What's actually inside the math books that Florida banned?

Apparently then “smart” means well spoken, because there is not a lot to respect in what William F. Buckley actually said.

15 Likes

19 Likes

The conspiracy faction has been around for a while, and Buckley as the polar opposite is a retconn.

13 Likes

Yeah, so SEL is fashionable right now and, like all pedagogical fads, there is this parallel question of whether or not these curricula help kids learn. And if it is a long term effect and which kids, etc. (My older daughter seems to regard it like she does chores.)

4 Likes

How angry will DeSantis be when or if technical universities start rejecting out of hand applicants from Florida public schools because a Florida public school education is seen as inadequate to prepare students for STEM courses?

By that point, of course, DeSantis will have left the Florida governor’s mansion (and hopefully crashed and burned in his attempt at the Presidency.)

2 Likes

I think that is because it is easier to form a coalition against something than to get people to agree on what they are for. This is part of the way the GOP has managed to be competitive despite supporting stuff that a majority of Americans are against.

2 Likes

Pseudo-intellectual at best.

Racist, misogynist asshole using big words strung together to sound smart to justify bigotry. There is a direct line from folks like him to the moder GOP.

11 Likes
2 Likes

I wouldn’t mind if, by the time they made it to college, students had internalized a culture of asking helpful questions and listening with an open mind (especially to their professors). If they also included some instruction on not cheating, that would be great.

4 Likes

Funny, that sounds like an excerpt from the Project Management course I’m doing atm. I guess Project Management is just another of those communist ideas out to undermine the USA.

3 Likes

I’m almost wishing I had chosen to have kids, just so I could raise them to be the complete opposite of how Republicans want. It would certainly give me satisfaction and a purpose in life. Then again, once the many consequences of humanity’s failure arrive over the next few decades, I’ll probably be very glad they weren’t existing to suffer it- if I had raised them right, it would break their hearts even more than my own.

1 Like

Even the superficial intellectualism he affected would be enough for the modern MAGAts to hate him despite (as you note) his sharing their worst views.

Gore Vidal was adept at goading Buckley into dropping the mask and revealing the bigoted, hateful thug underneath. The modern GOP is just too lazy to wear the mask.

5 Likes

Don’t worry. Somewhere in the republican plan, there’s a “separate but equal” school with only African American people in textbooks. Guess who gets bussed there, and what the funding’s like?

2 Likes
6 Likes

Forget that poser Peterson. There is only one lobsterdaddy
GIF by Giphy QA

5 Likes

I was reading up on SEL and I don’t see how banning that would allow even the most basic classroom management. Most classes I’ve been in or taught have a bit at the beginning where we talk about classroom dynamics and discourse to allow productive engagement. The best include a bit where the students and teachers come up with a set of guidelines, usually they end up including respectful discourse, if/how/and when you can use a cell phone or have separate conversations, etc. All that would seem to be disallowed under the current rules banning what they call SEL.
Our poor teachers. :woman_facepalming:t2:

5 Likes

It’s certainly how they’ve formed a loud minority, with that I agree. They’ve weaponized outrage. The way they’ve remained competitive and relevant though is by being lucky that the US political system is so completely broken. The electoral college nonsense, two senators per state, gerrymandering, and other terrible ideas have all landed in their favour. Now they downright cheat by voter suppression and the like. They’re a shrinking minority wielding power only through increasing trickery. Even without that though, the fact that every president (and thus the Supreme Court) is chosen by the same few hundred thousand people in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan is batshit. A rancher in Wyoming has 10000 times more representation than anyone in the city of Los Angeles. Nothing about the system makes sense and it all falls in republicans’ favour. That’s the only reason they and their 20% of nutters still exist.

8 Likes

Well a common complaint from people learning Maths is “when will I ever use this in real life?” So this seems like a good way of counterracting that complaint and maybe getting kids more invested in the subject.

5 Likes

Yep. Learning theory includes the “affective domain,” which is what you need to address to get learners to even care about learning the thing in the first place. Some kids might be motivated by grades alone, but for most, this kind of thing could really help.

5 Likes

Math - Because they don’t want you to!

2 Likes