A Georgia school board voted along party lines Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.
A Georgia school board voted along party lines Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class.
Independent thought IS overrated after all. Many things in society are tamped down to some lowest common denominator level to placate the masses and be palatable to the broadest cross segment. Emerging ideas though need discussion and facts being what they are the adults in the room are much more likely to be fixed in their ways and unwilling to acknowledge anything that goes against their ‘good old days’ perceptions of right and wrong.
I happen to be one of those adults and understand that some of the lenses I view things through are tinged by the experiences and perspectives around me while growing up. Those things though are not the current reality that we have to work within. I may not agree with every notion that my kids bring forth, but they’re welcome to challenge me on it to explain their point. If you don’t allow kids the information to make a detemination of their own however then the future world suffers for it.
I don’t disagree with you. But, there’s a reason I don’t show my toddler violent movies. I don’t think that the kid is old enough to see that. Also, a 4 year old doesn’t need to know what World War 2 was. I’m not saying that it directly compares to this topic but I’m saying that a parent has to make choices of what I fo their child can consume based on what they think their child is ready for. So, if there’s a topic that I don’t think my kid is ready for now, and the school tells me that they’re not going to cover it now, then if a random teacher goes against that, I’ll have a problem with it. As you should.
The way around that around here is a parental permission slip if there is any question on a topic being age appropriate. Affirmative rejection of education by the parent is recordable and should be actionable by society if at egregious enough levels where it’s seen as restricting a proper education.
I have a problem with your logic. Because in that world the status quo would never change and people would still be taught that homosexuality is a mental disorder. And I feel as though you would not agree with that.
First, parental permission slip. I’m actually against a system that constantly checks with parents regarding every little thing. I’m just saying that parents already have an influence as the public on what the curriculum is. So, if there’s a topic you want, but is missing from it, or if the topic is present and you don’t like it, then go to the school board. Don’t insert, or remove content on a whim. And if the curriculum is not changed and you’re not willing to deal with that, then private or home schooling is an option. So I don’t think permission slips are necessary.
“Affirmative rejection of education by the parent is recordable…” How do you define “rejection” and “education”? And how is that being recorded? People had to reject a lot of education in order for the civil rights movement to get any traction. I wonder what kind of things we were being taught about women before they were allowed in schools. The problem I have with the lack of definition here is that you follow it up with “…and should be actionable by society…” because that means there’s legal action that can be taken based on those loose definitions. And the rest of “…if at egregious enough levels where it’s seen as restricting a proper education.” doesn’t clarify it at all.
The “good guys” aren’t going to be in charge forever. And we need to make sure that we don’t make it easy for the “bad guys”.
The notion of the slips as I’ve seen them implemented is as such:
In X grade we will have education on Y topic which has some measure of content that parents may find questionable for their children. If you object to this then please advise us in writing (through whatever means the school prefers) and we will have them placed in an alternative class dring that time.
If the parent rejects the class then it will be presumed they will attend the class the next year/semester, if it is rejected again at that time then there needs to be some intervention to have a discussion to identify a specific cause. That could include school counselers, social services or whomever else is required to ensure the kids get a comprehensive education in accordance with the established modern standards.
Parental interests should be noted, but not the exclusive dictation of what information is available to a kid. Those who look to restrict access to information are almost universally going to be doing so because they’re afraid that their own version of things is going to be seen as wrong, usually for good reason. Ignorance is bred in isolation through unopposed repetition of opinions stated as facts.
Helping shape curriculum is distinct from the choice to engage with it at any given point and not mutually exclusive. Arguing for the exclusion of information is almost always bad, arguing for the inclusion of it is less often bad but needs to be backed by sound logic and science.
I’m reading what you wrote and I disagree with a lot of it, but I feel like our disagreement runs deeper into something more fundamental. I’m just not sure what it is. To my logic, it’s obvious that this kind of centralized influence on childhood development is a bad idea because of how easily it can fall into the wrong hands. The classic “But what about when the bad guys win an election?” comes to mind. And I don’t know if that’s just not a concern, or is it not even a consideration for you? To me it’s all about the net-positive or net-negative. And to me, the system you propose has a net-negative impact on society.
I assume that there will be some measure of eternal back and forth as one side or the other fights to have their side expressed, but that given ready access to information there is an inevitable tendancy for progressive ideals to become adopted as the norm.
Consider the major advances over the past 200 years in society, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the generalized acceptance of LGBT rights, etc. Im the early 1900s it was the norm to say interracial couples where immoral, now to publically say so would have you in a virtual pillory. When I was young gay jokes where commonplace and to be gay was used as an insult, now I’m here arguing that free discussion of such as being good science and should be valid public education material. Short of extrordinary efforts at repression those kinds of advancements are not going to be reverted. The very fact that I even can have such a discussion with people across the globe at leisure helps ensure that.
There’s a solid reason why urban centers tend to have a more liberal bend to them in that the common exposure to alternate ideas, particularly at a young age, lends itself to acceptance of those ideas on their merits.
I don’t disagree that progressive ideas tend to be accepted as time goes on and that the “left” tends to be the main driving force behind them. However I also don’t think that the people that are on the left or right are inherently different. They believe different things and act on those beliefs, but underneath that there’s a common biological limitation of being human with a human brain. And I don’t think that we humans are as smart as we think. So, even the good side needs to have a limit on its power. Every government thinks they are the good guys. Because of that I fundamentally oppose creating systems where power is centralized in “the few”.
That’s the crux of it though. Public education and the standards of it are by default driven by a consensus on truth and rational. What’s perceived as truth can change over time as people learn amd society accepts new norms, but by the fact that these things are at least obstensibly deemed by the majority of credible bodies to be true, that by definition doesn’t make it power centralized in the few. The outliers that reject the standards are the few in this case and are welcome to voice their opinions through whatever reasonable means they wish, but are not permitted to deny the existance of or silence the generally accepted norm.