferior (which is true).  So the solutions to all the STOKED anger is simply to attack, attack, attack.  Destroy, Destry, Destroy.

Texas for example hasn't increased school funding in years despite a rising population.  The Republicans simply do not care about education.  They do however like using education to make the uneducated angry.  Which is what we have today at School board meeting around the country. Folks complaining about books they have never read, and would never read. Thus nobody should be allowed to have access to anything but what the uneducated think should be available for the children should read. Their fucking kids were NEVER going to read these books anyhow.  But now they have a reason to be angry.  Which is the whole point of the GOP's politics, make folks mad and keep them as uneducated as possible.  What the GOP is for is school choice.  Where people sending their kids to private schools (that don't have to worry about protests of ignorant Republicans wanting to ban books) be able to have the government pay for their private school choices.  

It's sad really.  But hell I probably read more books by the end of Elementary school than the average Republican I know read perhaps by the end of their college days. They were not curious.  They are not curious today.  This is why Fox News is so effective.  They can easily influence this demographic, the less educated and well rounded the better.  You see it's a lot harder to convince educated people to form an angry mod.  The uneducated? Not so much.

In a nutshell the "Freedom" the GOP espouses nearly always infringes on the freedom of others.  Whether it's the ability to spread covid because you don't like masks, or whether you want to protect your children from books by preventing others access to the reading material.  The freedom to own assault weapons is worth the price of stacks of dead school children.  The dead kids are just a cost of their freedom.

Again I just wish for one fucking time in my lifetime the GOP could fix a problem of any magnitude. Instead it's just get the mob angry and onto the next false outrage.  It's of course a LOT easier to foment anger than solve problems.  It's an elevate the stupid as if they are the smart people.  Better to have a mob of stupid angry people than a thoughtful group of educated people.  So let's elevate the stupid, or worse the well educated Ivy leaguers who pretend they are not well educated.  Because they have demonized the well educated.  Hypocrisy is truly the seminal foundation of the Republican party. 

There’s a lot here to inspire a reply. A couple things.

There’s a reason that along with Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc., the Nazis were exterminating intellectuals, teachers, and artists. People who are capable of objective, critical thought, creative thought and communication are a threat. They need rigid adherence to prescribed dogma, not thinking outside the box. Don’t ask why, just do.

I don’t think schools are necessarily seen as liberal because they don’t employ far right teachers. I think education, and teaching critical thought, is a liberal endeavor. We want people who can think for themselves, free from constraint by orthodoxy. To start with “I don’t know,” study all the available evidence, and arrive at an informed conclusion. (That’s why they call it a conclusion, because it comes at the end of the thought process.) Challenging one’s beliefs is part of getting a good education. Don’t believe something just because that’s what your parents believe, or even because that’s what we believe. Study all sides and think for yourself, decide what you believe and why.

That runs counter to the interests of the ideologue, who begins their thought process with the conclusion and works backwards from there. That way they don’t challenge their beliefs. It also makes them well suited for authoritarian rule. That’s why Republicans are trying to destroy the public education system in favor of religious schools (predominantly Christian schools but some non-Christian schools too just so their priorities don’t look too obvious). They want thought control. Free thought, and free access to information, is a threat. If a kid is allowed to go to school with people who are different from them, to study science, study history, they might just learn that people are people, straight white people are no better than anyone else, that there’s nothing wrong with people who aren’t straight or white, and that you don’t need to be a Christian in order to be a good person. You might even conclude that the concept of “God” is a human invention and the world makes perfect sense without it. That makes you dangerous to the White Christian Nationalist, i.e. the modern Republican.

And on fixing problems, maybe he wasn’t the first person to point it out but I thought Pete Buttigieg nailed it when he said that problems are more useful to the Republicans than solutions. That’s why they don’t try to fix the problems. They’d rather use them as weapons with which to attack their political opponents.

Just look at immigration, Trump’s signature campaign issue. He said he was going to build a wall. Never mind that that’s not a solution and wouldn’t work. For two years the GOP controlled the executive branch and both houses of the legislative branch and built no wall. Then when Trump did start building a wall, it was mostly refurbishing, replacing, or augmenting existing wall. Very little new wall was ever built. And it hasn’t stopped shit. His only other policy on immigration was the cruel family separation policy. The cruelty was the point. They thought that by ripping children from their parents’ arms they’d discourage people from coming. That didn’t work and there are still children who haven’t seen their parents since. It’s inhumane and about as un-Christian a “solution” anyone could conceive. Well, that is if you see those people as humans and not animals, anyway.

And now they want to impeach Biden for not fixing the immigration problem that they couldn’t fix and don’t have any proposals on how to fix. 

[WhatTheBuck 28764]

18 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Fascism 

Attack truth. Create your own truth

Attack media. Create your own media channel

Attack education. Create your own curriculum 

If you control what people know (Truth), how they know it (Media), the future of what people know (Education), you have control of people. 

 

 

Blame others for doing what you’re doing. “They’re indoctrinating the children!”

