When we were doing our virtual learning – we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing school work. One of them was googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus. Whenever they follow the Google Doodle links or whatever, right, we make note of those kids and the things that they bring up with each other in chats or email or whatever,”
Are the kids or their parents aware that their searches, e-mails, and chats are being monitored this way? And how exactly does this surveillance work? Are their teachers the only ones that get this data, or is there a private company the schools are partnered with that also hoovers up everything?
This gross violation of privacy is the bigger story, in my opinion.
Marion Township in Pennsylvania had to pay out the nose a few years ago because of staff spying on children at home via webcams in school issued laptops.
Why are teachers being allowed to spy on students at home? I can understand having remote access to view a laptop during school hours within programs used for school. But to have unfettered access to their search history? Or unfettered access to dial in and observe whenever they feel?
> we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing school work.
The perverts at Marion School district had similar attitudes and look where that got them.
Yes, the kids and parents are aware that the teachers are watching them during virtual school hours. Kids who were watching YouTube or playing games in class were reprimanded on the spot.
Monitoring student-to-student chat and e-mail, even during school hours*, is several steps too far, in my opinion. Like placing microphones at every desk. Such measures may be justifiable only during tests.
*Do e-mails or chat messages sent outside school hours, or during recess, remain private?
Students speaking to each other or texting each other in class would be reprimanded. This really is no different from before except that they can more easily get away with it by using another device to communicate. The students are fully aware that their school device is monitored during class.
I don't take issue with reprimands. I take issue with their conversations being recorded. Which absolutely is different than before, when whispering to a classmate, even during class, would remain reasonably private. Unless a microphone was installed at every desk.
> their school device is monitored during class.
So messages sent during recess, or after hours, are not recorded? Even if part of a chat conversation or e-mail chain where some messages were sent during class? Or is the entire device monitored, meaning if they view during class a chat conversation that took place after-school, the entire conversation is recorded? Or even if they don't view it during class? You said the device is monitored, so would that include all the chat logs and e-mails stored on it? Chats and e-mails that would leave students socially hermits if they ignored out of a desire for privacy.
The example document you linked only mentions screen-recording, that the student is alerted to when it's activated. Are you sure that's the full extent of their spying capabilities, or that it's the same service these teachers were discussing? It does not seem to enable the kind of self-professed "stalking" these teachers described.
The ones where kids chat about or search for non-school-related, very delicate and private topics, with their teacher digitally looking over their shoulder (to which the stalking software you implied they use would have alerted the students - or so the brochure claims).
It's possible the kids don't care about the spying, and keep discussing/searching for those topics even when the "You are being monitored" notification pops up. But I don't find that likely. Nor would the teachers describe it as "stalking" if that information was shared willingly.
Maybe by suddenly turning on screen recording, teachers were able to catch snapshots of chats and searches before the students could close those windows? But that is still a gross violation of privacy, and definitely not "no different from before".
Those are done by looking at their screens. The teachers are likely notified if anyone is not looking at their Zoom window and then just go over and see what they're doing. Searching for topics that happen to cross your mind is hard to resist, and the students likely don't care if the teachers know they are searching about LGBT rights or clicking on the Google Doodle. Why would they?
More reason for me to distrust public school systems. Big red flag in an educator if they're trying to "get to the kids" early about anything other than what the agreed upon curriculum is.
If a student shows up with visible bruises from domestic abuse, should the teacher attempt to "get to" that child, or just focus on the agreed-upon curriculum?
If the chess club coach notices that a student displays aptitude at strategic thinking, would it be fair to invite them to attend chess club? If the student's parent is upset by the child attending chess club, does the school have a duty to inform them, or does the child have freedom of association?
That said, I'm pretty uncomfortable with teachers having visibility into kids' Google searches, unless the kids know that they're under such scrutiny.
If any person notices evidence of domestic abuse or someone's aptitude they are liable to do what they can do support them. The context here is they're trying to get to the child to influence them into their own worldview. Should we trust our public school teachers with that much responsibility? If your answer is yes, then you should ask yourself what would you do if the worldview was the one you hate the most.
