> Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available
If I was in grade school when this happened, this would have hampered my ability to learn. I was generally reading above the standard level and loved reading in class.
Reading this post just makes me sad. Kids aren't getting the same opportunities I got to nurture my curiosity.
Additionally, the content of the book has to pass rather insane content rules, including banning any description or implication of homosexuality. Wildly, they branded it as 'Parents rights' as in: "If I don't want my kid to read X...NOBODY's should". The outcome is an attempt to whitewash out topics that are inconvenient to the agenda at play to protect the agenda long term.
$5 says it just makes teen pregnancy happen at higher rates btw.
I'm with you in principle, but I worry that this would result in defunding the schools which need the most help: those in the most extremist states willing to accept funding revocation in response to book bans.
Good point. The people imposing the book bans don't seem to care about education in the first place, and more likely than not they have some chip on their shoulder about big government anyway.
> The law requires that all library books selected be:
> 1. Free of pornography and material prohibited under s. 847.012.
s. 847.012. includes...
> (3) A person may not knowingly sell, rent, or loan for monetary consideration to a minor:
> (b) Any book, pamphlet, magazine, printed matter however reproduced, or sound recording that *contains* any matter defined in s. 847.001, ...
s. 847.001 includes numerous definitions (including a rather broad "Sexual content") many of which are devoid of exonerating literary context. I think the implication here is that many popular books like the ASOIAF series, many young adult books that I personally read in high school, and many important classics like 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. that I don't find at all age-inappropriate for a high schooler would all be banned from school libraries. Unless I'm having some grave misunderstanding here Florida has just made it a felony for a high school lit teacher to loan a student a copy of *1984*.
This is absurd puritanical behavior that frankly this makes me frightened for the US.
In this case, it's not merely about taking it out on the smart kids, but rather part of a more general push to label anything that encourages gender nonconformity as 'inappropriate' (regardless of age level).
I 100% guarantee you that this has nothing to do with smart kids like you being unable to read big brain books but rather intentionally vague and loose language being used to curtail what the school administration and parents consider morally objectionable material.
Unfortunately the linked article includes a screenshot of a parent stating that teachers have barred students from bringing their own books/eReaders out of fear for liability.
That's the problem with policy that makes failure at a job function a crime. People will be overly cautious because they don't want to be charged with a felony.
That's not "unfortunate", that's part of the intended purpose. After all, if you let children share books they might let each other know that gay and transgender people exist.
I read it and it seems perfectly fine for teenagers. Go Ask Alice has been something specifically marketed to the same age group for over 50 years and is about a 15-year-old girl being drugged against her will, setting of a spiral off addiction, sex, being raped while on drugs, committing prostitution for drugs, and eventually the death of the protagonist from drug addiction.
Teenagers, yep, remove the porn and its fine for teenagers. A cautionary tale for them that might help them realize people pushing the gender ideology are usually fucked up child abuse survivors who need therapy for the abhorrent crimes that were done to them.
I don't think you've read Go Ask Alice, because your post seems to imply you think Go Ask Alice can serve as a warning about gender. Go Ask Alice is actually an anti-drug book and doesn't really talk about gender at all. They're two very different books and I am only using Go Ask Alice as a comparably sexually graphic book that is in the same intended age range.
Okay, please believe me when I say Go Ask Alice has nothing to do with Gender Queer except they have very similar sexual content and are targeted to similar age ranges. Go Ask Alice has been considered historically appropriate for teenagers for over a generation at this point, and therefore I don't really view Gender Queer's sexual content to be inappropriate for teenagers. If we're giving teenagers books where 15 year olds prostitute themselves for drugs, teenagers can also read books where people have consensual sex.
You are begging the question though. Is there really a problem where masses of Florida teachers are sneaking inappropriate books to young children? Are there dozens of them that won't discuss appropriate reading materials with the parents of their students or their administrators?
Of course there aren't, it's a dumb political stunt chasing a moral panic.
You probably got books from the library then or brought them from home. Which isn't affected by this law from what I can tell. I think I read a book from a "classroom library" like once during school while I was loaning books from our actual library non-stop. Wouldn't have affected me at all.
Nothing's ever been ok in Florida. They do their own thing down there, and we stay far away from the crazyness. Each state is semi-independent with the federal/state separation of powers. It's good for vacation though.
I dunno. As the country bifurcates more and more, I'm thinking long and hard about if I want to travel to certain states. I'd rather as little of my money as possible be spent there.
I don't step in non-constitutional-carry states. The good thing is that, with the exception of basically Florida, there are no states I care to visit that don't already have it. The problem is traveling to those states. I'm temporarily a felon to get there, even though it is my right to keep and bear that handgun nationally. Beats me.
I will not contribute my money to a government that does not allow me my rights, and will also not disarm myself to make myself more of a juicy target just to temporarily sight-see. Not worth it. Plenty of pretty sights to see in the states that aren't ridiculous.
Hmm. Watch Active Self Protection on YouTube, and tell me that again.
You'd be surprised how often people get targeted for no reason / stupid reasons.
Frankly, I find that the people that oppose guns and concealed carry are usually the type that live in nice neighborhoods and make nearly six figures, where the opinion is invalid. So, basically the demographic of Hacker News.
I don't want to come off as a troll, but I honestly believe that a person can do both those things at the same time:
1. Do what you can to make all neighbourhoods better. (Donate to or volunteer at local organizations working to improve neighbourhoods, get to know your neighbours, vote for positive change, join neighbourhood watch, etc.)
2. Do what you can to protect yourself until Step 1 comes to fruition. (Avoid high-risk areas, maintain situational awareness, train in self-defense, carry self-defense tools, etc.)
Lol, one day I was riding my bicycle home, and had to pass through a very poor part of town in which I am a racial minority. My bike got a flat just that moment. Someone took notice of my weakness that I had to stop and fix the flat and that I was obviously not from the neighborhood. They put a gun to my head.
That disabused me of any notion I am never a target.
The US is a big and varied place. One could certainly spend an entire lifetime here and not feel left out of much. And I say this as someone with a meager but existent share of international travel under my belt.
I personally don't feel the desire to visit other countries. If it's not somewhere I'd want to live, it's not somewhere I really care enough about to see. I care more about experiences and knowledge, both of which can be had where I live.
It helps that my state is also comparable in size to larger European countries. And has a pretty dynamic environment. Very mountainous and foresty in the north, planey in the east, red desert to the south, and tan desert to the west. Blazing hot in the summer, and well below freezing in the winter. I still haven't seen the majority of just this state.
Being rather varied in nature, the U.S. is still just one country. It is culturally more diverse than some places, but that's still mostly one culture, one way of living, one way of thinking about things. Since you can't leave, you're confined to it and have no way to experience other cultures.
I guess that does not bother you, but what are your thoughts on this anyway?
There were some books that some segment of voters didn't approve of that certain school libraries were providing. This seems like a backdoor way to stop that while bypassing having to go through controversial school board meetings and/or 1A constitutionality issues to block those books.
Not to say this isn't insane, just explaining how I think it happened.
Am I mistaken in understanding that this “White list” is actually a large collection of white lists, and each district’s librarians curate their district’s list?
Wouldn't that be even worse? A teacher could get a felony for having a book that their neighboring school can read. Hyper local laws being felonies sounds incredibly dangerous. How often are the lists updated and how likely is it for the teacher to be operating on the correct list?
Let's not pretend both parties are equally bad. There is a lot wrong with the Democratic Party, and with the US political system in general, but the Republicans rushing to turn the US into a fascist dystopia. There are degrees of bad, and the GOP is significantly worse at this point.
People forget there are more than one kind of freedom.
Example: I believe states should be small, physically, so their laws are relevant locally. But since several megacountries do exist, I prefer those countries to have "freedom" in the sense where locals can do whatever laws are relevant to them, even if those local laws include censorship or other nonfree things.
Under this definition everything is freedom, you just get to pick your scale. "Freedom" in the sense that a dictator is free to pick whatever laws they feel like that day, even if it includes subjugation and other nonfree things.
Mental health metrics have been declining for adolescents, and things like global warming anxiety and gender dysphoria are increasing in a way that some think is socially mediated and counter productive.
> There were some books that some segment of voters didn't approve of that certain school libraries were providing.
I mean, so? This is small minority of people we're talking about. Why do they get veto power over everything present in the classroom? It's the teachers' job to teach the kids, manage/provision the classroom, etc.
To be clear, this isn't democracy, it's republicanism. Laws get passed in republicanism all the time that the majority of the people don't agree with, because their representatives aren't actually representing their interests.
If the government doesn't have the assent of the people is it not illegitimate? I thought the whole presumption under our system was the representatives have the assent of the majority.
I think it is because their state's congressman they think is acting in their interest, while the other states' congressman are not. And they're not wrong...
Personally I also find it bizarre system where the majority vote of the other 49 states tells your state what to do, under federal law, particularly in wholly intrastate matters.
A lot of federal-law-telling-states-what-to-do is not tied to criminal punishment, but rather financial punishment. Federal taxation basically permits the US government the first share of our income. The US government then chooses to redistribute large chunks of money back to the state government, but only as long as it plays by the rules. So states can either play by the rules, or have to make up that money by essentially double-taxing their residents.
I'm sure states would love to just take that money in directly, but the federal government gets first dibs and states complete with each other on the remaining taxation. For instance, Florida is not just a popular retirement spot for the weather -- it also has zero income tax and a property tax with capped year-over-year growth.
"Congressional approval rating" is a dumb and misleading stat and I hate that it's reported on so much, especially in contexts like comparing to to e.g. the President's approval rating.
Maybe you love your representative and Senator(s) but your party is in the minority. So, you don't approve of Congress.
Maybe ditto on the liking your reps, but Congress is always doing really stupid shit even when your side's in charge (like the goddamn own-goal "debt ceiling" bullshit) simply because they can't rally enough support to make that junk stop, so you don't approve of Congress. Or maybe your side controls both houses and the Presidency but still can't do jack-shit because of Senate rules, or because some other Senator or two (not yours) in your preferred party like playing both sides to advance their state's interests at the expense of everyone else—so you don't approve of Congress.
Maybe you like your reps and your side is in charge but you've really taken anti-politician stand-up jokes to heart, or follow media that highlights and exaggerates all the stuff you hate about reps on the "other side" even when yours is in charge, so you tick the "disapprove" box.
To make an extreme example, let's say that 99 senators are great and everyone loves them, but 1 senator is terrible and the rules of the Senate happen to allow filibusters. You could have a situation as a result where 98-99% of people approve of their senator, but a small minority approves of the overall output of the Senate.
If you can get your population to believe that the other choices are literally demons trying to condemn them to hell, it's an easy fear based decision for uneducated voters.
There are plenty of people in the US that will agree that the current federal government is almost entirely illegitimate. That majority of things our government currently does are not powers granted to it in the Constitution.
There is a massive corrupting temptation of corporate money for all members of congress. We might elect somebody that we believe will represent us but ultimately they are swooned by the siren song of fat sacks of cash. However, I think more often than not, the people that get elected spent the most money on their campaign. The majority of money spent of campaigns comes from contributions that we are supposed to believe don't buy influence.
Whatever you feel about Matt Gaetz, his interview with Tim Pool illustrates the corporate influence issue we are up against.
Republicans are generally much more moderate in their personal ideologies than what their representatives do. But it doesn't matter because they still vote them back into office no matter what.
Because then you would realize the whole charade about the social contract and consent to be governed under the law all falls apart and there is nothing left but whether you decide to defend against the violence of enforcement.
> This is small minority of people we're talking about.
This group of people you are talking about are well organized to take action on anything that aggrieved them. It just so happens that they are aggrieved by anything that isn't explicitly what they believe. Instead of accepting that some may not agree with you, they believe that anyone not in agreement is wrong and must be stopped at every turn.
Conflating Spain with events in another European country, as if the EU (of which Ukraine isn't even part of) were comparable to the United States, is ridiculous. You clearly have no grasp of history or geography, let alone modern politics.
No, your point is that lumping New York and Florida together is comparable to lumping Spain and Latvia together. That is definitely not the case. Completely different histories, languages, and governing structures.
Came here to say pretty much this. Conflating two states in a nation with two different nations in the EU isn’t exactly the best way to say “everything is ok here”.
Analogies are often terrible because they just shift the conversation to identifying the differences and similarities in the two sides of the analogy and arguing about their relevance or lack thereof. That may lead somewhere eventually, but probably not, and certainly not efficiently.
A good analogy illustrates a different way of viewing something that not all readers might have considered, rather than simply asserting that two things are equivalent in the given context.
Edit: Also, I am American, so I hope you can curb your European-focused hatred when reading my comment.
I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good things and this doesn't seem to be a repeated habit, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and recalibrate, we'd appreciate it.
We have an big propaganda issue that is being exploited by our national enemy's (I'm talking about you Russia). All this stuff that upsets our stable society is only good for our enemies. Nobody should care of what other people are reading, unless it poses a threat to our society. Talk about shouting fire in a theater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_warfare "Russian interference in foreign elections Russian interference in foreign elections, most notably the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, has been described as information warfare."
Read as written, it seems like the parent is saying that things like this (felony for providing a child anything but whitelisted books) destabilize the society they occur in, and bad national actors exploit and encourage that instability. Not that Russia directly induced this law.
I just don't get the link to these idiotic policies put into place in places like Florida. Is Russia using Facebook or something to make people there believe dumb shit?
I think it's a subtle form of white nationalism and American exceptionalism when you pretend that the most racist, backwards, destructive, Country on Earth couldn't have come up with every single one of these policies all on their own
Florida gets a bad rap. Their Sunshine Law[0] has them voluntarily offering their dirty laundry to the public to keep themselves accountable. Only an ignorant or a jealous fool would call that a bad thing. You have to truly be living in 1984 to want your government to hide more things from you.
1) Small time offenders should probably be given the same dignity and privacy as other people. There's no reason to believe allowing people to turn a police blotter into weekly entertainment is a positive thing.
2) This is about the state government doing things. Florida's different criminal disclosure laws have no relevance here. Florida is fucky because florida's state government is run by a narcissist who wishes he was a dictator.
I am very much against this law but I think "present in school" is much different than "curated."
I couldn't give a shit if kids were bringing Anarchist Cookbook and images of the tortures at Abu Dhabi prison to school. What the kid and his family obtain on their own through private means and choose to read in a public venue like a school IMO is none of my business.
If the teachers are curating books that disproportionately pushes certain non-academic agendas, though, then maybe the parents ought to have the right to guide the employment of that teacher to make sure it follows the desires of the voters. Criminal charges are insane though.
What you're describing very much isn't happening, though. These books indeed were merely "present in school" on a book shelf. Nobody's being indoctrinated into practical terrorism in Florida schools by being forced to read the Anarchist's Cookbook or anything like that.
If the books in the school library just appear there with no influence by the school staff in charge of the libraries then I guess we can just fire the library staff. Then there's no one there to risk a felony. I didn't realize it was completely non-curated and unmanaged in Florida.
Are they completely non-curated? Kids just put whatever book they want there? If so I'd say the teacher isn't liable for what happens. If the teachers put the books or manages which books are there they are curated and that activity can be managed by the people paying the teacher, ie the taxpayers/representatives.
> and that activity can be managed by the people paying the teacher, ie the taxpayers/representatives
In this case, Florida has decided to manage that activity by making it a felony to merely happen to have a book on the shelf that's not on the pre-approved list.
There's also the fact that you're selecting for some of the worst teachers by confining them to curriculum and harshly punishing deviation or expansion. The best teachers are good precisely because they do those things, and if you take that away it's not the same job anymore—they're just reading a script and serving as a mouthpiece for the state rather than serving the students the best they can. That's not what they signed up for. They'll leave.
Check teacher forums, this kind of over-management and micro-management are major reasons for discontent in the job, and one of several factors pushing good teachers out of teaching.
They know that the second they name any specific books that were actually present in classrooms, we'll all realize how ridiculous the outrage over such innocuous books actually is.
This is a motte-and-bailey fallacy [0], using the (easy to defend) argument "we shouldn't give obscene material to 8-year-olds" to justify the (indefensible) argument that "no material that any parents find ideologically reprehensible should be made available to any children through the school system".
Note that nobody in this thread defending the policy has been able to name any of these porn books that have been given to children, and that none of them attempt to defend the ramifications of the policy as implemented.
(Posted elsewhere in the discussion, but that ended up being on a dead thread)
There is a strong movement afoot to define any material teaching about
1) consent (whether it mentions sex or not)
2) the child's own body (in ways designed to help them recognize and avoid things like sexual abuse)
3) queer issues of any kind, but especially trans issues
as pornographic, regardless of the actual content, so that they can ban it and claim they're saving the poor children from horrible, horrible sexual material.
This is not a new movement; conservatives have been trying to ban queer people from any kind of public visibility for decades by claiming that their very existence is sexual, ignoring the fact that heterosexual romance and sex is being shoved into our faces constantly, often in far more blatant ways, and often in media explicitly aimed at children. They're merely redoubling their efforts now that it's becoming clear that society at large is starting to genuinely accept trans people, which they cannot abide.
Remember that the conservative take for decades was "if we allow gays to marry, what's next, allowing dogs to get married? Or people to marry kids?"
Conservatives have been pushing to make being gay or trans or queer in any way to be morally equivalent or at least directly leading to pedophilia forever.
...And while I honestly never would have believed it a decade ago, it's becoming increasingly and horrifyingly clear just how much of that is naked projection. So much has come out recently about their complicity in both committing and covering up child sexual abuse, and yet due to the prevalence of Fox News and the advent of the "post-truth era", their base—who supposedly cares very deeply about that sort of thing—simply waves it off as at best a left-wing smear campaign, and at worst, well, one or two of them may have done some stuff, but that's nothing compared to Pizzagate, right??!
The reason for this is that a lot of the base has a "Strong man" centric world view, where a good thing is a thing done by a "good" person, meaning a good person can do no wrong and a bad person can do no right, while everything a "good" person does is by definition good.