[Willfully Horn 7985]

4 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Well, it’s not that they can’t accept the dictionaries, it’s just that they have to go through a lengthy review process thanks to cumbersome new rules. But Rawstory gonna Rawstory. Even in their tweet they reference reporting by Axios. Here’s the Axios article:

https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2022/12/13/north-texas-schools-donated-dictionaries

The Axios article links to original, local reporting from NBC5 in DFW (the raw story, if you will):

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/carter-in-the-classroom/charity-has-difficulty-donating-dictionaries-to-students-due-to-new-board-book-policy/3144962/

Among other things the article goes on to say how they like to hand out the books in person so they can promote the Rotary Club and they need assurances that they can still do that.

What I’d like to know is, who are the people assigned to read and approve books for the schools in this review process? What are their names? Where do they live? Where do they work? What are their qualifications? What are their histories? Do any of them have a criminal record? I’m not saying anyone should make death threats against them and their families like right-wing election deniers do to election workers, nor that people should demonstrate outside their homes. But I think concerned parents have a right to know who’s deciding what little Johnny can read. If their names aren’t already made public, perhaps they should be. Then if people want to use that information to dig into every little detail about their personal lives, it should be their right to do so.

Is that too much to ask? Surely only the most decent, upstanding people who are fully qualified for the job should have that kind of power, right? There ought to at least be some minimum educational requirement. Like, say, a degree in science before they can review a science book.

Dictionaries, dude.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

If you stand on a public sidewalk in front of the school the way the Gideons do in our community to hand out Bibles to students, I'm not sure there is anything anyone can do is there? So perhaps they could hand out little dictionaries to all the children while the review is underway for the lengthier dictionary for the library?

[WhatTheBuck 28764]

1 hour ago, Willfully Horn said:

Dictionaries, dude.

Apparently I’m not privy to that particular allusion. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20387]

Think how meek and mild mannered librarians are.  It's a stereotype that borders on a trope.

Anyway, MAGA types are threatening librarians around the country.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/american-library-association-president-book-bans-censorship

 

[atomheartbevo 89603]

4 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Think how meek and mild mannered librarians are. 

Tell me you’ve never slept with a librarian, without telling me you’ve never slept with a librarian.

[WhatTheBuck 28764]

10 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Think how meek and mild mannered librarians are.  It's a stereotype that borders on a trope.

Anyway, MAGA types are threatening librarians around the country.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/american-library-association-president-book-bans-censorship

 

I only read Teen Vogue for the pictures. 

[Sbbruin 21811]

4 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I only read Teen Vogue for the pictures. 

 

[Texas Jeff 1940]

Austin ISD just say no to somewhere between $44 and $66 million for teacher pay, plus additional revenue to build and repair schools, because they didn't want to give a tax break to NXP.  NXP is considering building new fabs in the US and looking for a location.  Obviously they want to build at the lowest cost, so they are looking for tax incentives.  Austin is competing against other regions of the country for this facility and because of this denial, that facility and the jobs that come with it may go elsewhere.

This was free money for the district, with nothing held out for Robin Hood, and the trustees voted no.  IF the facility is built here, which is now an IF, then the additional tax revenue that NXP would pay without the agreement would NOT go for education elsewhere, it would just increase the state surplus.

The deciding votes against it were cast by new trustees, who were all endorsed by Education Austin, who in theory represents teacher interests.

There are lots of things wrong with education in this state, but don't count on your local officials to be fiscally responsible.

[drt 637]

I know nothing about this deal, but nothing like this is ever free. A good deal, sure, but there are always strings. 
 

And I say this as an AISD parent whose kid goes to a school that is over 50 years old and can’t hire staff. Like most of the rest of the district. 

[LCHorn 2611]

9 hours ago, Texas Jeff said:

Austin ISD just say no to somewhere between $44 and $66 million for teacher pay, plus additional revenue to build and repair schools, because they didn't want to give a tax break to NXP.  NXP is considering building new fabs in the US and looking for a location.  Obviously they want to build at the lowest cost, so they are looking for tax incentives.  Austin is competing against other regions of the country for this facility and because of this denial, that facility and the jobs that come with it may go elsewhere.

This was free money for the district, with nothing held out for Robin Hood, and the trustees voted no.  IF the facility is built here, which is now an IF, then the additional tax revenue that NXP would pay without the agreement would NOT go for education elsewhere, it would just increase the state surplus.

The deciding votes against it were cast by new trustees, who were all endorsed by Education Austin, who in theory represents teacher interests.

There are lots of things wrong with education in this state, but don't count on your local officials to be fiscally responsible.

Can you elaborate on how providing a tax break to this firm actually increases AISD revenue and is shielded from recapture? 

[Willfully Horn 7985]

Sounds like my taxes are being spent to cut a non local business’ operating costs. What am I missing?

[Biff Tannen 45651]

Fuck tax breaks to bring in more businesses.  We have too much as it is.  Our unemployment rate is like 0.