Supreme Court rejects affirmative action at colleges as unconstitutional

[Trunkage]

I think where Hawki is driving this is, from our perspective, as teachers are largely employed as civil servants then it is expected that they discharge their duty in an as apolitical fashion as practicality demands.

Now obviously that’s probably really hard for teachers since their job is impart facts, nurture thinking and analytical skills and encourage curiosity. Doubly so for those in a country so politically fractured and adversarial as the United States.

It's funny how many progressive things are seen as political and many regressive things are seen as apolitical....

And by funny, I actually mean intentional. Its like the word apolitical is being used to bludgeon the young 'uns into acting a certain way

 

[tstorm823]

It's funny how many progressive things are seen as political and many regressive things are seen as apolitical....

And by funny, I actually mean intentional. Its like the word apolitical is being used to bludgeon the young 'uns into acting a certain way

How many "regressive" flags have you seen put up by teachers in their classrooms?

 

[Hawki]

So, you'd say a Greenpeace flag in a classroom is verboten?

Of course not, stop being silly. There's any number of scenarios where bringing in a Greenpeace flag could be relevant to the lesson. Perhaps you're covering the history of whaling. Perhaps environmental science in general. Perhaps you're studying New Zealand history and are covering the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. However, there's a world of difference between doing that, and hanging up a Greenpeace flag in a classroom that's not even technically yours, and where it remains hanging regardless of any context.

Perhaps you're arguing that should be allowed, but if so, then you'll also have to accept that it should also be fine to have a flag that says DRILL BABY DRILL for instance.

What about Pride flags? Are they political slogans, too?

Not inherently, but they can be. But even if a Pride flag was purely in the realm of self-expression, you're running into a number of issues, in that:

a: The classroom doesn't belong to the teacher. Maybe it's different elsewhere, but at least in my experience, it's very rare for a teacher to have sole ownership of a classroom. Usually teachers come and go into the same room, unless it's specifically designed around a specific area.

b: If we're keeping things in the realm of self-expression, then I suppose, for instance, you'd be fine with me (as a teacher) putting up movie posters for movies I like in the classroom, even if they're not relevant? That's a form of self-expression.

c: It's frankly unprofessional. Using my own work as an example, it's common to see personal desks decorated with memorabilia, ranging from superheroes, to a teacup collection, to family photos, to drawings made by children. It's unheard of, on the other hand, to see any such stuff in public-facing areas. In the case of teachers, it would be the difference between the teacher having memorabilia in their own office versus the classroom.

d: Segwaying a bit, if your view is that every teacher should be able to bring any kind of political slogan/poster/whatever into a classroom, then that's your prerogative, but imagine how that would work in practice. Classroom A has a pride flag, Classroom B has a poster saying "marriage is between a man and woman." Classroom C has the ten commandments, Classroom D has "God is dead" carved into the wall. Classroom E has a poster for the Liberal Party, Classroom F has a poster for the Labour Party. Classroom G has a Black Lives Matter flag, Classroom H has an All Lives Matter flag. And that's still the best case scenario, where personal/political expressions are kept to separate classrooms. What happens when you put them inside the same classroom?

I could actually see a case to have a Pride flag, if it's small enough to carry around and take out of the classroom (e.g. something on the teacher's desk), on the basis that most schools allow personal expressions of religion (hijabs, turbans, etc.), so you could make the case for something small scale. But hanging up a Pride flag in a classroom on permanent display? That's much harder to justify.

Okay, so politics should stay out of the classroom.[/quote]

Well what kind of politics are you talking about? If you're saying politics shouldn't be discussed at all, no, of course not - try doing history without politics for instance. On the flipside, it's perfectly reasonable to expect teachers to be as neutral as possible, and that would include them not having overt political displays. If you disagree, again, sure, but that would require you to allow for displays you don't agree with alongside the ones you do.

Where's our boundary, here? For the purposes of official action, who is setting that boundary, and why?

The boundary is where the school board/Department of Education sets it. Heck, the boundaries might vary from one case to another. For instance, a Catholic school probably WOULD have the ten commandments, whereas a secular school would be unlikely to have any religious displays. But if your view on boundaries are that there shouldn't be any...well, you're certainly entitled to that view, but I can't see it working well, and it certainly wouldn't match any school experience I had.