This means that the people they follow and support can do an identical action to someone they hate, but the liked person does a good thing and the hated person does a bad thing in their eyes.
Take for example, epstein. Both Bill Clinton and Trump (among a hundred others) were clearly and publicly acquaintances of Epstein, however, to conservatives, clinton is a pedophile and trump is innocent.
Most cases defending basic freedoms involve reprehensible facts. In the US, Miranda was a burglar. Clarence Brandenburg was a KKK leader. Paul Cohen wore a t-shirt reading "FUCK THE DRAFT" at a time when such words weren't part of polite public discourse.
The only thing worse than a law against your definition of "bad" content is a law against your definition of "good" content. But that's what will be next if this law moves the Overton window.
Which is why it's dangerous to focus on the actual content being regulated. Be upset that content -- any content -- is being regulated, because the US Bill of Rights is supposed to prohibit such laws. In a free country, there shouldn't be laws controlling what people say to each other.
This isn't about Governor approval. This was approved by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. Not a mandate by them.
The context of all of this is teachers putting books in front of kids that their parents don't approve of.
I'm not in Florida but I'll give you a local example to me that's come under debate. A book with sexually explicit material was recently pulled from an elementary school. Kids 10-ish and under. sex education doesn't come until the end of elementary school. If I understand it right, this was not an education book.
There is debate over whether this should be in the school and there are parents, politicians, and teachers on both sides of this.
What got Florida to this point is worth exploring and discussing. No matter what side you're on.
> I'm not in Florida but I'll give you a local example to me that's come under debate. A book with sexually explicit material was recently pulled from an elementary school.
What book was it?
I ask because the first real science fiction book that I ever read, that inspired a life-long love for the genre, and which I read under the age of ten, was Rendezvous With Rama, which did contain a sex scene. And the presence of said sex scene didn't traumatize me or anything; I mostly just didn't understand it. Certainly not worth preventing me from having access to that book in its entirety over!
Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the book. It was one I was not familiar with.
The discussion noted that the book discussed using "toys". They also noted that there was an add for buying sex toys as part of the book. These are elements that really caught my attention.
I have a hard time seeing most parents in the US being ok with this material being put in front of kids who are 5-10 years old.
“I don’t really recall but it was some terrible thing like giving sex toys to kids but I don’t remember really. I can definitely see why they’re doing this though!”
So what you're saying is, rather than have actual data or even a single concrete anecdote, you're happy just passing along word-of-mouth gossip when we already know that the people pushing for these laws are happy outright lying about their intent.
The thing about anecdotes about schools is that you actually can find examples of a lot of bad behavior—because there are lots and lots of schools and lots and lots of teachers and sometimes those teachers are malicious or are catastrophically stupid, just like any other group of people that large.
But when you dig a little farther most of that stuff's usually handled just fine at the school or district level. There's very little justification for involving state or even county level government in addressing things like inappropriate lessons or content, because they do happen but are not an actual systemic problem because they're already dealt with by the existing, very-local systems.
Popular science magazine has it's back several pages full of ads for sketchy dick pills, "romantic couple" porn videos, and other sex services. My mother got really upset but I just wanted to read about the B2 bomber so she pretty quickly realized that it was a non-issue.
The hilarious part is that young teens will find pretty much anything arousing anyway. When I was that age, one of the books in the Ender's Game series involved a weird scene where someone attempts to essentially seduce Ender. You can bet I re-read that scene a hundred times. Or a scene in a harry potter book where a couple young teens talk about making out.
If you want to prevent any "sexualization" content from reaching your young readers, you pretty much have to limit them to Go Dog Go.
There are almost zero teachers on the side of this, and the parents who favor censorship are in the extreme minority, whipped into a frenzy by cynical politicians in a country whose media and political system is clearly broken.
If there was really widespread agreement that the book did not belong in the library, then it wouldn't have been there in the first place. What these laws do is enable tiny vocal minorities to wield censorship powers.
There isn't widespread agreement. That's how we got here. Parents are disagreeing with teachers as to what material they want in front of their kids.
The book I referred to earlier described using sex toys and had an add to get them. This is in a library for kids aged 5-10ish. People were arguing in support of the book being in that library.
What's the example book? I doubt it's as black-and-white as you're making it sound. There are plenty of books with "sexually explicit material"* in them that are appropriate for children.
* e.g. the book my mom made me read about how our bodies change during puberty.
While I'm sure at national scale it's fully possible to dredge up OH NO VERY SCARY EXAMPLES,
the overwhelming impetus and application of laws like this is to prevent religious autocratic conservative parents' kids from learning the actual nature of the secular (i.e real) humanist world,
most typically through canon and contemporary literature which does its job: illuminating the human condition, and the hypocrisy venality ignorance brutality and rigidity of people exactly like those who oppose such illumination.
Been telling my friends who e.g. foolishly moved to Austin or Florida chasing the "nest Silicon Valley": if you intend to, or have, kids, GTFO now. The descent of Texas and Florida into autocratic christofascism continues and raising a child, especially a young woman, there, would be actual hell
A lot of people are under the impression that public schools are a disaster in this country unless you're in a high performing school district. Either buy an expensive house or try to make enough money to send your kids to private school. So, no, public schools are not okay here, regardless of your view on this law.
Instead of taking property tax money, pooling it, then evenly dividing it across a state. The way most states are designed is that property tax is given to the local school district, meaning that areas with cheaper homes get less money than areas with more expensive homes. This is made worse by demographic problems associated with poverty which makes teaching poor kids more expensive than rich (e.g. ESL, food poverty, unstable households, behavioral issues, untreated mental health problems, etc).
There're three tiers: Private education, rich area public, and poor area public education.
The money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem.
Actually fixing US schools amounts to "fix (or significantly mitigate) the US poverty-cycle problem", unfortunately. Unfortunate because if just funding poor schools like rich schools (Nb sometimes those funding levels are the opposite of what you'd expect, though—there are state and federal programs to funnel money to really, really bad schools) then it'd be straightforward and (relatively!) cheap to fix. The actual causes are more complex and would require far more "political will", as they say, plus a lot more money, to fix.
> The money's a very small part of the problem. Failing schools have huge piles of money thrown at them all the time, and it doesn't help like one might think it would if that were the main problem.
I disagree. When poorer areas have worse student:teacher ratios while paying teachers less, and giving them the most challenging students, it is absolutely about the money.
Even if teachers are willing to take on a bigger challenge, we're also asking them to take a pay cut to do so which isn't reasonable.
Our very worst local district pays far more than the rich suburban districts and has for many, many years. The schools remain hair-raisingly dangerous and totally ineffective at their jobs. They are also terribly dysfunctional at this point, but that's an outcome of being given an impossible task—fix that completely and they'll just become dysfunctional again after a while.
We can and should fix the money issue, but it's barely gonna move the needle on outcomes. I wish it would because, again, that's a pretty simple fix in the scheme of things, but it won't. The causes are much deeper and would be much harder to address.
No. Lot's of money is sent to the school district where it then gets squandared into sports fields and administrator pay while the district cries to teachers that it doesn't have enough money to pay them more. Anyone thinking teachers are actually getting the money from these "funding increases" apparently doesn't know who is in control of that money. It's not teachers.
The topic was leveling out district funding, not paying teachers more. Leveling out district funding might help a little, but it's not the main cause of bad schools/districts. Paying teachers more might help, but would also not do much for the worst districts. Those bad schools and districts are, to a large degree, merely symptoms of larger societal problems that schools aren't equipped, empowered, or intended to address.
The problems are in how our economy is structured, how our social safety net is scoped, funded, and arranged, how fallout from various racist older systems have affected the current state of the country, the justice system, and probably in certain socialized behaviors or attitudes (which are all tied up in those other things, anyway). You cannot turn a terrible district in a very bad part of the city, or awful, poor rural school districts, into good districts just by giving them more money, no matter what they spend the money on (unless you put the schools in charge of sweeping social reform programs, I guess, but I don't think anyone's proposing that and it's probably not the best way to administer such things).
The kids and the parents have problems the schools can't fix, and those affect school life in ways that put a ceiling on how well the schools can do, no matter how good the schools per se are. The main reason some districts or schools are better than others has more to do with selection bias than funding—schools with easy-to-teach kids do well, schools with hard-to-teach kids don't, and the reasons some kids are in one of those categories and others are in the other mostly aren't within the scope of what schools can fix, period.
Rich districts aren't good mainly because they have more money on account of high house prices, but because high house prices and (sometimes) other circumstances (car dependency, commute range) select for kids with stable, comfortable home lives, parents who value education and are themselves educated, and little criminality or blatantly anti-social behavior in (at least) their immediate family & friend circle—because absence of those qualities in home-life tend to correlate with poverty, so, with not being able to afford to move to districts with expensive housing. The house prices are an important part of the reason, but not (mainly) because they enable higher tax revenues.
Can I correctly surmise that you're Canadian? If so, your leader declared a national emergency to squash free speech, banished handguns so you can no longer protect yourself, and cut off political opponents from the financial system. Trying to control the books children can view in an educational environment seems trivial by comparison.
Not that Canadian authoritarianism makes this FL issue any less ridiculous, but since you brought it up, I am kind of amazed that no one in a "modern democracy" (what I thought Canada was aiming for) had any problem with the alarming weaponization of the financial system against anyone who even donated to the trucker protests. In my mind, it was somewhat equivalent to a Republican-controlled US government freezing the bank accounts of anyone who donated to Planned Parenthood and then was protesting the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade. It was an alarming abandonment by Trudeau's government of the principles that I would've assumed they were trying to uphold.
> Republican-controlled US government freezing the bank accounts of anyone who donated to Planned Parenthood
I'm not familiar with this. Searches yield articles about freezing of Planned Parenthood funding. Could you point me in the right direction for more details?
"banished handguns so you can no longer protect yourself..."
I think this view has been quite comprehensively debunked by now. I for one do not want to live in a country where most people have access to handguns.
2A was intended to allow the populace to keep government in check. In the age of muskets that was probably good thinking, but try that now and see what happens.
It really does look truly weird from out here. I mean, I'm living in the UK, where some seriously bad shit is going down, but even given all o that, stuff in the US looks pretty dark...!
Looking across the pond I see people being arrested for mean tweets and memes.
Seems rather further dystopian than a state mandating their public tax funded schools keep content neutral around divide topics - allowing parents to make their decisions.
Politicization of schooling, particularly party-political school board elections, is setting up conflict between teachers (who are seen as a natural liberal constituency) and some people who seem to have drunk particularly deeply of the anti-woke koolade.
Canada literally suspended its entire charter and its constitutional rights not even a year ago. But I guess we really like to sneer at the americans and project while looking the other way or coming up with excuses when we do much worse. The inferiority complex here in canada would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
Why do you think the majority of Floridians are OK with this? Does it matter to American politicians that the majority of Americans are in favor of access to abortions? The noisy people and PACs who donate to campaigns are against it and that's all that matters.
Conceptually, if the government defines the teaching, at what point do the people run the government and at what point does the government run the people?
Also, politics in America are way more messy than that. The choice becomes "People you agree 50% with or people you agree 20% with?". I would bet that if this were put to a statewide vote, it would not pass.
The community/voters define the government and the government defines the teaching.
Which entity is more in touch with the wants and needs of Florida voters: Florida's state and local governments or the federal government in Washington?
The hiring of teachers is approved by community elected school boards.
FL laws take that power from communities and puts it in State level hands. Your point is upside-down and tries to paint heavy handed big-government rules as better in fact.
Also who said anything about DC? The point was about letting teachers, parents, and yes, minors; make choices for kids. This is whitewashing extremist beliefs over communities that very well may disagree, exactly what you imply this protects lol.
I am not familiar with them being well known for lies or fraud. Showing actual video seems like a way to avoid that. The videos seem to speak for themselves. Even if taken out of context it looks reaaaally bad.
Which for some, (like me), is ludicrous. My own take is that children learn best (or for some, learn at all) when their interest in something is piqued or they are inspired by a teacher. (I only did homework for teachers I liked throughout my time in elementary and high school.) I claim most of what we learn in school is completely irrelevant to our lives anyway (with a clear exception of learning to read at all). My wife rose to an executive position in a big company without knowing her 'times tables'. "Teaching the curriculum" also leads to the textbooks that came into use after the "No child left behind" legislation. When I read them, I was simultaneously outraged and wanted to cry at (a) how dry they were (b) how memorization-focused they were (c) (for Euclidian Geometry) how much wrong information they contained.
With billions of books in the world, having a very short white list of books means the chances of a teacher suggesting a book that would inspire a particular kid plummets. We get a little closer to Farenheit 451 every passing day.
> interest in something is piqued or they are inspired by a teacher
Don't you see how this is a direct example of teachers having outsized influence on students, and how they shouldn't be allowed to 'teach' them whatever the please?
People put education on some kind of pedestal. Like it's a magical place of discovery. No, it's to provide basic literacy and math skills to the poor so they can function in society.
Perhaps. She did know how to use a calculator, and generally she does better at arithmetic things than I do (balancing the checkbook, eg.) because she knows she's not good, whereas I know I'm good, so I'm more careless. Also, math wasn't and isn't important in many jobs, including hers. So "explains a lot of the problems this country is in" isn't the stunning argument for your side you may believe it to be. No offense intended.
I’m not going to suggest it’s a good idea, but I know when math books became a topic it was supposedly because some type of political stuff was being included in the problems. Haven’t followed it closely but I do remember hearing that.
There's nothing called "CRT" being taught to grade school kids. Teaching math using statistical examples from the Implicit Association Test is problematic how?
If you think math problem context drives social change then you are going to have to go find me data on people suddenly buying 37 watermelons at a time after math problems we got in the early 2000s
The implicit association test has large numbers of critics. Presenting it as as true as mathematics is disingenuous. In fact, it is a silly idea to link any psychological study to mathematics, as psych studies are notoriously un-replicatable. Better to stick to hard sciences like physics, chem, or biology, or at least well-replicated social studies. But presenting something controversial in line with mathematical facts is not a good idea.
If very limited references to the fact that racism even exists are "political", then you're getting pretty close to that joke: "What sexual orientation are you, straight, or political?"
There's actually a very simple argument: The existing system has been used as a workaround by activists to defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught to students. Keeping the books out of the library is the best practical method of stopping this, because directly controlling the contents of the curriculum is hard to enforce.
That argument may or may not be true in this particular case, but it's not some impossible thing that can't ever have a good reason behind it.
Edit: Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries. Schools make content-based decisions about what's appropriate for students all the time.
> The existing system has been used as a workaround by activists to defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught to students.
And who determines, with which justification, what should be taught to students? Teaching science and facts should never be something controversial, and I'd expect teachers to be able (and allowed to) make that decision - they know the children under their responsibility the best, not politicians.
> Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries.
What's the actual meaningful distinction here? Both are publicly funded, that students/kid can choose to go to and browse books in (but rarely do). It's not like kids are banned from public libraries.
For one thing, adults are typically not allowed into school libraries during school hours. It's much easier to keep books away from parents interested in knowing what their kids are reading in a school library than a public one, where parents are more likely to be with their child.
But either way, governments cannot stop you from speaking. However, no government office, neither a school library nor a general public one, is or ought to be required to carry your speech.
> However, no government office, neither a school library nor a general public one, is or ought to be required to carry your speech.
That's the opposite of what's actually going on here, though. What's going on is that speech is being prohibited, not that it's being forced to be allowed.
Translation: The above comment is REALLY mad that kids can learn about the existence of gay people or about how sex and STDs are spread and they feel the need to ensure kids are not told about this topic and that teachers get jail time for mentioning it.
Make no mistake, schools make choices all the time. This decision align those choices to far more insane rules by..guess what...an activist government instead.
A great example of this is John Green's Looking For Alaska. It has a sex scene that is objectively banned by this law.
That very sex scene is an example of why sex should not be the primary goal of a relationship (it goes poorly) and is directly contrasted with a moment of actual love in the very next chapter as an example of how sex is not the most valuable thing about a relationship.
It is a scapegoat for politicians and angry...activist...PTA members to simplify the topic "This book has a charater giving a BLOW JOB!!! My 16 year old is asked to READ IT?! These teachers and librarians are sick!" NOBODY's KID SHOULD READ IT.
Might I add, almost EVERY school keeps a list of alternative books and gives parents the option to opt out.
It's Gay marriage and descriptions of sex today, Alan Turing today cannot be fully explained in a book.
Maybe tomorrow it will be Hitler. "It is too violent of a topic and parents should have the right to keep their kids from reading left-wing details like the holocaust."
That's a good steel man argument, thanks for articulating it. The irony is, they are solving "activists who defacto teach things that shouldn't be taught" by themselves becoming "activists who ban things from being taught". Opposite side of the same coin.
What would be the other end? At both extremes there is content that more centrist sides disapprove. Should either of the ends be allowed? Or should it swap around as either side gains power in politics?
Let me be clear that I do not agree at all, in any way with this argument, I'm just answering your question as to what the opinion of people who like this think.
There are books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers. Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal? Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults. The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
A lot of people replying to this skipped over part of this comment.
I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS ARGUMENT. I AM JUST PUTTING IT HERE TO ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!!
I'm not completely sure that everyone making this argument actually believes it. Presumably there are some who do, but I suspect there's a large portion of people who are looking for a way to selectively fire teachers they don't like. Certainly there are politicians who benefit from stoking outrage, and supporters who enjoy boasting of their commitment to their cause by taking an extreme position on a culture war issue.
It's unfortunate that Hacker News doesn't support bold text. I would have bolded it if I could - it seems like a lot of people replying to me completely missed that I don't actually agree with any of these arguments, and am just telling people arguments that those on the other side make.
My eyes also fell directly to your second paragraph and I immediately thought you should step away from the compiler and experience the world if you really believe this. It’s because you wrote it like you were making the argument and there was no separation between yourself in the context it was written.
Because having sex before you are 18 is quite normal? It is odd to pretend otherwise, but 16 for example is quite an usual age, at least here in Europe. I doubt it is actually different in the US.
> Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal?
It is normal. Teenagers have sex all of the time, and to ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen is dangerous.
> Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults.
Yes, they should. How else do they become functional adults? They need to learn so they can make the right choices when it comes to sex, whether that's abstinence, birth control, etc.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
Yikes. So you're saying people who teach sex ed are "groomers"? If I give my kid a "birds and the bees" book when she's a teenager or younger, I'm a "groomer"? I'm getting the feeling that this is just more right-wing projection.
> Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal?
Having some form of sexual interaction with peers certainly isn't universal but it is well within "normal" for teenagers. The mechanisms of our legal system require us to treat majority as a binary state that people just switch on one day at age 18, but actual development doesn't work like that in any way.
If you enforce on actual people the legal fiction that no one under 18 has ever encountered sexual material in the world or in their own mind, you're creating all sorts of vulnerabilities for them when they do reach 18 and have minimal awareness of their own boundaries, right to have them, and practice enforcing them.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
"Groomers" is very commonly used in this context as a homophoblic slur, conflating queer people with child abuse and pedophilia. If that's not your intention I suggest you don't use it in this way in conversations like this. Grooming is certainly a very serious form of child abuse. Coincidentally I'm sure, depictions of it are also banned by this restriction on books. You are not going to help youths realize they are in this situation if you prevent them from ever engaging with the stories of others who have been.
Most people in the world are sexually active before 18. Your teenage years are you prime years of curiosity. Now, yes, they shouldn't be engaging in sexual activities with older, more mature people. But there's zero problem in late teens just being teens and discovering themselves. The more information they have on how to do that safely, the better. This law (and your puritan line of thinking) does the exact opposite. Expect to see a rise in teenage STDs and pregnancy.
Yeah. It's rather important to be able to tell the difference between educational books about sex, normal, healthy sexual relationships, and porn. I can understand banning porn that encourages unrealistic expectations from sex (which is a problem), and the other two. If you ban the other two, you can bet children will learn about sex from porn.
Or not at all and be really surprised when they get pregnant.
> Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal?
It is normal. Actually, it's more normal than having sex for the first time after the age of 18, statistically speaking; while the average age of virginity loss in the US has gradually increased over time, it's still at something like 17.
Here's the thing: The argument you have articulated there, whether you agree with it or not, is not actually what is being argued (or at least is not all that is being argued).
It's not actually primarily "books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers" that are being challenged by this. It's books talking about the existence of gay, trans, and other queer people as something other than a horrible sin or a mental defect.
If it were just what you say, then yes, that would still be wrong, and stupid...but what it is, in fact, is wrong, stupid, and horrendously bigoted.
The problem with some of these books is that they normalise horrendous practices, e.g. extreme sex acts like anal fisting, or extreme body modifications like young girls having their breasts amputated because they have a false belief that they are boys.
The books that just talk about standard sex education and give an overview of sexuality aren't a problem. It's these other ones that attempt to push the boundaries to their extremes, that parents and teachers are pushing back on.
So you think being trans is fake and comparable with anal fisting. Cool cool. That means you are precisely one of the people I described, trying to ban books about the existence of gay, trans, and other queer people.
I guarantee you there aren't more than 1 or 2 parents or teachers in the entire country (possibly not even that many, but there's always some nutcase somewhere) who genuinely think that having books on anal fisting available to elementary schoolers is a good thing.
Books on being trans aren't remotely comparable. And, just as an aside, if someone realizes they're trans before they go any significant amount through puberty, they can take very safe hormone treatments in order to ensure they never have to have more expensive and potentially traumatic surgery to present as their true gender.
Unlike books on sexuality, many of these pro-trans books normalise irreversible bodily modifications and present this as if it's a positive thing.
If mature adults want to take wrong-sex hormones, get bits chopped off and turned inside out, and so on, after a long period of consultation and contemplation, then that's acceptable, if that's what they truly need.
But showing this stuff to kids, as if it's a normal option? No way. This is child abuse.
It's also completely unlike being gay, lesbian or bisexual, where no bodily changes whatsoever are encouraged or needed. Also there's no identifying as something you're not, into groups where you don't belong, i.e. so many males thinking it's their right to barge into as many female-only spaces as possible. Really the T is nothing like the LGB at all, it's just that activists use the latter as a shield against criticism of the absurd and abusive demands they're making.
It didn't used to be a law, so clearly something has happened that made this idea popular enough to be passed into law.
I guess teachers thought that because they have access to other people's children, they're allowed to put whatever ideas into their heads that they please. Those days are coming to a close.
It's mandatory state/public education, so the curriculum is legislated and kids are forced to be there, and to start, we have a captive audience. The subject legislation was in response to some arguably extreme cases where there is a concerted effort to distribute lgbtq pornography to kids as a way to use critical theories to shift social norms around sexuality, but uniquely using intersectionality - a recognized political pressure technique to do so. It doesn't work on the majority of adults who see it for what it is, and so its proponents have moved upstream and turned to using the tactic directly on children where they will not encounter resistance to the change they seek to make.
There is little argument that the teachers and advocates for these materials in elementary schools have a stated desire to abolish the civilization these children would otherwise grow up to inherit and become stewards of. Call it what you will, all the words are artifacts of the same basic critical theory and premises ('ist, 'phobic, anti-' etc.) that form a whole new language one either speaks and thinks in, or does not. It's designed to alienate and atomize people so as to manage and extract value from the conflicts you as an activist create. Those words are threats it uses to protect the real underlying ideology from rational scrutiny. From an educational perspective, this is not the drawing out and developing of childrens minds, but rather the funneling and shaping them as an openly stated means to create young activists intent on demolishing the pillars of social stability from which all social growth and progress has emerged.
Instead of having kids and raising them the way religion-based societies and cultures do, mormons, muslims, hindus, christians, etc. and being the change, these activists are leveraging the mandates of the education system to undermine the society they wish to upend. A key front in this is teaching intersectionality, where your beliefs become immutable identities under the umbrella of a system of infinitely regressing subjectivity and criticism instead of deriving a free and independent identity from experience and competence. I'm not going to relitigate intersectionality on this thread other than to say it was invented and not discovered, and all of its proponents' arguments reduce to "everything is made of words, words have no fixed meaning, so nothing has fixed meaning, therefore - all things meaning nothing - my belief is equivalent to your experience, there is only struggle for power, and if you disagree, you are my antagonist." It's nihilism all the way down. They imagine themselves engaged in a kind of science by picking random disciplines and testing them to dissolve in their solipsisms.
To do this, some activists are using pornography as a vehicle to inject this critical narrative into the sexual developent of school children, and adulterate these kids' sense of truth and reality by claiming the new concepts in the minds of children as they begin to apprehend them, with words and narrative that subordinates them to the system of criticism the activists are militating for, and with the neutralizing uncertainties of their theory. Florida's legislature has reacted to it by requiring scrutiny of what goes into those schools.
That is a charitable case for Florida's reaction. I can't defend individuals actuated by deeply held hatreds, or who this view might have something in common with, but if we are going to learn about why someone would go so far as to ban this material, it's important to do so with tools that are not merely the artifacts of the hall of mirrors critical theory solipsisms this virus is using to fillibuster, disrupt, harass, and delay rational discussion about it.
There isn't a bland news source that covers the stories of parents reading the explicit content out loud from books at their kids' schools at school board meetings, but it is common enough that Florida responded to it with legislation. If you would like to track down the stories that made the legislation viable, those instances are where I would recommend starting. The most recent example in the news was from a controversy in California about the governor's wife's charity being used to distribute similar material through the school system.
Toward quality discussion, the culture war issue over this isn't just about provincials banning books and how it's a symbolic faux pas, there are very real networks and NGOs coordinating to spread this specific ideology as a means to destablize societies so as to coopt and dominate them, using a really old playbook, and the tools themselves are the conflict and outrage itself, not the details of what those are about. The Florida legislation isn't just a sop to a reactionary base, it's strategic by people who have just begun to fight something they recognize as much worse. When you stop seeing your opponents as merely ignorant and realize they're being as smart and strategic as you are, it's a very different perspective.
For background, I would read Arendt and Solzhenitsyn who saw it first hand, and as a foundation for what current writers like Mattias Desmet, and in a more accessibly popular sense James Lindsay have been writing about with significant depth. All of them write about how popular movements with good and sincere intentions are co-opted and used as vassals for one much more dangerous movement.
Or, to put it in other words, all you can offer is more rumormongering and fearmongering bullshit that isn't even correct about what actually happened: a single teacher once accidentally showed the wrong version of the educational film The Mask You Live In [1] to 12-year-olds in 2019, which accidentally exposed to them to a few more minutes of knowing that blurred-out pornography exists, and a single parent complained, and then nobody else but the right wing hate-o-sphere ever cared again.
To be clear, I offered a concievable and logical rationale for the Florida legislation that was based on summaries of the ideas that moved the people and legislators to implement it. The intent was ideally someone should be able to respond to it with something smarter.
There are more instances than the one this comment references.
However, I will elaborate further on the ideas of Arendt and Desmet that the object of the overarching movement is to make sure that individuals believe and trust nothing, even their own senses, because it will prevent them from resisting the small cadre of people who have historically followed these tactics with violence and terror to subordinate populations. The root of all social "theory," is to produce intellectually stultifying gibberish engines. It's chaff. Their jargon is designed to cost you time, create uncertainty, and "neutralize" you so that the sufficient condition of good men doing nothing is met.
The charitable rationale for people revolting against social justice in schools is that they recognize it is disingenuous, and that it's incumbent on the advocates of these theories to demonstrate that they are compassionate, honest, magnanimous, humane, and exercise other positive viritues, as if they aren't, you probably don't want them near your kids.
Is this what a charitable case looks like? It sounds like a regurgitation of a conspiratorial fantasy. I'd hate to see what the uncharitable case looks like.
Free speech is not the same as being able to tell other people’s kids anything you want while they’re attending a mandatory educational institution run in the name of the public.
This law seems like an extreme reaction, but to what many people believe is already an extreme situation.
I mean, schooling children at all is ideological: it's literally built on the ideology that we should have an educated populace. I'm really confused by this statement.
Indoctrinating children with views that their parents would object to is not the proper purpose of public education. The vast majority of parents are happy for their children to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, and so on. Specific political views, or that people with their skin color inherited historical evil, is something else entirely.
I mean, I agree that public education generally doesn't intend to indoctrinate children with views that their parents would object to. For one, that'd be nearly impossible to perform in a classroom setting because 30 kids would definitely have parents from a wide variety of backgrounds so you'd have to indoctrinate each with different beliefs individualized to the parents.
I think I'm missing your point here because you seem to not mind the indoctrination that is the basis of having a public education system in the first place, but you started with protesting public education's indoctrination in general, and then when you narrowed it, of course I agree with you because it's never worked that way because it'd be logistically impossible and therefore it most certainly isn't happening right now and therefore unrelated to your original protesting of indoctrination.
Reading, writing, arithmetic... not always science though right? I bet a good chunk of parents don't want evolution taught in schools. A smaller but significant chunk probably don't want climate change taught in environmental science either.
Except there’s actual video, pictures, tweets, etc of people participating in the activities this time, which wasn’t the case with the other moral panics.
Perhaps we should all start sending books to Florida! Or perhaps upload pirate epub copies somewhere so that the little darlings can read them on their phones.
Whatever random book any random teacher bought or was given.
The whole point is that they have to remove ALL books that aren't approved through The Process. Of course there's not going to be a list of those. There isn't some master list of books that are lying around classrooms everywhere.
The rules are whitelisting not blacklisting oriented, so it’s easier to give the set of list that would be allowed, and every other book in existence outside that allowed set is potentially blocked.
The rules would block a book like East of Eden. Pornographic elements and too advanced for kids (even if it isn’t)
In Florida, school librarians are called "media specialists" and hold media specialist certificates. A rule passed by the Florida Department of Education last week states that a "library media center" includes any books made available to students, including in classrooms. This means that classroom libraries that are curated by teachers, not librarians, are now illegal.
Prepare for “route around the damage” moment where districts are going to start requiring teachers to get media specialist certified just to avoid the legal headache.
I am not a lawyer, but the fact that it is a felony seems particularly aggressive to me. Usually stuff like this (related to how a school is run) is usually administrative law and the school district would be the one responsible for insuring that it is enforced (so they might fire a teacher for non-compliance, but it would be the district itself being taken to administrative court by the state government for not following the law, rather than a specific teacher). This is also just bad in general, but the fact that the law criminally targets teachers rather than being put into the boring administrative code just shows how politically and ideologically motivated this is.
Classroom libraries are a big deal. Every step taken that makes a teacher's job riskier, less pleasant, or less like what they want to be doing (teaching kids, without having to worry about whether some plainly-positive action is legal), drives good teachers out of the profession.
A few states have done similar things (IIRC Oklahoma was another, for instance). Insane politics (plus the general, unavoidable unpleasantness of the situation) around Covid, plus a recent return of political demonization of teachers (see: this exact law)—which efforts, incidentally, absolutely do affect the day-to-day work environment for teachers—drove lots of teachers out of the profession, and now there's a second wave thanks to salaries not coming even close to keeping up with inflation, while wages have gone up quite a bit in the rest of the economy. Most of the country's having some amount of trouble finding teachers, and some places are having a lot of trouble, so they've taken some desperate measures to at least find warm bodies to watch the kids. I'd guess the reasoning with singling out military folks is that they've been kinda-sorta vetted (ha, ha) already, and they're likely to be fairly disciplined and able to finish stuff (like getting their teaching cert[s]).
Yeah, the less people serve, the more the military is seen as some sort of high brotherhood of philosopher kings, instead of a vast government bureaucracy filled with young adults of dubious responsibility, with a few responsible adults desperately trying to maintain order.
But it usually means you had to actually attempt teaching math and have some experience in practice. That's part of what a Master's degree is supposed to mean, unless that, too, has diminished.
I have a MS in computer science. I had an assistantship but I did research and curriculum development without actually ever teaching anything. Just one data point.
Bradleys are complicated and require some technical knowledge.
The lowest scores on the ASVAB are for things like cooks or truck drivers, or things like fuel filtration specialists aka gas station attendants in cammo.
None are qualified to teach Calc I but some might not be qualified to teach much of anything.
It looks like Florida public school enrollment is increasing[1] by quite a lot. It's up to 3,032,800 for Fall 2023 from 2,903,500 in 2020[2], only beat by Arizona, Alaska, and Utah.
I’m sorry but I question the sanity of anyone that thinks these are actually legitimate questions.
How many Kindergarten libraries do you think have pornography in them? Seriously. What has given you the impression that this is happening? What proof have you been offered?
This is very obviously an attempt to control what kids are allowed to learn from the top down using “pornography” as an excuse.
There is a strong movement afoot to define any material teaching about
1) consent (whether it mentions sex or not)
2) the child's own body (in ways designed to help them recognize and avoid things like sexual abuse)
3) queer issues of any kind, but especially trans issues
as pornographic, regardless of the actual content, so that they can ban it and claim they're saving the poor children from horrible, horrible sexual material.
This is not a new movement; conservatives have been trying to ban queer people from any kind of public visibility for decades by claiming that their very existence is sexual, ignoring the fact that heterosexual romance and sex is being shoved into our faces constantly, often in far more blatant ways, and often in media explicitly aimed at children. They're merely redoubling their efforts now that it's becoming clear that society at large is starting to genuinely accept trans people, which they cannot abide.
So they already have the worst teacher shortage, and they're determined to make it even worse by making it a crime to encourage children to read.
This is completely insane. How can this be even remotely constitutional? Please tell me at least the current Florida legislature is deeply unpopular because of their commitment to censorship and opposition to education.
Encouraging children to read is not covered by the law. You read the article.
Having a library of books is an easy way to encourage literacy, probably even the best way. It is not the only way.
Far more important to the development of literacy in children is the presence of books in the home. There are decades of statistics on the impact of just having a stack of books in the same home as the child.
All of this is also failing to touch on the problem that drew this overreaction. To be sure it is a huge over-extension of what the government ought to do. But the thing it was a reaction to... That never had anything to do with literacy, and everything to do with ideology. When one uses literacy as the shield, and depends on the perpetual good graces of people one has spent years demonizing on ideological grounds, one should expect damage to the very thing everyone thought was sacrosanct.
> Far more important to the development of literacy in children is the presence of books in the home.
Of course, but that's not something schools have control over. Unless they can give a child a book on loan to take home. And that requires books in the school. And because different children have different interests and different reading issues, a wide selection of books is better than a narrow one.
> That never had anything to do with literacy, and everything to do with ideology.
Do you mean that the ban is about ideology, sacrificing children's access to reading in order to indoctrinate them into a state-approved ideology?
> When one uses literacy as the shield, and depends on the perpetual good graces of people one has spent years demonizing on ideological grounds, one should expect damage to the very thing everyone thought was sacrosanct.
They clearly don't think it's sacrosanct if they're sacrificing it this eagerly to hurt the people they want to demonize. I guess we're talking about gay people here? They want to demonize gay people, and want to restrict the book supply in order to indoctrinate children with that?
I think the disconnect is that some parents see children as property to be managed and controlled, and many other adults see children as individuals with agency and autonomy (to the extent that is developmentally appropriate).
I also believe that most of this backlash is about children being able to freely access information that contradicts their parents' worldview. I have also seen strict parents punish their children for expressing differing beliefs and values. Queer kids get physically abused by their religious parents. I absolutely believe schools should be a safe place for students to learn and experiment with ideas and values.
Not to mention, strict informational control has long been a mechanism for abuse. I think there's probably a nexus between parents who object to their kids reading what they want and parents who utilize various physical and psychological abuses as "discipline".
Exactly. Conservatives try to paint this as protecting their kids from left-wing ideology, but it's really about being able to force right-wing ideology on them.
I'd strongly prefer exposing kids, in an age-appropriate manner, of course, to the whole breadth of human ideology and life experiences, with different views on it, and teaching them to think for themselves.