If the worldview you "hate the most" is one where LGBTQ kids are safe and loved and accepted, then forgive me if I don't have much sympathy for your position here.
Christianity exposes a binary: those who are not for me are against me.
CRT theorists propose the same binary: those who are not pro-CRT support racism.
It is possible to be against both racism and CRT.
CRT is not scientific. It is ahistorical, based on storytelling and disagrees with basic fundamental statistics. It is a religion with followers and evangelists, demons and devils. It even has a salvation arc, original sin and the "sins of the father" as concepts. Blood guilt is not science.
Let's be very specific. The teachers are teaching kids to be nice to each other. That's what you're objecting to here. Teaching kids to be nice to LGBT people or teaching kids that math is important are both "[influencing kids] into their own worldview." Be very specific about why you object to one and not the other.
Domestic abuse is a crime, and there is a civic duty to report it. I don't know the details but in the most serious cases, it can be illegal not to, and the law protects those who do.
Having an opinion is not a crime neither is being straight, gay or whatever you can think of as long as it is safe, sane and consensual.
And generally, when a kid shows strategic thinking, the school tells the parents about it and the chess club. There may be reasons why parents don't want their kid to play chess, and if it is not part of the curriculum, it is not something for the school to decide, they can make suggestions but parents have the final word.
Also, noticing strategic thinking does not need to involve spying. If the chess coach looked as search histories for recruitment, that would be a problem.
If a student shows up with visible bruises as the result of domestic abuse the teacher is supposed to make a report to CPS and let the professionals handle it (teachers are mandated reporters in the United States).
There's orders of magnitude difference between the chess club coach noticing a student displays aptitude and inviting them to join the club and a teacher _actively searching_ a students computer for "evidence" of them supporting the teachers politics-du-jour.
What happens to a student that shows an interest in things that are vaguely antithentical to teachers like these, say for example: guns? With a student being caught Googling "biggest sniper rifle in the world".
Contrary opinion: all this is good, actually. School should be a safe place for LGBTQA and questioning kids when home is not a safe environment. The teachers quoted all sound like they are doing a great job.
It actually is the job of teachers to raise kids though.
Just because a teacher is teaching a specific subject doesn't mean they're unable to also help the kid with growing up?
Recognizing and providing direction is specifically what a teacher is supposed to do.
One major part of school is to give children the ability to have more trusted alerts to help them understand the world and not keep them isolated into a single world view of their parents.
Well, I disagree that it's the job of teachers to raise kids. That's entirely the job of a parent, teachers can help at will, but that's too much of a burden to place on them.
Raising kids is hard and difficult and the person with the greatest incentive to put in the best efforts to do so is a parent.
I never said it's only the job of the teachers. Raising kids is realistically the job of everyone, but more importantly trusted adults in the life of the kid.
Especially because in a lot of abusive cases, kids need another trusted adult in case they need to report what's going on and get guidance from them.
More importantly, what makes them qualified to do so? How do I know, as a parent, that they are actually making the school a safer place for everyone and not spewing their own ideology?
Their teaching credentials and oversight. How do I know, as a fellow member of society, that you are raising your children to participate politely in society instead of to harass minority groups?
> Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.
This sure sounds like a lot more than "telling our kids that racism is bad".
We would all benefit from a direct link to a recording or summary from this CTA conference. I suspect the reality is more banal than claimed: teachers are frequently the only (trustworthy) adult contacts outside of a child's family, and can be a resource for children who might otherwise be pushed into conversion therapy or other objectively harmful and outright illegal[1] "treatments" by their guardians.
Ya, it very well may be. I make no claims about the integrity of Abigail's transcription here. She may well be severely misrepresenting things. But if so, that's where the criticism should be located.