To what extent are politicised committees determining curricula? What are we talking about when a teacher is sacked for displaying a flag, but the ruling political party has the liberty to rig the education boards and curriculum to present the view of the world that it wants?

You might want to look back when I stated that it sucked that the teacher was fired, but asked why a BLM flag was on display in the first place. So far, the answer seems to be that teachers should have carte blanche to display what they want (or, alternatively, should be free to display certain types of things and not others).

As for school boards being politicized...yes, and? There's an awful lot of politicization in US school boards, just like everywhere else. Not that disputes over curicula are new in any country, but things seem pretty dire there. The solution, of course, is to keep school boards as apolitical as possible, be as balanced as possible, etc. And yes, that's far easier said than done, but if I'm reading you correctly, your solution seems to be "let them fight."

 

[Hawki]

As soon as you have a political party whose worldviews, values, policies and priorities conflict with environmentalism and ecological concern, an environmental organisation is political. It advocate for values and responsibilities that hinder a political model. You cannot defend the environment without being on a collision course with a political current who aims to sacrifice it for profit. This is a political impact.

Any advocacy that touches on public policies, social rules, legal rights, is political. And negociating the place of the environment within our spectrum of freedoms, concerns, priorities and imperatives, in particular, is a political action.

Really, by that standard, everything is political.

You're absolutely right in that environmental movements have often collided against the people you describe, but you seem to be following the model of everything is politics, because there'll always be someone opposed to something.

I think where Hawki is driving this is, from our perspective, as teachers are largely employed as civil servants then it is expected that they discharge their duty in an as apolitical fashion as practicality demands.

Pretty much this.

Now obviously that’s probably really hard for teachers since their job is impart facts, nurture thinking and analytical skills and encourage curiosity. Doubly so for those in a country so politically fractured and adversarial as the United States.

Well, yes, I mostly agree. Everyone has biases, no-one is completely neutral, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to be impartial. For instance, I know this isn't a 1:1 thing, but I got into a shouting match with a colleague at work once over the subjects of Ukraine and Taiwan. In contrast, if a member of the public was saying the same thing, I'd be obliged to remain silent, or at least, be as neutral as possible. For teachers, best thing they can do is encourage various points of view, remain as neutral as possible. For instance, I'm sure you, like everyone else, took place in classroom debates on certain topics, the teachers I had remained neutral arbiters (mostly).

 

[Gordon_4]

Really, by that standard, everything is political.

You're absolutely right in that environmental movements have often collided against the people you describe, but you seem to be following the model of everything is politics, because there'll always be someone opposed to something.



Pretty much this.



Well, yes, I mostly agree. Everyone has biases, no-one is completely neutral, that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to be impartial. For instance, I know this isn't a 1:1 thing, but I got into a shouting match with a colleague at work once over the subjects of Ukraine and Taiwan. In contrast, if a member of the public was saying the same thing, I'd be obliged to remain silent, or at least, be as neutral as possible. For teachers, best thing they can do is encourage various points of view, remain as neutral as possible. For instance, I'm sure you, like everyone else, took place in classroom debates on certain topics, the teachers I had remained neutral arbiters (mostly).

Honestly not as many as I’d have liked, but the ones I remember were around the Kosovo conflict - I was in Year 8 at the time. Although one very memorable experience I had in Year 12 was my history teacher brought in a guy from Palestine, I don’t think he was a member of the PLO but given he was in his late 40s he could have been, and he spoke to us for a whole lesson and did some Q&A with us. Then same time next week was a - younger - man from Israel who basically did the same thing. I wish I still had my notes from the sessions but they are long lost to entropy now.

 

[Elijin]

Yeah Hawki, wouldn't want to risk gay and trans kids thinking the classroom is a safe place

 

[Hawki]

Yeah Hawki, wouldn't want to risk gay and trans kids thinking the classroom is a safe place

(If you want to get a flag for every single individual who ever wants to feel "safe," you're going to run out of space for flags very quickly.)