But mostly, I've got a kid that's struggling to read, but has a couple of very strong interests (trains!) that I leverage to get him to read more. Restricting the diversity of books available because they need to go through some slow approval process first, will make it harder for him to access books that he's eager to read. Because the whitelisting process means that even books that aren't even the slightest bit objectionable, won't necessarily be available, and may have to wait until more mainstream books have been approved.
Best I can tell these new laws apply to all grade levels. What justifiable reason is there for limiting what books high schoolers can access other than "I don't want my kid to come across facts or opinions that might contradict my worldview."
High schoolers are going through puberty and many are sexually active so statutes (s. 847.012) banning "detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement" in books are just puritanical nonsense. That would definitely rule out ASOIAF and probably 1984. I'm pretty sure it would even rule out some young adult novels I read in high school and high schoolers are the target audience.
For lower grade levels I suppose there is maybe a more reasonable argument to be had over what is age appropriate but "felony for unapproved books" seems like a pretty absurd conclusion to reach.
Frankly I don't think I need any cover to demonize parents calling for book bans.
It depends on what you think constitutional means. If you think it refers to some spirit independent of a particular time and place, then sorry, no. If it is whatever the right people say it is, then yes.
> Florida already has the worst teacher shortage in the nation
This isn't new. Florida teacher shortage has existed for a long time. It's because Florida doesn't pay their teachers. This isn't likely to change anytime soon because Republicans have had a stranglehold on Florida since 1999, and they are notoriously anti-education.
FYI, your assertion is long known to be racist trope. First of all, no one, anywhere, ever, can "live" on welfare alone. It's just not possible. To live on welfare requires a job with some income. Further, if you earn less than $300K/yr, and you vote Republican, then you are voting adversely to your own economic interests and working against your own economic advancement. But if you make $300K/yr or more, then by all means...
A racist trope? What an absurd statement. Are you saying only 1 race uses welfare? That sounds kinda racist, but moreover it sounds like you're just trying to discourage discussion by throwing the R word around.
Of course you can live on welfare alone. Many do, and in fact it can become a full time job just to stay on welfare, especially when it becomes multi-generational.
Source: a partner who worked in the welfare offices and dealt with such people (of all races).
Yea I've been on welfare myself and it wasn't enough but I wasn't trying to make a job out of it and applying for all the different extra plans and what not, I was just trying to find a new job.
What’s the definition of a booming economy? Florida’s GDP per capita is much closer to Vermont than California; the real GDP growth rate for Florida, while high, is also lower than California. [1]. Though of course with a large population the overall GDP for Florida is high.
Florida would have a booming economy if the governor's office and state administration was entirely staffed with armadillos. Florida's economy and low taxes are fueled by tourism, and since tourism is unlikely to go anywhere, neither is the booming economy, which has boomed through every administration, Republican or Democrat, since the end of WWII. There is nothing the fascist Santos administration could possibly do to either hurt or help Florida's economy, no matter how deeply he indulges his narcissism.
EDIT: Since I can't reply the the threads below me, "education" can't just be had in the classroom. In fact as an experienced developer almost all of my education was outside the classroom. I suspect this is the case for most fields.
EDIT 2: Higher skilled "educated" people like surgeons, urologists, anesthesiologists, oncologists and orthodontists vote Republican[3]
In addition to income, there are also correlations to race, education, gender, marital status, religion, gun ownership, etc. According to your source, support of Democrats goes up with the amount of education; from 36% of voters who never went to college, to 57% of voters who have an advanced degree. That's a bigger spread shown than the rich/poor divide that you're focused on.
> Older people tend to have accumulated more wealth than those just starting out.
Which has been true since the dawn of value exchange. That's part of why the outcry against "inequality" citing differences in income between a 20-year veteran of some career versus a new entrant in the market are so tough to swallow.
Wait twenty years... they'll be the same... Unless we change the rules to take it all away from everyone.
There's some truth to this, but nb. that "net worth at same age" stats for various generations in the US are bleak. Each generation since the Boomers has done worse than the one before at the same age, and the Boomer/X divide is already large.
Agreed completely. Many younger folk point me to graphs that show the value of the dollar and how it's vastly different compared to decades ago, but I simply say that's Democrat propaganda and they realize their mistake!
> EDIT: Since I can't reply the the threads below me, "education" can't just be had in the classroom. In fact as an experienced developer almost all of my education was outside the classroom. I suspect this is the case for most fields.
What you're describing is vocational training. Education typically includes forced ventures outside of one's own narrow worldview. That's why Republicans hate education. They want cogs with saleable vocational skills who won't question the narrow worldview that is preferred on the right.
When 99% of the Republican Party membership is voting against their personal economic interests in order to keep the other 1% rich, you really have to wonder what education they have had, if any.
> Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed lawmakers to boost starting teacher salaries to $47,500, which ranks 16th in the country. Overall though, Florida’s average teacher pay is ranked 49th.
What's the difference between a classroom library and the school library? I'm German, I've never heard of classroom libraries or anything similar in Germany. We have school libraries that provide the standard text books and most of the novels etc, but they're generally not walk-ins where you pick something to read.
"Classroom library" makes it sound a lot more formal than it is. Picture like a bookshelf in the corner that students can pick a book from of during a designated reading time if they didn't bring their own.
"Classroom libraries" are for students to pick up a small book during a break in teaching to encourage reading. Usually these books aren't long and don't have a formal checkout process because they'll stay within the classroom walls.
A classroom library is a bookshelf in the class set up and stocked by the teacher of that class, usually so those students who finish work early have something quiet to do to kill time.
Most of the classrooms I remember fondly as a kid had a selection of magazines along the same lines as you'd find in the average dentist's waiting room plus a mix of books based on the teacher's tastes. "The Way Things Work" was a recurring favorite of mine that popped up in a lot of classrooms through my first few years of school.
1) Lower grades (i.e. k-6) will often keep a bunch of books in the classroom, so the kids have a selection available if they want to (or have to) read. This way they don't have to make a trip to the library to pick out a new book, as it can often be kinda difficult for a kid to find time to visit the library outside scheduled classroom visits, and that's an extra step between a kid wanting to read and being able to, that teachers would rather not have (since it might mean less reading). Often these sorts of classroom libraries are stocked by the teacher. Such libraries may be left behind by teachers retiring or otherwise leaving teaching, and the teacher replacing them may keep part or all of the library.
2) Upper grades, where you start having dedicated English or "Language Arts" classrooms, will often keep classroom sets (that is, enough books for every kid to have one at once) of the books the classes teach. Often there will also be other individual books, plus maybe some classroom sets of books that the teacher doesn't teach (maybe they switched their program up a bit, or maybe they're left overs from a previous teacher)—a teacher may keep these around or stock such a small library themselves and let kids borrow them, because being an upper-grades English teacher tends to correspond with liking and wanting to encourage reading. Some lower grade (well, properly, middle-grade or what you might call "upper elementary", but I'm trying to keep it simple) classes may also keep a few classroom sets once the kids can read independently and full books are being taught to and read by the entire class at once (a 4th grade classroom might have a classroom set of Charlotte's Web or something like that)
[EDIT] LOL, on reflection that was really three cases with some overlap (classroom sets of books; miscellaneous books intended to be read in class; miscellaneous books intended to be borrowed) so, uh, worst structure for a comment ever, I guess.
Thanks, structure or not, that helped me understand the difference between your system and ours better (or what I remember from what it used to be, it's been a while since I learned to read).
My English/drama teacher (small school) had one. It was mostly classics, famous theater works, and YA lit. I donated my collection of Discworld books to it after I graduated. It was really just a bookshelf. You could read in class or borrow one, she had a sign out sheet.
In English Library can just mean a collection of books, so you can talk about some person's "library" to mean their book collection. When people talk about a classroom library they're really meaning the collection of books in a classroom.
That being said school libraries in America do tend to be walk in places where you can pick something up to read.
To add to the other answers, schools generally have school libraries that are similar to public libraries, in that they have a large selection of material and students may come in (either at a specific assigned time or in their free time at school) to check out books.
I disagree with the assertion that destroying public education is a right-wing goal. While there may be some individuals or groups with that belief, it is not a universally held position among those who identify as right-wing. Additionally, making it a crime to teach is not a tactic that is being used by any mainstream political group or party. Education is an important issue that affects the future of society and should not be politicized or used for political gain.
But they are politicising it and using it for political gain. They are making it a crime. Anyone who still votes for these people finds these things at least acceptable.
or recall Scott Walker and what he did in Wisconsin.
Or even look at the article currently under discussion, which makes it a FELONY for a teacher to have the "wrong" books in the classroom. How can you say that is not an attack on teachers?
I challenge you to contact any person who has worked in public education for more than 5 years and get their view on the right wing. I think you'll find that there is an organized and well funded attack on US public education, which is driven by the right wing.
It's unecessarily divisive that criticism on teachers' unions is labeled "right-wing". It's also linguistically dishonest to call policy measures "attacks" and "assaults". Sometimes organizations become so detached from reality and everyday life that minor changes become necessary. But rather than engage with their detractors, the unions seem to sic the media on them.
If you want to parse it that finely, then pretty much ALL policy is an attack. E.g.: The school board sets a budget, the result of which is that I have to pay some tax. If I don't pay that tax, they'll eventually forcibly remove me from my home. That's plainly an attack.
I tend to agree with you, but destroying public education does seem to be a goal of the most vocal members of the political right wing. Moderate voices are being drowned out, and increasingly excommunicated from the Republican party.
(It claims to be about pronouns, and encouraging anti-lgbtq smears, but, if you read the bill, you'll find the reality is much worse.)
There are thousands of examples like this going back decades. You used the words "right wing", but I suspect you don't know what they mean. For example, you should read up on the blocking of the equal rights amendment, which was arguably the founding moment for the right wing in the US. It would have prevented discriminatory hiring by the US government.
Arguments against it included claiming it was a conspiracy between lesbians and government workers, and "you wouldn't want bathrooms to allow gays like desegregation did for blacks, right?", and lots of claims about how men would sexually assault women and children in bathrooms if it passed (the constitutional amendment had nothing to do with bathrooms).
More impactfully, to this day, Prop 13 is hailed as one of the biggest wins of the right wing in California, and it is largely responsible from taking our schools from top ten in the US to bottom ten.
Anyway, I'm guessing you don't support any of this nonsense based on the rest of your comment.
> it is not a universally held position among those who identify as right-wing
Nobody said it was universal. But it is incredibly dishonest to pretend that there isn't a huge effort to destroy public education among the right wing. Libraries are under attack across the nation, and there is a major push to dissolve the separation of church and state. This movement is underway, and it's being pushed by the right wing. That is not to say that every single conservative supports it.
> Additionally, making it a crime to teach is not a tactic that is being used by any mainstream political group or party.
Except, did you read the article? It's a felony for teachers to have wrongthink books in their classrooms. The Ministry of Truth maintains a list of permissible books. This is a law passed by DeSantis, the most likely 2024 candidate for president. If that ain't mainstream, I don't know what is.
Dont forget about us crazy libertarians that want Backpack funding of Schools via School Choice.
we clearly want to a "Destroy public education" by making teachers accountable to parents which is a terrible thing according to the teachers union
//sidenote we also want to abolish all public unions (including teachers union) as public sector employees use their union to corrupt the election process in their favor screwing over the tax payer who ends up having no one in their favor in contract talks.
> //sidenote we also want to abolish all public unions (including teachers union) as public sector employees use their union to corrupt the election process in their favor screwing over the tax payer who ends up having no one in their favor in contract talks.
This sounds like trading away some freedom of association for a small group of people — ostensibly for the greater good — which isn’t very pro-liberty in my eyes. Where I live, while the taxpayers do not attend these contract talks we have the final word in that we ultimately decide to pass the school budget or not through voting.
anti-union is anti-libertarian imo. But I can't gatekeep libertarianism, it's just my personal opinion.
Pure unbridled free market will crush unions anyway, both the kinds formed by corporations (collusion) and those formed by employees (union). There is no need to legislate such action as market forces influence actors towards the more economical choice.
>Pure unbridled free market will crush unions anyway
Unless they are public sector union which face not market competition at all, as they are government employees. Thus the problem with them
I was very clear to not be "Anti-union" as you seem to claim but I am very much anti-PUBLIC SECTOR unions as there is clear conflict of interest inherent in those. Many libertrian are "pro union" for the private sector but are opposed to public sector union because of this clear conflict
There are lots of things that are traded way when it comes to government.
The libertarian solution to the Teachers Union issue is to have schools run by private organizations not attached to the government, thus would be free to unionize and have all the union benefits.
So long as they are a public employee who vote, and who use their power to have outside influence over the ones who are supposed to be representing all taxpayers not just the ones in the union, there is a clear conflict of interest when it comes to PUBLIC sector unions.
Want to be in a union, support backpack funding of private schools and end public schools
> the fact that it is a felony seems particularly aggressive to me
Agreed. There's really not analogy for this in the professional world, except for things that are _already a crime_ like fraud or negligence. I don't think most people on HN could be prosecuted just for failing to do their job to the satisfaction of their local government.
> Prepare for “route around the damage” moment where districts are going to start requiring teachers to get media specialist certified just to avoid the legal headache.
If the certificate is a prerequisite for all teachers to get jobs then they risk their employment if they're caught with the prohibited texts. So this would only result in teachers culling their libraries to avoid losing their job.
A felony also prevents you from doing a great many things, like finding any job or renting or most anything. We have built a society that punishes conviction for life, long after the punishment has been served. Add to that we’ve been making more and more misdemeanors felonies, we are producing a society of misery.
These people are just cruel and self serving. They are scoring points by being more and more radical and destroying lives in exchange. They are vile, and I consider their behavior more felonious than most felons.
unfortunately the legislation is inevitable. Florida's neoconservative legislature has decided the only way to win elections consistently is with increasingly divisive culture-war brinksmanship. That the strategy works is unimpressive as fear and uncertainty are powerful motivators, regardless of outcome. That it has become such a consistent pattern in the past forty years of Republican leadership is mournful to say the least because its doomed to fail at the national level.
The effort to recriminalize non-heteronormative behavior is a telling sign this party of small government and personal liberty has run out of motivational boogeymen.
A quick search suggests that other third-degree felonies in Florida are things like: felony battery, aggravated assault, carrying a concealed firearm without a license and resisting a law enforcement officer with violence.
with all of the other inane laws that have come before this, this is still mind-blowing? with all of the rhetoric from the governor on all of the other topics, this is still mind-blowing? yes, it's absolutely an abhorrent thing to do and is just dumb at all levels, but is it mind-blowing or "of course they did this" kind of stupid?
Why are you expecting everyone to follow Florida politics and news as closely as you and have the same calibration of what is expected to happen there or not?
How could you not? It's not like I'm actively pursuing "WTF did Florida Man do today", but it's all up in my feeds. I'm usually too busy swatting away "WTF did Texas do that will infringe upon my human rights today" to be actively looking for others, but Texas and Florida seems to be in a grudge match on who can implement religious extremism into law the fastest.
After the first 2 or 3 stories, you see there's a pattern. If this is honestly the first time you've ever heard of some zanny thing that the governor of Florida has done, then I'd have to ask what rock you've been under and is there enough room for me to join you there as it seems to be the only place to avoid Florida news.
The other way to route around the damage is for teachers to just ban all books in their classrooms. That avoids all legal risk as well, and seems to be the route that will be taken in the short term, at least.
This is a remarkably crude and revanchist move from Republican politicians. It’s embarrassing but mostly bluster and spectacle. It won’t work, and there are already for more effective and sophisticated forms of media control wielded by their allies (See Jane Meyer’s Dark Money, or Messengers of the Right). But at the end of the day it’s school-wars red meat for the rubes, and that’s good enough for De Santis.
> It’s embarrassing but mostly bluster and spectacle. It won’t work
What they are doing is plain FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt. And hell yes it works. Vague laws absolutely work, just look at recent cases where women had to wait days for a life-saving abortion because of insanely vague laws, e.g. [1].
Agree that it spreads FUD, but I mean it won't work as children can still trivially access banned books if they desire. The much greater threat to children's reading comes not from the particular books available in their school classroom, but from other factors: parental literacy and reading habits; literacy of child; number of books in household, literate culture of child's milieu.
And you do what if a kid does it? Send the kid to jail? Good luck with that. Send the teacher to jail? Good luck with that too. Confiscate kid's e-reader? Olalala, that's heaven for the kid's family lawyer, gonna milk from the state 1M USD in a blink.
We live in a world of “sanctuary this” and “Do not comply with that” and “I will not enforce the other”.
In other words, we live in a world where a nontrivial percentage of the population, especially many in influential positions, have decided that they don’t need to obey laws they disagree with.
How else are you going to get people to comply with the law?
Note that I am not asserting that any law is “good” or “bad”. But the proper way to handle bad laws is to win elections and change them, or use public sentiment to pressure lawmakers to change them.
The kinds of "using public sentiment" that actually get things often done tend to involve willfully and intentionally breaking the law, as wildcat strikers, civil rights marchers, and sit-in protestors can attest.
The largest topics you're alluding to (sanctuary cities and marijuana regulations) have to do with federal versus state jurisdiction.
True advocates of small government support states' rights over the preposterous power grab of Wickard v. Filburn. Especially when it manifests as states not using their own resources to enforce the otherwise mostly unenforceable desires of the federal government.
The problem is that some of the libraries are hosting sexually explicit material that is accessible to younger children that some parents claim is sexually grooming the children. Some of these books have been included on reading lists.
The book that is the poster child for this is the cartoon book Gender Queer
The fact is the VAST majority of these books are not sexually explicit, nor “grooming” in any way. The books simply admit that non-straight people exist.
Applying this “sexually explicit” logic, then your left saying the network television comedy “Modern Family” is indistinguishable to the director’s cut of “Eyes Wide Shut”.
