Elizabeth Warren's plan to denazify America

How are examples of racist abuses of power counter-examples of racist abuses of power?

6 Likes

It’s pretty simple.

The Federal government that used troupes in Little Rock to fight racist abuse is the same Federal government (granted, under different administrations) that put Japanese American’s in camps and locked up prisoners in Guantanamo.

Edit, wait, sorry. They later are not intended to be counter examples of racist abuse. It was to show that just because the Feds did right once, doesn’t mean they always have or always will. The are meant to be counter examples to Little Rock.

But then they are just two garden-variety examples of authoritarian abuses of power, among thousands of such abuses in human history. No one argues that there are such examples, or even that they don’t represent the vast majority of examples.

You asked for examples of legitimate uses of central power to support minorities. We listed several. There are also examples of local power resisting central abuse (Sanctuary Cities/States are a great example). What American Internment Camps and Gitmo don’t represent are counter-examples.

6 Likes

No, I was being sarcastic.

“Got any other examples of minorities being marched somewhere by armed guards?”

I was hinting that there are pictures that meet that requirement … but are the opposite of examples of supporting minorities.

This:

Was sarcasm?

You might want to check your emitter, because my detector was recently calibrated.

ETA:

Yeah, that didn’t come across well.

5 Likes

No problem. I think you might be using an outdated sarcasm calibration standard SNL 200X-Rx5. NIST has since release the new RnM 2019-VMT standard, which has resulted in a lot of confusion.

The new NIST standard is only supposed to be used with a limited number of emitters, though, and they haven’t released the calibration standards for those, yet. :wink:

4 Likes

That depends on whether the regulators in the Federal Government half-ass it as well. As Mindysan mentioned:

If the regulators actually regulate, then schools won’t be allowed to half-ass it.

5 Likes

Ok, here’s the problem. Or at least potential problem as I see it. Mindy says we should just call it history. Agreed. We have standards for teaching math, science, and language arts now. Those are created at a state level with national and federal input. We can do the same with history. The enforcement of standards for teaching history are not held to the same level as other areas. That can and should be fixed regardless. It may be more contentious and harder to agree on a standard, but any improvement would be welcome.

Now if you are suggesting that if particular elements of history are regulated and enforced at a higher level than math, science, and language arts, then then that’s one thing. Different discussion.

But if history is standardized and regulated the same as other subjects, it’s going to get half assed the same as the others. And not necessarily intentionally. Maybe 80 assed is a better description. Teaches draw up lesson plans and do their best to interpret standards. They sometimes miss something, run out of time in the school year, or focus on areas they find interesting. Teaching is not a homogeneous product for consumption. Now there are scripted programs, but god, those are soul crushing for teachers.

So things get downplayed or missed for math, science, and language arts now. Despite those being regulated. Enforcement is difficult and is generally handled by standardized tests. This isn’t like busing where you can just look at maps and count heads to see if it’s being done. You can maybe create some sort of records program for teachers to log what the taught then audit that. But verification of whether it was actually done or done well is back to testing the kids.

So if you test history, and most of the kids are proficient … but the teacher just didn’t get to the part on race history that year, what do you do? What carrots and sticks do you use to make changes?

My understanding when first reading the article was that a program for teachers to use would be rolled out. Giving them help and instruction materials. Make it easier to teach with or without standards. It would seem that districts and teachers that want to use those materials would be more diligent if they see them as a positive … regardless of any other enforcement policy.

Again, if this is being viewed as requiring a different form of enforcement than teaching other subjects, then yeah, everything I said is kind of irrelevant.

11th-doc-this|nullxnull

We should defer to educators on how to effectively educate people, not government bureaucrats, as I said. Pay teachers better, make the college level curriculum more robust, where they are well-educated not just in education, but in their field of study.

4 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.