 

[Ag3ma]

Segwaying a bit, if your view is that every teacher should be able to bring any kind of political slogan/poster/whatever into a classroom, then that's your prerogative

Goodness no: I think a teacher should not advocate support for any political party and to an extent political views. They may offer a personal opinion, as long as it does not reasonably constitute advocacy. On political matters, they should encourage free discussion looking at multiple perspectives, as long as those perspectives are reasonable and respectful (so no need to give the Nazis an equal and fair hearing on the rights of Jews, for instance), and they can weight discussion depending on appropriate evidentiary justification: for instance I don't think climate change deniers necessarily merit equal hearing given the balance of scientific evidence.

But I think "political view" is a tricky issue, particularly where the decision on what is a political view stems from a partisan politician.

In practice, the use of these is right on the boundary. There are some schools and boards that permit the use of these flags (BLM, pride) in the classroom, and others do not. My leaning is towards not as a permanent fixture - as a temporary one or a display with wider context, lean to yes. If a teacher talks about the flag to pupils and says it's there to represent the fact that gay / black / etc. pupils should feel the classroom is a safe and equal place for them to be heard, one might argue that context is met.

I'm talking about this because of the reference to the teacher being fired. Overreaction, you say. It's more than that: it's a deliberate attempt to make an example for political purposes: the politically appointed head of the board glorifying in the fact they'd gone for her and misleadingly describing it as "entire classroom memorialised". What's that about politics in the classroom? There is nothing more political in the classroom than heavy-handed politicised committees setting curricula with preferred angles and attacking teachers who deviate from their preferences, because the institution tends to have more power than the individual.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

(If you want to get a flag for every single individual who ever wants to feel "safe," you're going to run out of space for flags very quickly.)

We could just restrict them to the people whom conservatives are literally trying to eradicate.

 

[Elijin]

(If you want to get a flag for every single individual who ever wants to feel "safe," you're going to run out of space for flags very quickly.)

Right, because we arent only just leaving an era where it was closet or else, and they're still under attack at basic levels.

But sure, wave it away as "ugh not everything needs to be signalled".

A classroom should be a safe place, and those issues specifically are places where recent decades it has NOT been a safe space for thise issues, hence it needs to be explicitly shown.

 

[Casual Shinji]

(If you want to get a flag for every single individual who ever wants to feel "safe," you're going to run out of space for flags very quickly.)

That depends on how many people don't feel safe in everyday situations. Considering that one of the two political parties in America is going out of its way to target the LGBTQ+, and the other party is just kinda watching it happen, I'd say gay and trans kids take up a very high spot on the list of children that need to feel safe and welcome in classrooms.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

a: The classroom doesn't belong to the teacher. Maybe it's different elsewhere, but at least in my experience, it's very rare for a teacher to have sole ownership of a classroom. Usually teachers come and go into the same room, unless it's specifically designed around a specific area.

In the United States, the classrooms are usually reserved for specific classes, which means specific teachers, with the kids moving in between them as they change lesson periods.

 

[dreng3]

In the United States, the classrooms are usually reserved for specific classes, which means specific teachers, with the kids moving in between them as they change lesson periods.

This varies a fair bit from both state to state and from country to country.

In my home country classrooms are dedicated to a specific class, for an example, Year 7 - A, where you will learn any kind of topic with any one of your teachers, barring a few exceptions such as chemistry which takes place in a special classroom.
In some states classrooms are dedicated to specific courses/topics, for an example, math or english, where you will learn the topic with whichever teacher is assigned to your class.
But in other states classrooms are dedicated to specific teachers, for an example, miss Smith's classroom, where you might be taught any one of the topic miss Smith teaches.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Sure. Your "probably" is the same as actual science. Though it's hilarious that "black doctors are probably just at the poor clinics and that's why black people who go to the white people clinics die more often" if a fucking hilariously blind statement

Like, holy shit, that presumption is so fractally bad that I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Do you honestly believe that a poor person going to a clinic that isn't in poor areas is more likely to die? That doctors in poor areas are more likely to be black? And why is that? There's entire branching pathways of ways this makes you look incredibly shitty as a hypothetical explanation to a statistic you don't like and probably didn't know about an hour ago

So can you just actually be against racism and have some principles? You still saying AA is not racist?

That's the kind of things these studies usually don't realize. It's like the nutritional studies saying such and such leads to better outcomes but it usually ends up that the people that eat such and such healthy thing do tons of other things that promote a healthy lifestyle so you don't know if that one healthy thing actually does much of anything in the actual grand scheme of things (which is called health bias). Are you saying that medical workers that treat people without insurance (or have insurance issues) quite often won't be better at working with such patients than medical workers that hardly treat those people? Minority areas tend to be poorer areas and people usually tend to work in areas that they live in; are neither of those things generally true?