It’s straight up propaganda, meant to stigmatize non-straights as child predators. It’s not just a lie. It’s hate speech, spread for crass political gain. And it has no place in any society.
You know, sexually explicit material can be pretty beneficial for teens. The book that your ridiculous panic-mongering "news" outlet—and I am truly sorry that you have been exposed to a publication as rotten as this one—uses graphic depiction of a sex act to show how an adult couple—not "child pornography" as your Western Journal bozos claim—work out that one person wants to try a sex act that the other person does not enjoy. That's an important thing for teens to learn!
Even better, most of those books laying around are purchased by the teachers themselves out of their own money. So if my wife had a kid who's fascinated by bulldozers, she'll go to a thrift store and look for books on bulldozers so he could read something that interested them. Which if we lived in Manatee County Florida would be a felony because she'd be grooming him to screw a bulldozer, apparently.
The reaction where you get a court summons in the mail, unless you apologize profusely and profess your allegiance to the Party? Or the reaction where they take your picture while you're screwing the bulldozer, to fuel their strawman political campaigns?
The entire point of laws like this is to empower the bureaucrats with a credible truncheon, so that you can't just laugh away their self-important nonsense. "Not so funny now is it, funny man?"
Teachers are already paid little and dealing with the stress of managing large classrooms with little pay has to be turning off a lot of teachers away from that career path. With laws like this our future pipeline of teachers is essentially getting gutted. I guess republicans are winning on both fronts here. One, they pander hard to the extreme base and two, they kill public education and make private education more attractive.
"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them." -- Jerry Falwell
> If the book is available in the district libraries, that means it was approved by a media specialist and can be made available to students again. But any book not currently held in the district libraries must be individually evaluated and approved by a librarian.
So... It's an allowlist and not a denylist. Even worse.
I remember reading a description of denylists (everything is allowed except for...) as "American style" and allowlists (only these things are allowed) as "Soviet style".
Well that will increase job prospects for the Kids in my State. The poor kids in that county will not be able to think about critical issues.
In my State, kids are taught about various opposing view points and how to make informed decisions. In that county, now it seems to be "my way or the highway".
So, I see kids were I live being more successful in life then the kids in that county.
So, thank you Manatee County for helping out my area.
And interestingly there's a strong argument to be made that gun control has already been implemented by the conservatives of a different era to hurt a specific out-group people were conditioned into hating at the time.
Groups wanting to ban firearms and groups wanting to ban books are ideologically the same. Their back and forth petty bannings only encourage the other block to the detriment of actual human persons. Both believe their group ideologies override the rights of the individual and both are willing to use violent force of the state against people.
Trying to apply rational arguments to either "side" (of the coin) is inappropriate since neither come from rational positions. But there are plenty of people against the banning of both. They're just quieter without billion dollar lobbying groups required to achieve their goal of status quo.
But, if we want to be extra clear, legal minors at a public school don't have many civil rights. It's frustrating that they're treated so badly but that's the legal code. Technically it's probably legal to do this (but it should be challenged in court). Whereas adult citizens have far more clearly defined property rights; especially on their own property.
Don't know why you're being downvoted as the role of educational companies seems to be pretty large in the standardization and homogenization of schools and curriculums. Compared to the large publishers most school districts are pretty small fish- they don't have time to ensure compliance with all the regulations and standards, so their only choice is to buy a curriculum from a publisher. And of course buying a curriculum is not a one time expense- it's all licensed/subscription based and basically a direct pipeline from local taxpayers' pockets to large corporate publishers.
On the subject of political graft and schools, my Florida high school purchased *every single student* a pair of cheap earbuds for a *single* audio question on a standardized test everyone in the school had to take. Probably in 2015 or 2016. Pretty sure some politician was friends with or related to someone who stood to make money off those earbuds...
A lot of people here saying there's "no support for this". Let's not forget that the governor was re-elected by a landslide in the latest midterms even after the "don't say gay bill" which was the last thing that "nobody supported". Seems like the people in Florida are saying something different.
Voter disenfranchisement has been part of the playbook for a long time now.
Take this issue for example - if this passes, and a teacher gets a felony from suggesting a book off of the pre approved list, they probably can't vote anymore.
Less than half is not "most". 1.4 million felons were covered by the Amendment the voters approved to restore felon voting rights, but as your link states a few months later the legislature passed a law to limit that which made 775000 of those felons no longer eligible.
What’s going on with the politicians in Southern states? Why are they spending time making these pointless laws that often infringe on the rights of their constituents? How are people okay with being dictated what books their children can read?
Hate politics need an underclass to target and oppress. In the US that used to be Black people, but then Black people became too popular and too well supported; and then for a while it was gay people, but then then gay people became too popular and too well supported; and now the target is transgender people and gender nonconformists.
Consider the quote from Lyndon B. Johnson: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Now just swap out the hated group. That's why people are okay with it.
> and then for a while it was gay people, but then then gay people became too popular and too well supported; and now the target is transgender people and gender nonconformists.
This law explicitly bans discussion of Gay people.
This highlights part of the growing movement and disagreement around culture shaping through kids.
To highlight this, if you take a look at school of educations mission statement[1]
> Through commitment to innovation, social justice, excellence in teaching and research, and partnerships, the School of Teacher Education will position itself as a national leader in shaping the next generation of educators to be agents of transformation in an ever‐changing world.
Other schools [2] in the US are more explicit on change...
> School of Education devoted to developing civically engaged children, youth, and adults for a diverse and inclusive society.
There are many parents who are not supportive of the drive for change. Often pushing views that parents don't agree with.
Books are a subtle way to bring in change. The ideas in them. Especially as elementary age kids who are impressionable learn to read from these books.
The disagreements between parents and some teachers around this is at the heart of laws like this.
“Back in my day…” there was a crusade against Christian prayer and what not. Keep things neutral - to the point that teachers who were otherwise obviously religious would completely dodge the topic when my intellectually curious atheist self asked on topics.
Now we’re back at teachers here-and-they’re wanting to assert their belief system in the classroom and activist parents seeking to eliminate this issue… only the script is a bit flipped.
So, the question becomes should we keep schools neutral or not?
> So, the question becomes should we keep schools neutral or not?
What is the role of school? Is the role to prep kids to go to college? Is it to drive social change? Is it to teach what kids need to perform common jobs? Is it to teach kids how to have skills to operate as adults (like managing their personal finances)?
These are questions we don't agree on as a culture.
A bunch of debate is rooted in disagreement as to what these should be.
By asking what the role is, you presupposed that we can decide on one, and that it will somehow happen. If the adminstrators and teachers don't fulfill their role, that's a different question.
There might be a slight difference between prayers in classrooms and books being available in a library for children to check out if interested. Unless you're suggesting that all material containing any religious content or characters also be excluded from libraries in the name of neutrality?
I think there's some validity to this thought process. I'm of the opinion the books shouldn't be banned, but this point gives me pause.
There's an obvious difference here via the 1st amendment, which doesn't regulate social issues, but that's more legal technicality than philosophy.
My experience as a kid (after these crusades) was that religion wasn't forbidden as a topic, but that endorsement or derision of any particular religion was forbidden. E.g. it would be fine to ask what the difference in belief is between a Catholic and an Amish, but a teacher would probably refuse to answer if asked which one is better supported by historical fact. One of the history classes spent a week or two on the various common religions.
If I'm recalling correctly, the school library had copies of at least the Bible, the Quran and a Hebrew Bible (I feel like there was a better term but I can't recall it). There wasn't an attempt to hide the information, the school just couldn't endorse a particular religion. Tolerance was generally encouraged to all religions (or lack thereof).
This feels like it's going further than the religious issues. It's an attempt to suppress knowledge, rather than to suppress opinion.
Bullshit. There was a backlash against forced Christian prayer, as there should be.
> teachers here-and-they’re wanting to assert their belief system in the classroom
Bullshit. Making a wide variety of books available to interested students is literally the opposite of asserting a specific belief system.
> activist parents
Bullshit. This is very clearly neo-fascist alt-right book-burners trying to bring about white Christian nationalism. Very clearly: they're not even trying to hide this fact. Any argument that does not acknowledge this is a bald-faced attempt to instate white Christian nationalism is not in good faith.
> the question becomes should we keep schools neutral or not?
Bullshit. This is a clear attempt to set the standard for "neutral" as "white Christian nationalist" and anything other than that as non-neutral.
> my intellectually curious atheist self
Green username, bad-faith argument filled with bullshit. Why do I get this feeling this statement is similar to "as a gay black man ..."
> Need I remind you that the US is one nation _under God_?
I refused to recite that fascist bullshit in school, and "under God" was added by Dwight Eisenhower in 1954. I disagree that the US is "under God". What's your point? You're going to come to my house and wreck the place if I don't kneel for your God? What are you even talking about?
> It'll be quite "convenient" if certain books had more space on the shelves than others.
What are you talking about? Say what you mean. Otherwise it'll be quite "convenient" if your grandmother turns out to be a bicycle.
> Please make sure you're following the HackerNews commenting guidelines. :>
"Assume good faith" stops when strong evidence presented that the argument is in bad faith. I stated what that evidence was.
> “Back in my day…” there was a crusade against Christian prayer and what not.
No, there wasn't.
There has historically been litigation against forced or state-agent-led prayer, and that litigation was often by Christian (or Christian-adjacent; boundaries are disputed) groups.
First, let me say that I'm not attempting to give my own opinion on the direction that folks should go in. I'm most interested in bringing awareness as to what's going on so we can have deeper understanding and discussion.
With the school his is from, look at what their vision isn't. It's not to create well educated people who can excel at their jobs. Their vision isn't to create people who are self sustaining adults who can operate in society.
Their vision is to get people civically engaged around certain forms of change.
The specific forms of change are not agreed to as a culture in the US. This is an area where we don't have good in depth thoughtful conversations, either.
>Their vision is to get people civically engaged around certain forms of change.
>The specific forms of change are not agreed to as a culture in the US. This is an area where we don't have good in depth thoughtful conversations, either.
That's not what you initially said, nor do I understand how "civic engagement" is ever a bad thing. In fact, we need lots more of it.
You are applying ("The specific forms of change are not agreed to as a culture in the US") your trained-in prejudices as the right way, the only way. That's a little disturbing.
I'd add, as far as creating civic engagement is concerned, that you should never, metaphorically (and literally) speaking, hand someone a gun unless you know where they're going to point it.
I, and most reasonable humans, want more civic engagement from everyone. Including those with whom we disagree. Because that's how we make sure our society and government are working.
Discouraging civic engagement for any reason is bad, IMHO.
It's unfortunate that you don't come right out and say what you mean, rather than using inference and innuendo: You don't like what other folks want, so you want to ban it, or at least discredit those you believe disagree with you. At least that's my take on your comments.
To try and be more clear, I'm not attempting to give my own opinion on what should happen with regard to these topics. I'm attempting to highlight the disconnect. To get closer to a root of what's happening. This is from direct conversations with people across the political spectrum and from reading about it.
> Discouraging civic engagement for any reason is bad, IMHO.
When we deal with things there are priorities. What's the most important, what's less important, what's mildly important, etc.
Where does pushing for civic engagement relate priority wise with things like being able to handle your finances as an adult? Or being able to take care of your home? Or being able to hold a job? Or being prepared for college (if that's your route)?
The vision, in this case, points to civic engagement. It leaves out the others which makes them less of a priority.
Now, relate that to things like skilled trades. That's not something you need a college degree for and doing those jobs doesn't relate to being civically engaged. Many schools don't provide the foundation for people to even start in skilled trades even though we have a lack of skilled trades folks that's growing.
This is a simple angle for priorities.
Even within Civic Engagement there are priorities. Who gets to choose the priorities to steer the kids into? At what age does the steering start? Who gets to prioritize that?
Should it be university professors putting together programs for teachers to go through? Then those teachers implement those ideas with their students? Should it be the general public opinions?
Priorities are multi-dimensional. The leaders who lead our school leaders are setting the agenda. And, there are a bunch of people who disagree with that.
Again, please note, I'm not stating my opinion on these topics. I'm trying to highlight a little deeper on the root.
>To try and be more clear, I'm not attempting to give my own opinion on what should happen with regard to these topics. I'm attempting to highlight the disconnect. To get closer to a root of what's happening. This is from direct conversations with people across the political spectrum and from reading about it.
Not bad. Still a bunch of mealy-mouthed bullshit, but a little better.
Keep working on it. Perhaps you might one day convince someone you're actually a reasonable human being. I won't hold my breath.
> you don't come right out and say what you mean, rather than using inference and innuendo: You don't like what other folks want, so you want to ban it, or at least discredit those you believe disagree with you
> Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
The parent comment quite right out says the problem is prioritization. I'd rather see "critical thinking, first order logic and math" in place of "civic engagement". You say yourself "you should never, metaphorically (and literally) speaking, hand someone a gun unless you know where they're going to point it". In my view, inducing "civic engagement" is "giving a gun", and teaching "where ... to point it" is math.
>The parent comment quite right out says the problem is prioritization.
Actually, the grandparent comment[0] says nothing of the sort. mfer brings up prioritization in their response[1] to my comment.
>You say yourself "you should never, metaphorically (and literally) speaking, hand someone a gun unless you know where they're going to point it".
I do. And teaching civics is that gun. And understanding how our government and society functions is a powerful tool. Everyone should be taught such things, regardless of how they may use them.
My point is that teaching civic engagement does not "tell people where to point" that metaphorical gun. Rather, it gives people the knowledge and understanding to engage and interact with their society and political system. For whatever purpose a person feels appropriate.
Teaching someone how our system of government works and encouraging them to make use of that knowledge doesn't tell them "where to point" that knowledge.
I'd add that if you're ignorant of such things, you deprive yourself of knowledge that will allow you to interact more effectively with our system of government.
And understanding how our system works and how to utilize the power (and responsibility) inherent in citizenship is critical to maintaining a free, open and democratic society.
That's not to say that teaching math or literacy or science or how to tie your shoes isn't important. They absolutely are, and no one here (or in any of the links provided by GP) says they aren't.
In fact, mfer didn't mention "prioritization" until I called them out for their "dog whistles"[2].
I don't know GP or what's in their mind, nor do I pretend to do so. All I can do in that respect is draw conclusions from what they write.
I did so. You apparently disagree with my assessment and perhaps I'm way off base.
But the argument made by mfer in the comment to which I replied had all the hallmarks of coded language slamming "academia" and pedagogy, with absolutely zero evidence or support for such an attitude among academics. It's a poster boy for "those academics and educated elites are indoctrinating our kids into destroying the nation."
Which is scaremongering and "othering"[3] of our fellow Americans. And I take great umbrage to anyone (including other Americans) who want to make their fellow countrymen "the enemy."
Not just because it's promoting division to advance a political agenda, but also because it's intellectually dishonest to cherry pick quotes in order to demonize others.
Finally, I'd point out that most of the rhetoric around all the bashing of civil society seems to be done by folks who don't actually understand how our systems work. Which is the best argument for teaching civics/civic engagement, IMHO.
>Actually, the grandparent comment[0] says nothing of the sort. mfer brings up prioritization in their response[1] to my comment.
This is a rather lengthy response that starts wrong in the very first paragraph. From [0]:
> With the school his is from, look at what their vision isn't. It's not to create well educated people who can excel at their jobs. Their vision isn't to create people who are self sustaining adults who can operate in society.
> Their vision is to get people civically engaged around certain forms of
change.
This reads to me clear as day as mfer saying they should prioritize ~getting educated people with skills~ over ~civically engaged~ + ~certain forms of change~.
The comment [1] that you referred to was not even published yet when I started writing mine. I will only be off to read his own response after I finish this one.
To add to that, neither mfer's comment, nor mine ever imply civics are not important and should not be taught.
Many right wingers believe "diverse and inclusive" is code for "progressive/communist indoctrination and telling our kids that LGBTQ people are better than cis straight people". They don't object to the literal words, they object to what they believe is the hidden meaning behind the words.
(this is not an exaggeration—I have a sickness that causes me to be fascinated by right-wing media, so I watch/read/listen-to quite a bit of it)
Teachers are responsible for teaching kids how to read, write, do math, learn the basic geography of the world, to learn sports, possibly learn music, maybe learn how to manage money, learn to use tools, program computers, and so much more.
What priorities are the highest? Should learning math be at the top? Should kids still learn cursive? Does memorizing spelling matter now?
The vision statement says that being civically engaged around diversity and inclusion sits above those other things. People chase after visions.
A lot of people don't agree on this. Even those in the middle.
So your belief is that teaching kids how our system of government works and what mechanisms are available to access and impact that system is wrong, and shouldn't be taught at all?
That book Gender Queer is terrible though. A seriously mentally ill person who suffered horrible abuse from her parents should not be writing such vile content with such pornographic imagery for children. How it ever got approved as a children's book is beyond me.
It is however a great tool for parents to see how utterly disturbed the books the schools are giving their kids are, and if they're smart pull them into homeschooling.
I just read it. Wtf are you on about? There's nothing vile in there, it's a frank memoir of growing up. You and Florida both need to chill the fuck out with this witch hunt.
499 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 376 ms ] thread> Appropriate for the grade level and age group for which the materials are used or made available
If I was in grade school when this happened, this would have hampered my ability to learn. I was generally reading above the standard level and loved reading in class.
Reading this post just makes me sad. Kids aren't getting the same opportunities I got to nurture my curiosity.
$5 says it just makes teen pregnancy happen at higher rates btw.
This is a feature, not a bug.
> The law requires that all library books selected be: > 1. Free of pornography and material prohibited under s. 847.012.
s. 847.012. includes...
> (3) A person may not knowingly sell, rent, or loan for monetary consideration to a minor: > (b) Any book, pamphlet, magazine, printed matter however reproduced, or sound recording that *contains* any matter defined in s. 847.001, ...
s. 847.001 includes numerous definitions (including a rather broad "Sexual content") many of which are devoid of exonerating literary context. I think the implication here is that many popular books like the ASOIAF series, many young adult books that I personally read in high school, and many important classics like 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. that I don't find at all age-inappropriate for a high schooler would all be banned from school libraries. Unless I'm having some grave misunderstanding here Florida has just made it a felony for a high school lit teacher to loan a student a copy of *1984*.