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this objection. If the objection is to surveillance of the students, I don't see how it would be any better to inform parents about participation in LGBTQ clubs, given how parents would be able to violate the privacy of their children far beyond merely providing them access to a club, and some would be motivated to if they knew their children identified as LGBTQ. If the objection is that parents _should_ be able to monitor their children in this way, I'd have to disagree; having sympathetic adults be the ones who find out seems better in virtually every way. And if the objection is that nobody should be monitoring the kids at all, I think you're either underestimating how little control minors have on their lives in general, and focusing on LGBTQ students getting help is probably not the most effective way to argue for a much larger structural change in society.
> If the objection is to surveillance of the students, I don't see how it would be any better to inform parents about participation in LGBTQ clubs
There's a difference between simply not informing them and actively hiding the information from them. Aibgail implies they are doing the latter. She may be lying or misrepresenting things, but the latter is bad.
What's being done here is heavy surveillance by the school, and the exclusion of that surveillance information from the parents. If the argument is that kids have no right to privacy, fine - share it with the parents.
But regardless of the merit of the particular ideas under discussion now, they are a lot richer and more complex than simply telling kids "racism is bad".
Well, one of the basic premises of public schooling is that the parents have a significant say in what is taught, via the election of school boards and other politicians. This report details a subversion of the 'consent of the governed', which is troubling.
It's remarkable how the underlying grievance has been dressed up over the years.
I remember how it was teachers "failing" to "teach the controversy" re: evolution when I was in middle school; now they're "subverting" the democratic will! Gack.
I don't know what else you'd call it if an unelected organization uses the governments money & power to do things that the public doesn't want. I am open to using different terminology, in case you have any suggestions.
I think the civil service is supposed to execute the laws of the jurisdiction, and defer to the elected branches when there are policy decisions to be made. If the unions are making their own policies, it doesn't really matter whom the electorate has appointed.
I would use the same term ('subvert') for a government contractor siphoning government funds for activities outside their contract terms. I really don't know what else to call this.
I think a concrete example of a law being broken by teachers not being actively homophobic or transphobic would be a substantive contribution to this discussion. Until then, it's not clear what law or regulation the teachers represented by the CTA are violating.
It seems like the CTA is attempting to make policy, without obviously violating laws. Areas without clear policies either require clarification by the elected officials, or should be left to individuals in the field. Unions and corporate lobby groups have no place in making policy.
Unions shaping policy is a very controversial subject, and I believe that there is no widespread consensus on whether it should or should not be permitted. It is one of the arguments made against public-sector unions, in that they have an improper influence on government policy, and thus undermine the democratic process.
I thought unions existed to collectively bargain for compensation and working conditions. When working conditions are related to policy, they can negotiate with the employer for 'concessions' (or agreements as the case may be). One (potential) problem occurs when the politicians and the unions agree on something, and enter into contracts with the purpose of 'locking-in' policy decisions beyond the politicians' terms.
In the case of workplace conditions and such, sure. But there's a huge issue of moral hazard when it comes to unions lobbying or influencing public policy more generally for their own benefit, for example with prison guard unions opposing the legalization of marijuana. Locking people in cages for the sale of a relatively harmless plant might benefit the prison guards, but that benefit is vastly outweighed by the harm to society.
Whenever someone speaks in lofty ideals it's always important to get them to be specific about what those ideals look like in practice, and be specific about what they're looking for.
"Subversion of the consent of the governed" can be anywhere from "making the kids smoke cigarettes at recess" to "teaching the works of MLK Jr. even though it makes local parents uncomfortable".
The classic example of this is the whole "states' rights" canard re: the American Civil War. The states' rights to what, exactly?
People often defend the hard-to-defend by talking in generalities and appealing to abstractions. The real test of the idea is if you can defend it both generally and specifically.
>"The classic example of this is the whole "states' rights" canard re: the American Civil War. The states' rights to what, exactly?"
The states have rights according to the tenth amendment (the last amendment in the 'Bill of Rights'):
>"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The declarations of secession by Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and Texas only mention slavery 83 times [1][2] between them, but if revisionists are to be believed, they were obviously not about a state's right to enslave human beings and to own them as property. [3]
I like it when people link the actual declarations, because Mississippi's in particular is a doozy:
> Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
Indeed you're still talking in generalities: which rights were being asserted under this reading of the Constitution?