Wrong again.

-

Some officials have made it clear they are on the lookout for transgressions. In a speech last year, Richard Corcoran, the Florida education commissioner, said it was important to “police” teachers to make sure they are not indoctrinating students with a liberal agenda.
“I’ve censored or fired or terminated numerous teachers,” he said. “There was an entire classroom memorialized to Black Lives Matter and we made sure she was terminated.”
...


Laws limiting the teaching of race, gender and related questions now exist in Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Executive actions, such as rules approved by a state board of education, are in place in Alabama, Florida, Utah and Virginia. In Georgia, the state board of education approved a resolution along these lines, but it was never codified into rules. In Montana, the attorney general issued an opinion on the issue. In Arizona, a law that imposed limits on teaching race was invalidated by the state supreme court.
...


In New Hampshire, Given said she used to teach students about racial disparities in economics partly by tying relative lack of Black wealth to Jim Crow laws and discriminatory mortgage policies known as redlining. Not anymore.
“We started avoiding modern parallels in order to avoid any question coming up that we were, by including this information, we were somehow suggesting one group is better than the other,” she said.
...


In August, about a month after Oklahoma’s new law passed, administrators in Edmond, Okla., sent a slide presentation to staff saying that teachers should avoid using the terms “diversity” and “White privilege” during classroom discussions, according to a screenshot obtained by The Washington Post. Regan Killackey, who teaches English at Edmond Memorial High School, was so disturbed that he contacted the ACLU in Oklahoma and is now a plaintiff in a suit challenging the law.

“I was watching what was happening around me and ethically I couldn’t remain silent,” said Killackey, who is White and has taught for 18 years. This year, he said, “I have taught differently. I’ve had to edit myself in a way that I’ve never had to think about in my entire career.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/14/critical-race-theory-teachers-fear-laws/

And that teacher in Florida got $300,000 because Florida was wrong in that case (the specifics weren't mentioned though). New Hampshire has nothing against teaching redlining, the teacher just chose to not teach it. Funny how you take out of the article the thing to boost your argument but then don't include that fact that the slide presentation was preliminary and the final slides said using "diversity" is fine. Argue in good faith at least.

There is one that says you can't teach white schoolkids that they hold responsibility for or should feel guilt over redlining on the basis of being white though.

Of course it is! Now, there's very little you can say about what makes a test question racist, or how to determine if one is when you write it so instead you just have to test a bunch of people of different ethnicities and see if the "correct" number of each group get it right. If not, then either you need to decolonize the test question or just give people of groups that aren't getting it right often enough an extra bonus, using some of that explicit measurable racism to counter that unmeasurable implicit racism with no clear source.

Even if not evenly at a national level this wouldn't be that hard to do at a state level, and state legislatures are easier to lobby than Congress. Like, most schools are funded by local property taxes, it wouldn't be that hard to pool all the property taxes and distribute in a mix of per student and per school (some costs are fixed regardless of student body).

Hell, I'd even be for school voucher programs with one caveat - any school that accepts vouchers must accept voucher students on a first-come, first-served basis until all slots available for voucher students are filled and may charge no additional costs beyond the voucher itself. Here's what the state spends to educate a student, take it or leave it but if you take it that's all you get for them and you don't get to be picky who they are - welcome to public education. This of course makes voucher programs much less enticing to the very people who want them.

I don't get how even distribution of schools funds isn't always the 1st thing mentioned to fixed the education system. It's can't be 100% even on a pure per student basis because of cost of living differences like an addition to add say 6 classrooms cost more in a urban city than doing that same addition in a suburb. Probably the same with something as basic as food is more costly in the city usually.

Yeah Hawki, wouldn't want to risk gay and trans kids thinking the classroom is a safe place

Putting up a pride flag magically makes a school a safe place? Schools are safe spaces already. Kids pick on other kids for like every difference ever, that's not gonna change by putting up a flag. What does it matter if it's because they are the smelly kid or the kid that has like Walmart gym shoes vs Nikes or they're a boy that looks/dresses more like a girl? Kids have to learn how to work that stuff out mainly on their own as an adult isn't party to most social interactions kids have (at just school, let alone like a playground and now social media).