This is absurd puritanical behavior that frankly this makes me frightened for the US.
fascist, neo-feudal
FTFY
That's the problem with policy that makes failure at a job function a crime. People will be overly cautious because they don't want to be charged with a felony.
Go read it and tell me you don't either.
Of course there aren't, it's a dumb political stunt chasing a moral panic.
As mentioned in a sibling thread, some teachers have blocked students from bringing in their own books out of fear of liability.
Y'all have some truly dystopian stuff going on there. Felony prosecution for showing kids books that the Governor didn't approve of?
Yikes.
I will not contribute my money to a government that does not allow me my rights, and will also not disarm myself to make myself more of a juicy target just to temporarily sight-see. Not worth it. Plenty of pretty sights to see in the states that aren't ridiculous.
Are you the president of the United States? Are you a multi-millionaire? Are you openly a member of a gang or other criminal organization?
If not, then, quite plainly, you're not a target. Period.
You'd be surprised how often people get targeted for no reason / stupid reasons.
Frankly, I find that the people that oppose guns and concealed carry are usually the type that live in nice neighborhoods and make nearly six figures, where the opinion is invalid. So, basically the demographic of Hacker News.
1. Do what you can to make all neighbourhoods better. (Donate to or volunteer at local organizations working to improve neighbourhoods, get to know your neighbours, vote for positive change, join neighbourhood watch, etc.)
2. Do what you can to protect yourself until Step 1 comes to fruition. (Avoid high-risk areas, maintain situational awareness, train in self-defense, carry self-defense tools, etc.)
That disabused me of any notion I am never a target.
Out of curiosity, do you ever travel out of your country?
If yes, how do you deal with the gun issue? If no, how do you feel about being locked within your national borders?
It helps that my state is also comparable in size to larger European countries. And has a pretty dynamic environment. Very mountainous and foresty in the north, planey in the east, red desert to the south, and tan desert to the west. Blazing hot in the summer, and well below freezing in the winter. I still haven't seen the majority of just this state.
I guess that does not bother you, but what are your thoughts on this anyway?
Not to say this isn't insane, just explaining how I think it happened.
(Not that the other party is much better)
Example: I believe states should be small, physically, so their laws are relevant locally. But since several megacountries do exist, I prefer those countries to have "freedom" in the sense where locals can do whatever laws are relevant to them, even if those local laws include censorship or other nonfree things.
Please elaborate.
I mean, so? This is small minority of people we're talking about. Why do they get veto power over everything present in the classroom? It's the teachers' job to teach the kids, manage/provision the classroom, etc.
At some point you have to just tell people "No".
Personally I'm not a huge fan of democracy, but you're looking at it.
Personally I also find it bizarre system where the majority vote of the other 49 states tells your state what to do, under federal law, particularly in wholly intrastate matters.
I'm sure states would love to just take that money in directly, but the federal government gets first dibs and states complete with each other on the remaining taxation. For instance, Florida is not just a popular retirement spot for the weather -- it also has zero income tax and a property tax with capped year-over-year growth.
Maybe you love your representative and Senator(s) but your party is in the minority. So, you don't approve of Congress.
Maybe ditto on the liking your reps, but Congress is always doing really stupid shit even when your side's in charge (like the goddamn own-goal "debt ceiling" bullshit) simply because they can't rally enough support to make that junk stop, so you don't approve of Congress. Or maybe your side controls both houses and the Presidency but still can't do jack-shit because of Senate rules, or because some other Senator or two (not yours) in your preferred party like playing both sides to advance their state's interests at the expense of everyone else—so you don't approve of Congress.
Maybe you like your reps and your side is in charge but you've really taken anti-politician stand-up jokes to heart, or follow media that highlights and exaggerates all the stuff you hate about reps on the "other side" even when yours is in charge, so you tick the "disapprove" box.
And so on.
There is a massive corrupting temptation of corporate money for all members of congress. We might elect somebody that we believe will represent us but ultimately they are swooned by the siren song of fat sacks of cash. However, I think more often than not, the people that get elected spent the most money on their campaign. The majority of money spent of campaigns comes from contributions that we are supposed to believe don't buy influence.
Whatever you feel about Matt Gaetz, his interview with Tim Pool illustrates the corporate influence issue we are up against.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q2dgVuS2QY
Why would that be the presumption instead of, you know, looking at polls?
This group of people you are talking about are well organized to take action on anything that aggrieved them. It just so happens that they are aggrieved by anything that isn't explicitly what they believe. Instead of accepting that some may not agree with you, they believe that anyone not in agreement is wrong and must be stopped at every turn.
A good analogy illustrates a different way of viewing something that not all readers might have considered, rather than simply asserting that two things are equivalent in the given context.
Edit: Also, I am American, so I hope you can curb your European-focused hatred when reading my comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34490527
or this way:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34123658
I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good things and this doesn't seem to be a repeated habit, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and recalibrate, we'd appreciate it.
Hey putin, you can downvote me all you want!
[0]https://floridadep.gov/sites/default/files/FloridaSunshinePu...
2) This is about the state government doing things. Florida's different criminal disclosure laws have no relevance here. Florida is fucky because florida's state government is run by a narcissist who wishes he was a dictator.
I couldn't give a shit if kids were bringing Anarchist Cookbook and images of the tortures at Abu Dhabi prison to school. What the kid and his family obtain on their own through private means and choose to read in a public venue like a school IMO is none of my business.
If the teachers are curating books that disproportionately pushes certain non-academic agendas, though, then maybe the parents ought to have the right to guide the employment of that teacher to make sure it follows the desires of the voters. Criminal charges are insane though.
In this case, Florida has decided to manage that activity by making it a felony to merely happen to have a book on the shelf that's not on the pre-approved list.
Check teacher forums, this kind of over-management and micro-management are major reasons for discontent in the job, and one of several factors pushing good teachers out of teaching.
Translation: Teachers are woke and shoving down the kids throat their political agenda.
Note that nobody in this thread defending the policy has been able to name any of these porn books that have been given to children, and that none of them attempt to defend the ramifications of the policy as implemented.
[0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
There is a strong movement afoot to define any material teaching about
1) consent (whether it mentions sex or not)
2) the child's own body (in ways designed to help them recognize and avoid things like sexual abuse)
3) queer issues of any kind, but especially trans issues
as pornographic, regardless of the actual content, so that they can ban it and claim they're saving the poor children from horrible, horrible sexual material.
This is not a new movement; conservatives have been trying to ban queer people from any kind of public visibility for decades by claiming that their very existence is sexual, ignoring the fact that heterosexual romance and sex is being shoved into our faces constantly, often in far more blatant ways, and often in media explicitly aimed at children. They're merely redoubling their efforts now that it's becoming clear that society at large is starting to genuinely accept trans people, which they cannot abide.
Conservatives have been pushing to make being gay or trans or queer in any way to be morally equivalent or at least directly leading to pedophilia forever.
This means that the people they follow and support can do an identical action to someone they hate, but the liked person does a good thing and the hated person does a bad thing in their eyes.
Take for example, epstein. Both Bill Clinton and Trump (among a hundred others) were clearly and publicly acquaintances of Epstein, however, to conservatives, clinton is a pedophile and trump is innocent.
The only thing worse than a law against your definition of "bad" content is a law against your definition of "good" content. But that's what will be next if this law moves the Overton window.
Which is why it's dangerous to focus on the actual content being regulated. Be upset that content -- any content -- is being regulated, because the US Bill of Rights is supposed to prohibit such laws. In a free country, there shouldn't be laws controlling what people say to each other.
This isn't about Governor approval. This was approved by the legislature and signed into law by the governor. Not a mandate by them.
The context of all of this is teachers putting books in front of kids that their parents don't approve of.
I'm not in Florida but I'll give you a local example to me that's come under debate. A book with sexually explicit material was recently pulled from an elementary school. Kids 10-ish and under. sex education doesn't come until the end of elementary school. If I understand it right, this was not an education book.
There is debate over whether this should be in the school and there are parents, politicians, and teachers on both sides of this.
What got Florida to this point is worth exploring and discussing. No matter what side you're on.
What book was it?
I ask because the first real science fiction book that I ever read, that inspired a life-long love for the genre, and which I read under the age of ten, was Rendezvous With Rama, which did contain a sex scene. And the presence of said sex scene didn't traumatize me or anything; I mostly just didn't understand it. Certainly not worth preventing me from having access to that book in its entirety over!
The discussion noted that the book discussed using "toys". They also noted that there was an add for buying sex toys as part of the book. These are elements that really caught my attention.
I have a hard time seeing most parents in the US being ok with this material being put in front of kids who are 5-10 years old.
But when you dig a little farther most of that stuff's usually handled just fine at the school or district level. There's very little justification for involving state or even county level government in addressing things like inappropriate lessons or content, because they do happen but are not an actual systemic problem because they're already dealt with by the existing, very-local systems.
If you want to prevent any "sexualization" content from reaching your young readers, you pretty much have to limit them to Go Dog Go.
This raises the question of what is material considered sexually explicit. Do you have the title and author of this book?
There isn't widespread agreement. That's how we got here. Parents are disagreeing with teachers as to what material they want in front of their kids.
The book I referred to earlier described using sex toys and had an add to get them. This is in a library for kids aged 5-10ish. People were arguing in support of the book being in that library.
Who gets to choose what's appropriate?
* e.g. the book my mom made me read about how our bodies change during puberty.
the overwhelming impetus and application of laws like this is to prevent religious autocratic conservative parents' kids from learning the actual nature of the secular (i.e real) humanist world,
most typically through canon and contemporary literature which does its job: illuminating the human condition, and the hypocrisy venality ignorance brutality and rigidity of people exactly like those who oppose such illumination.
Been telling my friends who e.g. foolishly moved to Austin or Florida chasing the "nest Silicon Valley": if you intend to, or have, kids, GTFO now. The descent of Texas and Florida into autocratic christofascism continues and raising a child, especially a young woman, there, would be actual hell
Instead of taking property tax money, pooling it, then evenly dividing it across a state. The way most states are designed is that property tax is given to the local school district, meaning that areas with cheaper homes get less money than areas with more expensive homes. This is made worse by demographic problems associated with poverty which makes teaching poor kids more expensive than rich (e.g. ESL, food poverty, unstable households, behavioral issues, untreated mental health problems, etc).
There're three tiers: Private education, rich area public, and poor area public education.
Actually fixing US schools amounts to "fix (or significantly mitigate) the US poverty-cycle problem", unfortunately. Unfortunate because if just funding poor schools like rich schools (Nb sometimes those funding levels are the opposite of what you'd expect, though—there are state and federal programs to funnel money to really, really bad schools) then it'd be straightforward and (relatively!) cheap to fix. The actual causes are more complex and would require far more "political will", as they say, plus a lot more money, to fix.
I disagree. When poorer areas have worse student:teacher ratios while paying teachers less, and giving them the most challenging students, it is absolutely about the money.
Even if teachers are willing to take on a bigger challenge, we're also asking them to take a pay cut to do so which isn't reasonable.
We can and should fix the money issue, but it's barely gonna move the needle on outcomes. I wish it would because, again, that's a pretty simple fix in the scheme of things, but it won't. The causes are much deeper and would be much harder to address.
Yes.
The topic was leveling out district funding, not paying teachers more. Leveling out district funding might help a little, but it's not the main cause of bad schools/districts. Paying teachers more might help, but would also not do much for the worst districts. Those bad schools and districts are, to a large degree, merely symptoms of larger societal problems that schools aren't equipped, empowered, or intended to address.
The problems are in how our economy is structured, how our social safety net is scoped, funded, and arranged, how fallout from various racist older systems have affected the current state of the country, the justice system, and probably in certain socialized behaviors or attitudes (which are all tied up in those other things, anyway). You cannot turn a terrible district in a very bad part of the city, or awful, poor rural school districts, into good districts just by giving them more money, no matter what they spend the money on (unless you put the schools in charge of sweeping social reform programs, I guess, but I don't think anyone's proposing that and it's probably not the best way to administer such things).
The kids and the parents have problems the schools can't fix, and those affect school life in ways that put a ceiling on how well the schools can do, no matter how good the schools per se are. The main reason some districts or schools are better than others has more to do with selection bias than funding—schools with easy-to-teach kids do well, schools with hard-to-teach kids don't, and the reasons some kids are in one of those categories and others are in the other mostly aren't within the scope of what schools can fix, period.
Rich districts aren't good mainly because they have more money on account of high house prices, but because high house prices and (sometimes) other circumstances (car dependency, commute range) select for kids with stable, comfortable home lives, parents who value education and are themselves educated, and little criminality or blatantly anti-social behavior in (at least) their immediate family & friend circle—because absence of those qualities in home-life tend to correlate with poverty, so, with not being able to afford to move to districts with expensive housing. The house prices are an important part of the reason, but not (mainly) because they enable higher tax revenues.
I'm not familiar with this. Searches yield articles about freezing of Planned Parenthood funding. Could you point me in the right direction for more details?
I think this view has been quite comprehensively debunked by now. I for one do not want to live in a country where most people have access to handguns.
Because it works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...
2A was intended to allow the populace to keep government in check. In the age of muskets that was probably good thinking, but try that now and see what happens.
Looking across the pond I see people being arrested for mean tweets and memes.
Seems rather further dystopian than a state mandating their public tax funded schools keep content neutral around divide topics - allowing parents to make their decisions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Didn't you ever read a book that wasn't prescribed by the curriculum?
Don't take my nuance to mean that I approve of this or think it's a good idea.
I don't know. I don't live in Florida. If it's not against the law why should I care?
> Does it matter to American politicians that the majority of Americans are in favor of access to abortions?
Abortion is legal in my state. ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
Also, politics in America are way more messy than that. The choice becomes "People you agree 50% with or people you agree 20% with?". I would bet that if this were put to a statewide vote, it would not pass.
Which entity is more in touch with the wants and needs of Florida voters: Florida's state and local governments or the federal government in Washington?
FL laws take that power from communities and puts it in State level hands. Your point is upside-down and tries to paint heavy handed big-government rules as better in fact.
Also who said anything about DC? The point was about letting teachers, parents, and yes, minors; make choices for kids. This is whitewashing extremist beliefs over communities that very well may disagree, exactly what you imply this protects lol.
https://youtu.be/TwucVRj_mdc
With billions of books in the world, having a very short white list of books means the chances of a teacher suggesting a book that would inspire a particular kid plummets. We get a little closer to Farenheit 451 every passing day.
Don't you see how this is a direct example of teachers having outsized influence on students, and how they shouldn't be allowed to 'teach' them whatever the please?
People put education on some kind of pedestal. Like it's a magical place of discovery. No, it's to provide basic literacy and math skills to the poor so they can function in society.
Well that alone explains a lot of the problems this country is in, and is not the stunning argument for your side you may believe it to be.
I’ll see if I can find a link.
EDIT: Found one. https://nypost.com/2022/04/22/floridas-banned-math-textbooks...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-racist-florida-release...
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/7/14637626/implicit-as...
That argument may or may not be true in this particular case, but it's not some impossible thing that can't ever have a good reason behind it.
Edit: Also, don't confuse school libraries with public libraries. Schools make content-based decisions about what's appropriate for students all the time.
And who determines, with which justification, what should be taught to students? Teaching science and facts should never be something controversial, and I'd expect teachers to be able (and allowed to) make that decision - they know the children under their responsibility the best, not politicians.
lol. May I introduce you to the right-wing south. They can't even agree on the age of the earth.
What's the actual meaningful distinction here? Both are publicly funded, that students/kid can choose to go to and browse books in (but rarely do). It's not like kids are banned from public libraries.
But either way, governments cannot stop you from speaking. However, no government office, neither a school library nor a general public one, is or ought to be required to carry your speech.
That's the opposite of what's actually going on here, though. What's going on is that speech is being prohibited, not that it's being forced to be allowed.
Make no mistake, schools make choices all the time. This decision align those choices to far more insane rules by..guess what...an activist government instead.
A great example of this is John Green's Looking For Alaska. It has a sex scene that is objectively banned by this law.
That very sex scene is an example of why sex should not be the primary goal of a relationship (it goes poorly) and is directly contrasted with a moment of actual love in the very next chapter as an example of how sex is not the most valuable thing about a relationship. It is a scapegoat for politicians and angry...activist...PTA members to simplify the topic "This book has a charater giving a BLOW JOB!!! My 16 year old is asked to READ IT?! These teachers and librarians are sick!" NOBODY's KID SHOULD READ IT.
Might I add, almost EVERY school keeps a list of alternative books and gives parents the option to opt out.
It's Gay marriage and descriptions of sex today, Alan Turing today cannot be fully explained in a book.
Maybe tomorrow it will be Hitler. "It is too violent of a topic and parents should have the right to keep their kids from reading left-wing details like the holocaust."
What things? Can you provide specific examples, lesson plans, or classes of these concepts being taught?
There are books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers. Why do you want teenagers thinking that having sex before you are 18 is normal? Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults. The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
A lot of people replying to this skipped over part of this comment.
I DO NOT AGREE WITH THIS ARGUMENT. I AM JUST PUTTING IT HERE TO ANSWER THE QUESTION!!!!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
It is normal. Teenagers have sex all of the time, and to ignore it and pretend it doesn't happen is dangerous.
> Kids shouldn't be reading stuff about sex (gay, straight, or otherwise) before they are adults.
Yes, they should. How else do they become functional adults? They need to learn so they can make the right choices when it comes to sex, whether that's abstinence, birth control, etc.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
Yikes. So you're saying people who teach sex ed are "groomers"? If I give my kid a "birds and the bees" book when she's a teenager or younger, I'm a "groomer"? I'm getting the feeling that this is just more right-wing projection.