We could just restrict them to the people whom conservatives are literally trying to eradicate.

Holy hyperbole Batman!!!

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

So can you just actually be against racism and have some principles? You still saying AA is not racist?

That's the kind of things these studies usually don't realize. It's like the nutritional studies saying such and such leads to better outcomes but it usually ends up that the people that eat such and such healthy thing do tons of other things that promote a healthy lifestyle so you don't know if that one healthy thing actually does much of anything in the actual grand scheme of things (which is called health bias). Are you saying that medical workers that treat people without insurance (or have insurance issues) quite often won't be better at working with such patients than medical workers that hardly treat those people? Minority areas tend to be poorer areas and people usually tend to work in areas that they live in; are neither of those things generally true?

Except it's not *just* about income, because the discrepancy exists between poor white people and poor black people. And rich white people and rich black people. And etc.

You haven't actually looked at these sstudies. You're just wildly speculating because it exposes something that you don't want to be true

 

[Ag3ma]

Really, by that standard, everything is political.

You're absolutely right in that environmental movements have often collided against the people you describe, but you seem to be following the model of everything is politics, because there'll always be someone opposed to something.

Because it's true?

The best you can probably argue is that various things are sufficiently low concern in public attention that they are not politically controversial. For instance, in the UK regarding history, there's very little controls on pre-modern era, but when it starts getting to the British Empire, the government advises moderation because some conservative types want to believe Britain was bringing civilisation to the world rather than stealing its land and wealth at gunpoint.

Also, posted in another thread by Thaluikhain but highly relevant here to the point I've been making:

Funny events in anti-woke world

Lucifer would have more class than this lot. Fleming has more class than these assholes! Fleming! Mundus too! Hell, throw in the The Devil from Cuphead, and Satan from South Park! Somebody make a large transmutation circle.

forums.escapistmagazine.com

The Florida Board have accepted a curriculum by an non-accredited, explicitly right-wing organisation conservative advocacy group. Useful to contextualise them banning BLM flags in the classroom and firing teachers over it.

 

[Hawki]

In practice, the use of these is right on the boundary. There are some schools and boards that permit the use of these flags (BLM, pride) in the classroom, and others do not. My leaning is towards not as a permanent fixture - as a temporary one or a display with wider context, lean to yes. If a teacher talks about the flag to pupils and says it's there to represent the fact that gay / black / etc. pupils should feel the classroom is a safe and equal place for them to be heard, one might argue that context is met.

That's very specious reasoning though. If your line of argument is that any topic requires a flag to correspond to the topic in question, again, you're going to need a lot of flags. A teacher can certainly bring them in, sure, there might be specific classrooms with specific flags (e.g. if I'm learning French, a French flag might be brought in), but, well, for instance, you've mentioned Nazis already. If we're learning about the Holocuast, should the Israeli flag be brought in to comfort Jewish students? If we're learning about the Armenian genocide, should the Armenian flag be brought in? These aren't entirely unreasonably proposals, but if it isn't consistently applied, it's noticed. Heck, this is a thread about affirmative action where bizzare standards were free for everyone to see long before it was struck down.

Also, there's difference between the Pride flags and BLM flags. The Pride flag isn't inherently political, the BLM flag kinda is, or at the least, is on the margins of it.

We could just restrict them to the people whom conservatives are literally trying to eradicate.

Well, even by that standard, you run into a number of problems, in that:

a) There's no shortage of groups that far-right types want to eradicate

b) It strikes me that if you were worried about far-right types, you wouldn't want to advertise the presence of their targets in a location. Homophobes roaming the street are going to zero in on a school with pride flags rather than one without it.

c) Under the criteria of "targeted for extermination," there's no shortage of groups in the world that have been (are, in some cases) targeted for such a fate, so do they get flags too? Should we fly the Israeli flag for Jews, for the flag of East Turkestan for Ughyrs? I'll grant you that the pride flag isn't inherently political in the way that a national flag is, but otherwise, it's the same criteria.

d) Is it just far-right, or other groups?

In the United States, the classrooms are usually reserved for specific classes, which means specific teachers, with the kids moving in between them as they change lesson periods.