Having some form of sexual interaction with peers certainly isn't universal but it is well within "normal" for teenagers. The mechanisms of our legal system require us to treat majority as a binary state that people just switch on one day at age 18, but actual development doesn't work like that in any way.
If you enforce on actual people the legal fiction that no one under 18 has ever encountered sexual material in the world or in their own mind, you're creating all sorts of vulnerabilities for them when they do reach 18 and have minimal awareness of their own boundaries, right to have them, and practice enforcing them.
> The only people who would be opposed to that sort of thing are groomers.
"Groomers" is very commonly used in this context as a homophoblic slur, conflating queer people with child abuse and pedophilia. If that's not your intention I suggest you don't use it in this way in conversations like this. Grooming is certainly a very serious form of child abuse. Coincidentally I'm sure, depictions of it are also banned by this restriction on books. You are not going to help youths realize they are in this situation if you prevent them from ever engaging with the stories of others who have been.
People under 18 have sex all the time, and they should absolutely be reading stuff about sex before then.
Or not at all and be really surprised when they get pregnant.
It is normal. Actually, it's more normal than having sex for the first time after the age of 18, statistically speaking; while the average age of virginity loss in the US has gradually increased over time, it's still at something like 17.
It's not actually primarily "books which contain explicit depictions of sex between teenagers" that are being challenged by this. It's books talking about the existence of gay, trans, and other queer people as something other than a horrible sin or a mental defect.
If it were just what you say, then yes, that would still be wrong, and stupid...but what it is, in fact, is wrong, stupid, and horrendously bigoted.
The books that just talk about standard sex education and give an overview of sexuality aren't a problem. It's these other ones that attempt to push the boundaries to their extremes, that parents and teachers are pushing back on.
I guarantee you there aren't more than 1 or 2 parents or teachers in the entire country (possibly not even that many, but there's always some nutcase somewhere) who genuinely think that having books on anal fisting available to elementary schoolers is a good thing.
Books on being trans aren't remotely comparable. And, just as an aside, if someone realizes they're trans before they go any significant amount through puberty, they can take very safe hormone treatments in order to ensure they never have to have more expensive and potentially traumatic surgery to present as their true gender.
If mature adults want to take wrong-sex hormones, get bits chopped off and turned inside out, and so on, after a long period of consultation and contemplation, then that's acceptable, if that's what they truly need.
But showing this stuff to kids, as if it's a normal option? No way. This is child abuse.
It's also completely unlike being gay, lesbian or bisexual, where no bodily changes whatsoever are encouraged or needed. Also there's no identifying as something you're not, into groups where you don't belong, i.e. so many males thinking it's their right to barge into as many female-only spaces as possible. Really the T is nothing like the LGB at all, it's just that activists use the latter as a shield against criticism of the absurd and abusive demands they're making.
I guess teachers thought that because they have access to other people's children, they're allowed to put whatever ideas into their heads that they please. Those days are coming to a close.
It's mandatory state/public education, so the curriculum is legislated and kids are forced to be there, and to start, we have a captive audience. The subject legislation was in response to some arguably extreme cases where there is a concerted effort to distribute lgbtq pornography to kids as a way to use critical theories to shift social norms around sexuality, but uniquely using intersectionality - a recognized political pressure technique to do so. It doesn't work on the majority of adults who see it for what it is, and so its proponents have moved upstream and turned to using the tactic directly on children where they will not encounter resistance to the change they seek to make.
There is little argument that the teachers and advocates for these materials in elementary schools have a stated desire to abolish the civilization these children would otherwise grow up to inherit and become stewards of. Call it what you will, all the words are artifacts of the same basic critical theory and premises ('ist, 'phobic, anti-' etc.) that form a whole new language one either speaks and thinks in, or does not. It's designed to alienate and atomize people so as to manage and extract value from the conflicts you as an activist create. Those words are threats it uses to protect the real underlying ideology from rational scrutiny. From an educational perspective, this is not the drawing out and developing of childrens minds, but rather the funneling and shaping them as an openly stated means to create young activists intent on demolishing the pillars of social stability from which all social growth and progress has emerged.
Instead of having kids and raising them the way religion-based societies and cultures do, mormons, muslims, hindus, christians, etc. and being the change, these activists are leveraging the mandates of the education system to undermine the society they wish to upend. A key front in this is teaching intersectionality, where your beliefs become immutable identities under the umbrella of a system of infinitely regressing subjectivity and criticism instead of deriving a free and independent identity from experience and competence. I'm not going to relitigate intersectionality on this thread other than to say it was invented and not discovered, and all of its proponents' arguments reduce to "everything is made of words, words have no fixed meaning, so nothing has fixed meaning, therefore - all things meaning nothing - my belief is equivalent to your experience, there is only struggle for power, and if you disagree, you are my antagonist." It's nihilism all the way down. They imagine themselves engaged in a kind of science by picking random disciplines and testing them to dissolve in their solipsisms.
To do this, some activists are using pornography as a vehicle to inject this critical narrative into the sexual developent of school children, and adulterate these kids' sense of truth and reality by claiming the new concepts in the minds of children as they begin to apprehend them, with words and narrative that subordinates them to the system of criticism the activists are militating for, and with the neutralizing uncertainties of their theory. Florida's legislature has reacted to it by requiring scrutiny of what goes into those schools.
That is a charitable case for Florida's reaction. I can't defend individuals actuated by deeply held hatreds, or who this view might have something in common with, but if we are going to learn about why someone would go so far as to ban this material, it's important to do so with tools that are not merely the artifacts of the hall of mirrors critical theory solipsisms this virus is using to fillibuster, disrupt, harass, and delay rational discussion about it.
Which activists would those be, and what pornography?
Toward quality discussion, the culture war issue over this isn't just about provincials banning books and how it's a symbolic faux pas, there are very real networks and NGOs coordinating to spread this specific ideology as a means to destablize societies so as to coopt and dominate them, using a really old playbook, and the tools themselves are the conflict and outrage itself, not the details of what those are about. The Florida legislation isn't just a sop to a reactionary base, it's strategic by people who have just begun to fight something they recognize as much worse. When you stop seeing your opponents as merely ignorant and realize they're being as smart and strategic as you are, it's a very different perspective.
For background, I would read Arendt and Solzhenitsyn who saw it first hand, and as a foundation for what current writers like Mattias Desmet, and in a more accessibly popular sense James Lindsay have been writing about with significant depth. All of them write about how popular movements with good and sincere intentions are co-opted and used as vassals for one much more dangerous movement.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_You_Live_In
There are more instances than the one this comment references.
However, I will elaborate further on the ideas of Arendt and Desmet that the object of the overarching movement is to make sure that individuals believe and trust nothing, even their own senses, because it will prevent them from resisting the small cadre of people who have historically followed these tactics with violence and terror to subordinate populations. The root of all social "theory," is to produce intellectually stultifying gibberish engines. It's chaff. Their jargon is designed to cost you time, create uncertainty, and "neutralize" you so that the sufficient condition of good men doing nothing is met.
The charitable rationale for people revolting against social justice in schools is that they recognize it is disingenuous, and that it's incumbent on the advocates of these theories to demonstrate that they are compassionate, honest, magnanimous, humane, and exercise other positive viritues, as if they aren't, you probably don't want them near your kids.
The same people who oppose freedom of speech are over here supporting DeSantis and his crusade against education and his push for bigger government.
This law seems like an extreme reaction, but to what many people believe is already an extreme situation.
See also: https://youtu.be/TwucVRj_mdc
I think I'm missing your point here because you seem to not mind the indoctrination that is the basis of having a public education system in the first place, but you started with protesting public education's indoctrination in general, and then when you narrowed it, of course I agree with you because it's never worked that way because it'd be logistically impossible and therefore it most certainly isn't happening right now and therefore unrelated to your original protesting of indoctrination.
> This law seems like an extreme reaction, but to what many people believe is already an extreme situation.
Many people believe a lot of really dumb things, that doesn't mean anyone should care about what they think or act based on it.
The whole point is that they have to remove ALL books that aren't approved through The Process. Of course there's not going to be a list of those. There isn't some master list of books that are lying around classrooms everywhere.
The rules would block a book like East of Eden. Pornographic elements and too advanced for kids (even if it isn’t)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Tango_Makes_Three
- https://www.fox13news.com/news/florida-school-district-bans-...
So you should teach how to read graphs in Math. But if those graphs show that racial prejudice exists, that's a felony. Simple.
Prepare for “route around the damage” moment where districts are going to start requiring teachers to get media specialist certified just to avoid the legal headache.
I am not a lawyer, but the fact that it is a felony seems particularly aggressive to me. Usually stuff like this (related to how a school is run) is usually administrative law and the school district would be the one responsible for insuring that it is enforced (so they might fire a teacher for non-compliance, but it would be the district itself being taken to administrative court by the state government for not following the law, rather than a specific teacher). This is also just bad in general, but the fact that the law criminally targets teachers rather than being put into the boring administrative code just shows how politically and ideologically motivated this is.
Florida already has the worst teacher shortage in the nation: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2023/01/22/our-child...
I’m not sure I follow.
M*A*S*H would be condemned as anti-veteran today.
I'm not sure I follow.
Government regulations rarely make any logical sense
PhDs -- yes. They're expected to teach or TA.
Most of my mentoring and tutoring experience came from new hires at work.
The lowest scores on the ASVAB are for things like cooks or truck drivers, or things like fuel filtration specialists aka gas station attendants in cammo.
None are qualified to teach Calc I but some might not be qualified to teach much of anything.
[1]https://www.fldoe.org/finance/fl-edu-finance-program-fefp/ft...
[2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_203.20.a...
How many Kindergarten libraries do you think have pornography in them? Seriously. What has given you the impression that this is happening? What proof have you been offered?
This is very obviously an attempt to control what kids are allowed to learn from the top down using “pornography” as an excuse.
1) consent (whether it mentions sex or not)
2) the child's own body (in ways designed to help them recognize and avoid things like sexual abuse)
3) queer issues of any kind, but especially trans issues
as pornographic, regardless of the actual content, so that they can ban it and claim they're saving the poor children from horrible, horrible sexual material.
This is not a new movement; conservatives have been trying to ban queer people from any kind of public visibility for decades by claiming that their very existence is sexual, ignoring the fact that heterosexual romance and sex is being shoved into our faces constantly, often in far more blatant ways, and often in media explicitly aimed at children. They're merely redoubling their efforts now that it's becoming clear that society at large is starting to genuinely accept trans people, which they cannot abide.
This is completely insane. How can this be even remotely constitutional? Please tell me at least the current Florida legislature is deeply unpopular because of their commitment to censorship and opposition to education.
Having a library of books is an easy way to encourage literacy, probably even the best way. It is not the only way.
Far more important to the development of literacy in children is the presence of books in the home. There are decades of statistics on the impact of just having a stack of books in the same home as the child.
All of this is also failing to touch on the problem that drew this overreaction. To be sure it is a huge over-extension of what the government ought to do. But the thing it was a reaction to... That never had anything to do with literacy, and everything to do with ideology. When one uses literacy as the shield, and depends on the perpetual good graces of people one has spent years demonizing on ideological grounds, one should expect damage to the very thing everyone thought was sacrosanct.
Of course, but that's not something schools have control over. Unless they can give a child a book on loan to take home. And that requires books in the school. And because different children have different interests and different reading issues, a wide selection of books is better than a narrow one.
> That never had anything to do with literacy, and everything to do with ideology.
Do you mean that the ban is about ideology, sacrificing children's access to reading in order to indoctrinate them into a state-approved ideology?
> When one uses literacy as the shield, and depends on the perpetual good graces of people one has spent years demonizing on ideological grounds, one should expect damage to the very thing everyone thought was sacrosanct.
They clearly don't think it's sacrosanct if they're sacrificing it this eagerly to hurt the people they want to demonize. I guess we're talking about gay people here? They want to demonize gay people, and want to restrict the book supply in order to indoctrinate children with that?
I also believe that most of this backlash is about children being able to freely access information that contradicts their parents' worldview. I have also seen strict parents punish their children for expressing differing beliefs and values. Queer kids get physically abused by their religious parents. I absolutely believe schools should be a safe place for students to learn and experiment with ideas and values.
Not to mention, strict informational control has long been a mechanism for abuse. I think there's probably a nexus between parents who object to their kids reading what they want and parents who utilize various physical and psychological abuses as "discipline".
I'd strongly prefer exposing kids, in an age-appropriate manner, of course, to the whole breadth of human ideology and life experiences, with different views on it, and teaching them to think for themselves.
But mostly, I've got a kid that's struggling to read, but has a couple of very strong interests (trains!) that I leverage to get him to read more. Restricting the diversity of books available because they need to go through some slow approval process first, will make it harder for him to access books that he's eager to read. Because the whitelisting process means that even books that aren't even the slightest bit objectionable, won't necessarily be available, and may have to wait until more mainstream books have been approved.
High schoolers are going through puberty and many are sexually active so statutes (s. 847.012) banning "detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement" in books are just puritanical nonsense. That would definitely rule out ASOIAF and probably 1984. I'm pretty sure it would even rule out some young adult novels I read in high school and high schoolers are the target audience.
For lower grade levels I suppose there is maybe a more reasonable argument to be had over what is age appropriate but "felony for unapproved books" seems like a pretty absurd conclusion to reach.
Frankly I don't think I need any cover to demonize parents calling for book bans.
This isn't new. Florida teacher shortage has existed for a long time. It's because Florida doesn't pay their teachers. This isn't likely to change anytime soon because Republicans have had a stranglehold on Florida since 1999, and they are notoriously anti-education.
Is it anti-education, pro-poverty, or both?
They really got you vibing on that us v them toxicity don't they.
The data[0] doesn't support that claim.
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/welfare-rec...
Of course you can live on welfare alone. Many do, and in fact it can become a full time job just to stay on welfare, especially when it becomes multi-generational.
Source: a partner who worked in the welfare offices and dealt with such people (of all races).
This isn't my experience. Many who came into asking were even on minimum-wage jobs, just trying to survive.
Source: I worked in welfare offices and dealt with many people.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr...
Florida would have a booming economy if the governor's office and state administration was entirely staffed with armadillos. Florida's economy and low taxes are fueled by tourism, and since tourism is unlikely to go anywhere, neither is the booming economy, which has boomed through every administration, Republican or Democrat, since the end of WWII. There is nothing the fascist Santos administration could possibly do to either hurt or help Florida's economy, no matter how deeply he indulges his narcissism.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-elections/exit-polls
EDIT: Since I can't reply the the threads below me, "education" can't just be had in the classroom. In fact as an experienced developer almost all of my education was outside the classroom. I suspect this is the case for most fields.
EDIT 2: Higher skilled "educated" people like surgeons, urologists, anesthesiologists, oncologists and orthodontists vote Republican[3]
[3] http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/
Which has been true since the dawn of value exchange. That's part of why the outcry against "inequality" citing differences in income between a 20-year veteran of some career versus a new entrant in the market are so tough to swallow.
Wait twenty years... they'll be the same... Unless we change the rules to take it all away from everyone.
What you're describing is vocational training. Education typically includes forced ventures outside of one's own narrow worldview. That's why Republicans hate education. They want cogs with saleable vocational skills who won't question the narrow worldview that is preferred on the right.
https://flgov.com/2020/06/24/governor-ron-desantis-signs-his...
And is about to raise them more but with some possible union restrictions attached:
https://www.wfla.com/news/desantis-call-for-more-teacher-pay...
Most of the classrooms I remember fondly as a kid had a selection of magazines along the same lines as you'd find in the average dentist's waiting room plus a mix of books based on the teacher's tastes. "The Way Things Work" was a recurring favorite of mine that popped up in a lot of classrooms through my first few years of school.
1) Lower grades (i.e. k-6) will often keep a bunch of books in the classroom, so the kids have a selection available if they want to (or have to) read. This way they don't have to make a trip to the library to pick out a new book, as it can often be kinda difficult for a kid to find time to visit the library outside scheduled classroom visits, and that's an extra step between a kid wanting to read and being able to, that teachers would rather not have (since it might mean less reading). Often these sorts of classroom libraries are stocked by the teacher. Such libraries may be left behind by teachers retiring or otherwise leaving teaching, and the teacher replacing them may keep part or all of the library.
2) Upper grades, where you start having dedicated English or "Language Arts" classrooms, will often keep classroom sets (that is, enough books for every kid to have one at once) of the books the classes teach. Often there will also be other individual books, plus maybe some classroom sets of books that the teacher doesn't teach (maybe they switched their program up a bit, or maybe they're left overs from a previous teacher)—a teacher may keep these around or stock such a small library themselves and let kids borrow them, because being an upper-grades English teacher tends to correspond with liking and wanting to encourage reading. Some lower grade (well, properly, middle-grade or what you might call "upper elementary", but I'm trying to keep it simple) classes may also keep a few classroom sets once the kids can read independently and full books are being taught to and read by the entire class at once (a 4th grade classroom might have a classroom set of Charlotte's Web or something like that)
[EDIT] LOL, on reflection that was really three cases with some overlap (classroom sets of books; miscellaneous books intended to be read in class; miscellaneous books intended to be borrowed) so, uh, worst structure for a comment ever, I guess.
That being said school libraries in America do tend to be walk in places where you can pick something up to read.
Working as designed. They cannot possibly be so ignorant as to claim good intentions.
But most ITT are outraged "florida won't let us show porn to children!"
Attacks on teachers never ‘as bad as right now’: union chief (2022) https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3621251-attacks...
Right-Wing Money Is Greasing the Anti-Teachers Union Skids (2018) \https://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2018/07/13/ri...
The Right-Wing Assault on Teachers’ Unions https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-the-right-w...
or recall Scott Walker and what he did in Wisconsin.
Or even look at the article currently under discussion, which makes it a FELONY for a teacher to have the "wrong" books in the classroom. How can you say that is not an attack on teachers?
I challenge you to contact any person who has worked in public education for more than 5 years and get their view on the right wing. I think you'll find that there is an organized and well funded attack on US public education, which is driven by the right wing.