Okay, so under that paradigm, should the teachers be able to display whatever memorabilia they want? Because in all seriousness, I've had plenty of time to think about this, in all my years of schooling, do you know how many classrooms I can recall that had a permanant flag display? One. Just one. It was a pre-school class where flags of the world were draped around the walls, and part of the reason I remember it was because it was the first time I was introduced to the Brazilian flag (one of those memories from childhood that sticks out for whatever reason, I'm sure we all have them). If it was only the Brazilian flag, that would raise an eyebrow or two, but flags of the world? Nothing wrong with that as far as I can tell. Heck, there'd be situations where a specific flag on display would make sense - for instance, I have a colleague whose son goes to "Portuguese school" (she's Portuguese), so if the Portuguese flag was on display, that would make perfect sense in the context.

But apart from that, nothing. I can't even remember a classroom where the Australian flag was draped, or anything similar on permanent display. So at least where I'm from, I just find the idea of flags being on display in classrooms bizzare (I mean, the American flag in American classrooms kind of makes sense, I don't know if pledging allegiance to it is still common or not, but that's about it.) And if the rationale is that the pride flag needs to be on display to make LGBT students feel welcome...well, sure, every student should feel welcome in a school, but the conditions that might make a student feel unwelcome based on inherent traits stretch ad infinitum.

Also, backlash effect.

Because it's true?

The best you can probably argue is that various things are sufficiently low concern in public attention that they are not politically controversial.

This reminds me of the debate we had over themes in stories, where you insisted that every story had a theme, even if it's at its most basic (said examples including Mary Had a Little Lamb). But that aside, I can only disagree. The original example was the difference between a group like Greenpeace, and the CVA, which by your criteria, is still inherently political, just not controversial. But by this standard, literally every single thing ever is political, the only question is whether it's controversial or not. Mary Had a Little Lamb would be inherently political by its mere existence, but only worthy of note if it started being used to promote veganism or something.

For instance, in the UK regarding history, there's very little controls on pre-modern era, but when it starts getting to the British Empire, the government advises moderation because some conservative types want to believe Britain was bringing civilisation to the world rather than stealing its land and wealth at gunpoint.

Which is true of pretty much every empire in history. That's how history works, the closer history is to the present, the more contentious it gets. So you'll get conservatives arguing what you just said, and leftists (Benjamin Law comes to mind) arguing that racism never existed in the world until Britain invented it for example. You'll get Nigel Biggar saying that an examination of the British Empire must be weighed by pros and cons, and Jason Hickel arguing that any pros are irrelevant to the discussion. Or, to look further afield, you'll get tankies defending the USSR, and right wingers saying "what about Stalin?" when told about Hitler's crimes (yes, that's a quote). You've got Russia's invasion of Ukraine right now where people on both sides of the spectrum are making claims/counter-claims that support their own ideology. Or, again, China and Taiwan, which again, I'll remind you is a case where personal politics had to be kept separate from customer service, because that's just common sense.

Saying that history is political isn't a revelation. But that's very different from saying everything is.

Also, posted in another thread by Thaluikhain but highly relevant here to the point I've been making:

Funny events in anti-woke world

Lucifer would have more class than this lot. Fleming has more class than these assholes! Fleming! Mundus too! Hell, throw in the The Devil from Cuphead, and Satan from South Park! Somebody make a large transmutation circle.

forums.escapistmagazine.com

The Florida Board have accepted a curriculum by an non-accredited, explicitly right-wing organisation conservative advocacy group. Useful to contextualise them banning BLM flags in the classroom and firing teachers over it.

Well first, I've had Trunkage on ignore for ages, so thanks for that.

Second, I'm not sure what point you're making, or at least, what point you're making in point to any point I've made (try saying that out loud). Politicization is bad, period. I've posted examples in both the "woke" and "anti-woke" threads of politicization of education across all levels of education from all kinds of sources, and I've already said that I think it sucks that the teacher was fired, but my original question was why the BLM flag was hanging there in the first place. So far, the best response I've got is that it's to provide a safe space, but if that's the case, it doesn't change its nature as a political symbol in what's meant to be a neutral space.

Third, the article's locked behind a subscriber-wall, and...yeah, sorry, not doing that. My Inbox is full enough already.