When "policy measures" include using state violence it's dishonest to not call them "'attacks' and 'assaults'".
https://www.heritage.org/the-given-name-act
(It claims to be about pronouns, and encouraging anti-lgbtq smears, but, if you read the bill, you'll find the reality is much worse.)
There are thousands of examples like this going back decades. You used the words "right wing", but I suspect you don't know what they mean. For example, you should read up on the blocking of the equal rights amendment, which was arguably the founding moment for the right wing in the US. It would have prevented discriminatory hiring by the US government.
Arguments against it included claiming it was a conspiracy between lesbians and government workers, and "you wouldn't want bathrooms to allow gays like desegregation did for blacks, right?", and lots of claims about how men would sexually assault women and children in bathrooms if it passed (the constitutional amendment had nothing to do with bathrooms).
More impactfully, to this day, Prop 13 is hailed as one of the biggest wins of the right wing in California, and it is largely responsible from taking our schools from top ten in the US to bottom ten.
Anyway, I'm guessing you don't support any of this nonsense based on the rest of your comment.
Nobody said it was universal. But it is incredibly dishonest to pretend that there isn't a huge effort to destroy public education among the right wing. Libraries are under attack across the nation, and there is a major push to dissolve the separation of church and state. This movement is underway, and it's being pushed by the right wing. That is not to say that every single conservative supports it.
> Additionally, making it a crime to teach is not a tactic that is being used by any mainstream political group or party.
Except, did you read the article? It's a felony for teachers to have wrongthink books in their classrooms. The Ministry of Truth maintains a list of permissible books. This is a law passed by DeSantis, the most likely 2024 candidate for president. If that ain't mainstream, I don't know what is.
we clearly want to a "Destroy public education" by making teachers accountable to parents which is a terrible thing according to the teachers union
//sidenote we also want to abolish all public unions (including teachers union) as public sector employees use their union to corrupt the election process in their favor screwing over the tax payer who ends up having no one in their favor in contract talks.
This sounds like trading away some freedom of association for a small group of people — ostensibly for the greater good — which isn’t very pro-liberty in my eyes. Where I live, while the taxpayers do not attend these contract talks we have the final word in that we ultimately decide to pass the school budget or not through voting.
Pure unbridled free market will crush unions anyway, both the kinds formed by corporations (collusion) and those formed by employees (union). There is no need to legislate such action as market forces influence actors towards the more economical choice.
Unless they are public sector union which face not market competition at all, as they are government employees. Thus the problem with them
I was very clear to not be "Anti-union" as you seem to claim but I am very much anti-PUBLIC SECTOR unions as there is clear conflict of interest inherent in those. Many libertrian are "pro union" for the private sector but are opposed to public sector union because of this clear conflict
The libertarian solution to the Teachers Union issue is to have schools run by private organizations not attached to the government, thus would be free to unionize and have all the union benefits.
So long as they are a public employee who vote, and who use their power to have outside influence over the ones who are supposed to be representing all taxpayers not just the ones in the union, there is a clear conflict of interest when it comes to PUBLIC sector unions.
Want to be in a union, support backpack funding of private schools and end public schools
Hell even FDR was opposed to Public Sector Unions
Agreed. There's really not analogy for this in the professional world, except for things that are _already a crime_ like fraud or negligence. I don't think most people on HN could be prosecuted just for failing to do their job to the satisfaction of their local government.
* Security clearances.
* Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) in finance.
* HIPAA in healthcare.
If the certificate is a prerequisite for all teachers to get jobs then they risk their employment if they're caught with the prohibited texts. So this would only result in teachers culling their libraries to avoid losing their job.
See also: vague abortion bans, where doctors have to wait for conditions to become acutely life-threatening before removing dead fetuses.
These people are just cruel and self serving. They are scoring points by being more and more radical and destroying lives in exchange. They are vile, and I consider their behavior more felonious than most felons.
The effort to recriminalize non-heteronormative behavior is a telling sign this party of small government and personal liberty has run out of motivational boogeymen.
All rather mind-blowing to be honest.
After the first 2 or 3 stories, you see there's a pattern. If this is honestly the first time you've ever heard of some zanny thing that the governor of Florida has done, then I'd have to ask what rock you've been under and is there enough room for me to join you there as it seems to be the only place to avoid Florida news.
Yes[0].
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451425/florida-social-m...
What they are doing is plain FUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt. And hell yes it works. Vague laws absolutely work, just look at recent cases where women had to wait days for a life-saving abortion because of insanely vague laws, e.g. [1].
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/idaho-woman-shares-19-day-misc...
In other words, we live in a world where a nontrivial percentage of the population, especially many in influential positions, have decided that they don’t need to obey laws they disagree with.
How else are you going to get people to comply with the law?
Note that I am not asserting that any law is “good” or “bad”. But the proper way to handle bad laws is to win elections and change them, or use public sentiment to pressure lawmakers to change them.
True advocates of small government support states' rights over the preposterous power grab of Wickard v. Filburn. Especially when it manifests as states not using their own resources to enforce the otherwise mostly unenforceable desires of the federal government.
The book that is the poster child for this is the cartoon book Gender Queer
https://www.westernjournal.com/book-depicting-child-pornogra...
A much more representative list is https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor... which tracks the 2021-2022 school year.
Applying this “sexually explicit” logic, then your left saying the network television comedy “Modern Family” is indistinguishable to the director’s cut of “Eyes Wide Shut”.
It’s straight up propaganda, meant to stigmatize non-straights as child predators. It’s not just a lie. It’s hate speech, spread for crass political gain. And it has no place in any society.
The entire point of laws like this is to empower the bureaucrats with a credible truncheon, so that you can't just laugh away their self-important nonsense. "Not so funny now is it, funny man?"
In my State, kids are taught about various opposing view points and how to make informed decisions. In that county, now it seems to be "my way or the highway".
So, I see kids were I live being more successful in life then the kids in that county.
So, thank you Manatee County for helping out my area.
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...
Trying to apply rational arguments to either "side" (of the coin) is inappropriate since neither come from rational positions. But there are plenty of people against the banning of both. They're just quieter without billion dollar lobbying groups required to achieve their goal of status quo.
But, if we want to be extra clear, legal minors at a public school don't have many civil rights. It's frustrating that they're treated so badly but that's the legal code. Technically it's probably legal to do this (but it should be challenged in court). Whereas adult citizens have far more clearly defined property rights; especially on their own property.
The censorship part of the story is a Trojan Horse for a terribly one-sided deal, in favor of the publisher, for every school district in Florida.
edit: everyone in my grade at least
Take this issue for example - if this passes, and a teacher gets a felony from suggesting a book off of the pre approved list, they probably can't vote anymore.
[1] https://www.findlaw.com/voting/my-voting-guide/can-felons-vo...
Consider the quote from Lyndon B. Johnson: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Now just swap out the hated group. That's why people are okay with it.
This law explicitly bans discussion of Gay people.
This highlights part of the growing movement and disagreement around culture shaping through kids.
To highlight this, if you take a look at school of educations mission statement[1]
> Through commitment to innovation, social justice, excellence in teaching and research, and partnerships, the School of Teacher Education will position itself as a national leader in shaping the next generation of educators to be agents of transformation in an ever‐changing world.
Other schools [2] in the US are more explicit on change...
> School of Education devoted to developing civically engaged children, youth, and adults for a diverse and inclusive society.
There are many parents who are not supportive of the drive for change. Often pushing views that parents don't agree with.
Books are a subtle way to bring in change. The ideas in them. Especially as elementary age kids who are impressionable learn to read from these books.
The disagreements between parents and some teachers around this is at the heart of laws like this.
[1] https://ccie.ucf.edu/teachered/mission/
[2] https://soe.umich.edu/about#mission-vision
Now we’re back at teachers here-and-they’re wanting to assert their belief system in the classroom and activist parents seeking to eliminate this issue… only the script is a bit flipped.
So, the question becomes should we keep schools neutral or not?
What is the role of school? Is the role to prep kids to go to college? Is it to drive social change? Is it to teach what kids need to perform common jobs? Is it to teach kids how to have skills to operate as adults (like managing their personal finances)?
These are questions we don't agree on as a culture.
A bunch of debate is rooted in disagreement as to what these should be.
There are really only two possible answers in the current public school systenlm:
1. Whatever a broad consensus of people want them to do.
2. Whatever a slim majority can impose on the rest.
As consensus evaporates, we are left with the latter. This plays out in red/blue states differently.
Eventually, we may need to move to a voucher system so that the parents just pick a school that they like.
There is one more option. Have a small group of people push their agenda while the masses are mostly unaware.
There's an obvious difference here via the 1st amendment, which doesn't regulate social issues, but that's more legal technicality than philosophy.
My experience as a kid (after these crusades) was that religion wasn't forbidden as a topic, but that endorsement or derision of any particular religion was forbidden. E.g. it would be fine to ask what the difference in belief is between a Catholic and an Amish, but a teacher would probably refuse to answer if asked which one is better supported by historical fact. One of the history classes spent a week or two on the various common religions.
If I'm recalling correctly, the school library had copies of at least the Bible, the Quran and a Hebrew Bible (I feel like there was a better term but I can't recall it). There wasn't an attempt to hide the information, the school just couldn't endorse a particular religion. Tolerance was generally encouraged to all religions (or lack thereof).
This feels like it's going further than the religious issues. It's an attempt to suppress knowledge, rather than to suppress opinion.
Bullshit. There was a backlash against forced Christian prayer, as there should be.
> teachers here-and-they’re wanting to assert their belief system in the classroom
Bullshit. Making a wide variety of books available to interested students is literally the opposite of asserting a specific belief system.
> activist parents
Bullshit. This is very clearly neo-fascist alt-right book-burners trying to bring about white Christian nationalism. Very clearly: they're not even trying to hide this fact. Any argument that does not acknowledge this is a bald-faced attempt to instate white Christian nationalism is not in good faith.
> the question becomes should we keep schools neutral or not?
Bullshit. This is a clear attempt to set the standard for "neutral" as "white Christian nationalist" and anything other than that as non-neutral.
> my intellectually curious atheist self
Green username, bad-faith argument filled with bullshit. Why do I get this feeling this statement is similar to "as a gay black man ..."
Need I remind you that the US is one nation _under God_?
> Bullshit. Making a wide variety of books available to interested students is literally the opposite of asserting a specific belief system.
It'll be quite "convenient" if certain books had more space on the shelves than others.
> Green username, bad-faith argument filled with bullshit. Why do I get this feeling this statement is similar to "as a gay black man ..."
Please make sure you're following the HackerNews commenting guidelines. :>
I refused to recite that fascist bullshit in school, and "under God" was added by Dwight Eisenhower in 1954. I disagree that the US is "under God". What's your point? You're going to come to my house and wreck the place if I don't kneel for your God? What are you even talking about?
> It'll be quite "convenient" if certain books had more space on the shelves than others.
What are you talking about? Say what you mean. Otherwise it'll be quite "convenient" if your grandmother turns out to be a bicycle.
> Please make sure you're following the HackerNews commenting guidelines. :>
"Assume good faith" stops when strong evidence presented that the argument is in bad faith. I stated what that evidence was.
No, there wasn't.
There has historically been litigation against forced or state-agent-led prayer, and that litigation was often by Christian (or Christian-adjacent; boundaries are disputed) groups.
?> School of Education devoted to developing civically engaged children, youth, and adults for a diverse and inclusive society.
Why is developing "civic engagement" among our population a bad thing?
Why is a "diverse and inclusive" society a bad thing?
Not being snarky here, I just really don't understand how reducing civic engagement and excluding those who are "different" are good things.
Perhaps you could explain your reasoning around that?
With the school his is from, look at what their vision isn't. It's not to create well educated people who can excel at their jobs. Their vision isn't to create people who are self sustaining adults who can operate in society.
Their vision is to get people civically engaged around certain forms of change.
The specific forms of change are not agreed to as a culture in the US. This is an area where we don't have good in depth thoughtful conversations, either.
>The specific forms of change are not agreed to as a culture in the US. This is an area where we don't have good in depth thoughtful conversations, either.
That's not what you initially said, nor do I understand how "civic engagement" is ever a bad thing. In fact, we need lots more of it.
You are applying ("The specific forms of change are not agreed to as a culture in the US") your trained-in prejudices as the right way, the only way. That's a little disturbing.
I'd add, as far as creating civic engagement is concerned, that you should never, metaphorically (and literally) speaking, hand someone a gun unless you know where they're going to point it.
I, and most reasonable humans, want more civic engagement from everyone. Including those with whom we disagree. Because that's how we make sure our society and government are working.
Discouraging civic engagement for any reason is bad, IMHO.
It's unfortunate that you don't come right out and say what you mean, rather than using inference and innuendo: You don't like what other folks want, so you want to ban it, or at least discredit those you believe disagree with you. At least that's my take on your comments.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
> Discouraging civic engagement for any reason is bad, IMHO.
When we deal with things there are priorities. What's the most important, what's less important, what's mildly important, etc.
Where does pushing for civic engagement relate priority wise with things like being able to handle your finances as an adult? Or being able to take care of your home? Or being able to hold a job? Or being prepared for college (if that's your route)?
The vision, in this case, points to civic engagement. It leaves out the others which makes them less of a priority.
Now, relate that to things like skilled trades. That's not something you need a college degree for and doing those jobs doesn't relate to being civically engaged. Many schools don't provide the foundation for people to even start in skilled trades even though we have a lack of skilled trades folks that's growing.
This is a simple angle for priorities.
Even within Civic Engagement there are priorities. Who gets to choose the priorities to steer the kids into? At what age does the steering start? Who gets to prioritize that?
Should it be university professors putting together programs for teachers to go through? Then those teachers implement those ideas with their students? Should it be the general public opinions?
Priorities are multi-dimensional. The leaders who lead our school leaders are setting the agenda. And, there are a bunch of people who disagree with that.
Again, please note, I'm not stating my opinion on these topics. I'm trying to highlight a little deeper on the root.
Not bad. Still a bunch of mealy-mouthed bullshit, but a little better.
Keep working on it. Perhaps you might one day convince someone you're actually a reasonable human being. I won't hold my breath.
Health and good fortune to you.
> Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
The parent comment quite right out says the problem is prioritization. I'd rather see "critical thinking, first order logic and math" in place of "civic engagement". You say yourself "you should never, metaphorically (and literally) speaking, hand someone a gun unless you know where they're going to point it". In my view, inducing "civic engagement" is "giving a gun", and teaching "where ... to point it" is math.
Actually, the grandparent comment[0] says nothing of the sort. mfer brings up prioritization in their response[1] to my comment.
>You say yourself "you should never, metaphorically (and literally) speaking, hand someone a gun unless you know where they're going to point it".
I do. And teaching civics is that gun. And understanding how our government and society functions is a powerful tool. Everyone should be taught such things, regardless of how they may use them.
My point is that teaching civic engagement does not "tell people where to point" that metaphorical gun. Rather, it gives people the knowledge and understanding to engage and interact with their society and political system. For whatever purpose a person feels appropriate.
Teaching someone how our system of government works and encouraging them to make use of that knowledge doesn't tell them "where to point" that knowledge.
I'd add that if you're ignorant of such things, you deprive yourself of knowledge that will allow you to interact more effectively with our system of government.
And understanding how our system works and how to utilize the power (and responsibility) inherent in citizenship is critical to maintaining a free, open and democratic society.
That's not to say that teaching math or literacy or science or how to tie your shoes isn't important. They absolutely are, and no one here (or in any of the links provided by GP) says they aren't.
In fact, mfer didn't mention "prioritization" until I called them out for their "dog whistles"[2].
I don't know GP or what's in their mind, nor do I pretend to do so. All I can do in that respect is draw conclusions from what they write.
I did so. You apparently disagree with my assessment and perhaps I'm way off base.
But the argument made by mfer in the comment to which I replied had all the hallmarks of coded language slamming "academia" and pedagogy, with absolutely zero evidence or support for such an attitude among academics. It's a poster boy for "those academics and educated elites are indoctrinating our kids into destroying the nation."
Which is scaremongering and "othering"[3] of our fellow Americans. And I take great umbrage to anyone (including other Americans) who want to make their fellow countrymen "the enemy."
Not just because it's promoting division to advance a political agenda, but also because it's intellectually dishonest to cherry pick quotes in order to demonize others.
Finally, I'd point out that most of the rhetoric around all the bashing of civil society seems to be done by folks who don't actually understand how our systems work. Which is the best argument for teaching civics/civic engagement, IMHO.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34492386
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34493562
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics)
[3] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/other...
Edit: Added reference for the term "othering." Corrected my prose.
This is a rather lengthy response that starts wrong in the very first paragraph. From [0]:
> With the school his is from, look at what their vision isn't. It's not to create well educated people who can excel at their jobs. Their vision isn't to create people who are self sustaining adults who can operate in society.
> Their vision is to get people civically engaged around certain forms of change.
This reads to me clear as day as mfer saying they should prioritize ~getting educated people with skills~ over ~civically engaged~ + ~certain forms of change~.
The comment [1] that you referred to was not even published yet when I started writing mine. I will only be off to read his own response after I finish this one.
To add to that, neither mfer's comment, nor mine ever imply civics are not important and should not be taught.
(this is not an exaggeration—I have a sickness that causes me to be fascinated by right-wing media, so I watch/read/listen-to quite a bit of it)
Teachers are responsible for teaching kids how to read, write, do math, learn the basic geography of the world, to learn sports, possibly learn music, maybe learn how to manage money, learn to use tools, program computers, and so much more.
What priorities are the highest? Should learning math be at the top? Should kids still learn cursive? Does memorizing spelling matter now?
The vision statement says that being civically engaged around diversity and inclusion sits above those other things. People chase after visions.
A lot of people don't agree on this. Even those in the middle.
Is that correct?
Edit: Clarified my prose.
It is however a great tool for parents to see how utterly disturbed the books the schools are giving their kids are, and if they're smart pull them into homeschooling.