 

[Silvanus]

Which is true of pretty much every empire in history. That's how history works, the closer history is to the present, the more contentious it gets. So you'll get conservatives arguing what you just said, and leftists (Benjamin Law comes to mind) arguing that racism never existed in the world until Britain invented it for example. You'll get Nigel Biggar saying that an examination of the British Empire must be weighed by pros and cons, and Jason Hickel arguing that any pros are irrelevant to the discussion. Or, to look further afield, you'll get tankies defending the USSR, and right wingers saying "what about Stalin?" when told about Hitler's crimes (yes, that's a quote). You've got Russia's invasion of Ukraine right now where people on both sides of the spectrum are making claims/counter-claims that support their own ideology. Or, again, China and Taiwan, which again, I'll remind you is a case where personal politics had to be kept separate from customer service, because that's just common sense.

Saying that history is political isn't a revelation. But that's very different from saying everything is.

You've missed the point here. We all know history is political, and that isn't news. The point is that pre-modern history is just as political as the recent stuff surrounding the Empire. The difference is that the pre-modern stuff is relatively uncontroversial.

So when you say we should avoid "politicising" topics in school, what does that mean in practice for something like history? Do you mean we should avoid the contentious elements of modern history, in order to placate either side of the political divide? Suffice it to say that's not actually being apolitical; it's just shying away from a teacher's duty to inform.

 

[Hawki]

You've missed the point here. We all know history is political, and that isn't news. The point is that pre-modern history is just as political as the recent stuff surrounding the Empire. The difference is that the pre-modern stuff is relatively uncontroversial.

I'm sorry, but that comes off as semantics. Your argument seems to be that everything is political, it's just that recent history is more contested than earlier history. Which is a statement that I, and most people would agree with, but you seem to be objecting to the use of "political" rather than "controversial."

So when you say we should avoid "politicising" topics in school, what does that mean in practice for something like history? Do you mean we should avoid the contentious elements of modern history, in order to placate either side of the political divide? Suffice it to say that's not actually being apolitical; it's just shying away from a teacher's duty to inform.

Come on, you're smarter than that, and I've already answered that question in this thread. To reiterate what I've already said near-verbatim, no-one is seriously suggesting that politics be removed from history, that's insane. When people say "keep politics out of the classroom," it's referring to real-world politics influencing it. If you want an example of this, you can check the DeSantis Guardian article link in the AntiWoke thread as politicization of a subject.

If you're questioning the contentious aspects of modern history, again, all I can is be as factual and as neutral as possible. And I get it, what's "neutral" to one person may not be "neutral" to another, especially if the people both have a stake in said history. I don't think it's possible to teach history without pissing at least one person off, that isn't to say the effort to be made. If a teacher's doing their job well, they'll present the facts, answer questions as honestly as they can, encourage class discussion, and set assignments that allow numerous points of view to be put forth (cliche example, I know, but the question of the Treaty of Versailles and whether the terms were justified or not).

 

[Silvanus]

I'm sorry, but that comes off as semantics. Your argument seems to be that everything is political, it's just that recent history is more contested than earlier history. Which is a statement that I, and most people would agree with, but you seem to be objecting to the use of "political" rather than "controversial."

Yes, because they mean different things. To say they want to keep controversial topics out of school would expose these people as the dipshits they are, so they instead pretend that controversial = political and uncontroversial = apolitical.

Come on, you're smarter than that, and I've already answered that question in this thread. To reiterate what I've already said near-verbatim, no-one is seriously suggesting that politics be removed from history, that's insane. When people say "keep politics out of the classroom," it's referring to real-world politics influencing it. If you want an example of this, you can check the DeSantis Guardian article link in the AntiWoke thread as politicization of a subject.

If you're questioning the contentious aspects of modern history, again, all I can is be as factual and as neutral as possible. And I get it, what's "neutral" to one person may not be "neutral" to another, especially if the people both have a stake in said history. I don't think it's possible to teach history without pissing at least one person off, that isn't to say the effort to be made. If a teacher's doing their job well, they'll present the facts, answer questions as honestly as they can, encourage class discussion, and set assignments that allow numerous points of view to be put forth (cliche example, I know, but the question of the Treaty of Versailles and whether the terms were justified or not).

This is what teachers are already doing, by-and-large, and political figures such as DeSantis are then trying to impose arbitrary restrictions based on their own views of contentious modern subjects.