The quote you provided could mean literally anything, from regulating the sale of beef to taxing bread. I suspect neither hamburgers nor dinner rolls were the subject of the Civil War.
Also worth mentioning that prior to the Civil War the South was very much opposed to states rights because that would have allowed northern states to block the capture and return of runaway slaves.
Oh come on, parents should obviously have the final say in what their kids are taught (via voting for school boards, etc.). How is this even remotely controversial?
Because kids actually should have a say. Like you don’t just all of a sudden gain sentience on your 18th birthday. Kids are people too and have should have a right to control their life to some degree.
It also works. Have you heard of democratic schools (also known as free schools)? The kids govern themselves, set rules, dictate curriculum. They have quite strong outcomes for students.
> The kids govern themselves, set rules, dictate curriculum. They have quite strong outcomes for students.
What a privileged childhood you must've had to think that this is a viable schooling system for anyone but upper-middle-class hippie rich kids. You do realize middle schoolers are routinely recruited into gangs in rough cities like Chicago, right?
> You do realize middle schoolers are routinely recruited into gangs in rough cities like Chicago
So, are you saying that there's some inherent difference between rich kids and inner city kids? Like, beyond their circumstances? Because if rich hippie kids can govern themselves, and inner city kids can't, that is either because rich kids are just better - or that poor kids have shitty circumstances that take that ability away from them. If you believe the former, we can't go any further because you're just racist or classist or both. If you believe the latter, then clearly kids deserve a say in their circumstances wherever they have that ability - and where they don't, something else needs to change first.
> If you believe the former, we can't go any further because you're just racist or classist or both
It looks like empty pseudo-accusations of racism finally made it to HN, all nicely disguised as a false dilemma (either you're a racist or you agree with me; very classy). This is where I bid you adieu.
I guess that came off pretty bluntly. I was saying we can dismiss this side of the argument, since it's blatantly classist/racist. I don't assume that you or any reasonable person would believe that line of thinking.
But since we're on the subject of taking the high road, I will say that you did, moments earlier, accuse me of being privileged to the point of being out of touch. If you want good and civil discourse, maybe ease up on the personal attacks yourself? Thanks
The victims are better off than they were before. Before, they were harassed and beaten. Now, they have a choice. They can either medicate with psychiatric drugs, simply express themselves as the gender they feel themselves to be, or surgically and hormonally change themselves. None of those three options will let them live the lives they wish to lead, but the best option is different for different people, and they have the choice to figure out which is best for them without society responding with violence.
The goal should obviously be to end any violence at all and give people free choice. But AFAIK no decision they make fundamentally changes anything. Hormones, surgery etc. don't seem to solve anything statistically speaking. For example you frequently head that hormone therapy should be stated as early as possible to get the best desired result but if you look at suicide data, earlier hormone treatment does not reduce suicides. Neither does surgery.
Should the people sill have their free will to chose? Yes, absolutely but as early as possible? Probably not. Young people make stupid decisions that's why they are not allowed to do certain things and decide certain things.
If a kid isn't allowed to get a tattoo why is it controversial that it isn't allowed to take hormones that permanently alter their body and make them infertile.
Also lets just assume that from all teenager going trough puberty that would be eligible for hormone therapy on the basis of their own decision, a fraction would eventually have a "normal life" if no hormone treatment is done. Lets say its 10%.
So by giving 100% of eligible teenagers hormone treatment this wound mean 10% are permanently harmed versus giving no teenager hormone treatment where 90% would eventually get it anyway when they are older. Which doesn't seem to have a measurable negative effect on their overall mental health and well-being. Then this would mean no early treatment for anyone safes 10% or the other way around early treatment causes 10% collateral damage.
Obviously there has to be a middle ground somewhere but I would say there is good evidence that pushing/motivating people/kids/teenagers is overall likely doing more harm than good.
And pushing/motivating based on some personal ideology is not in the interest of the people/kids/teens anyway. They may truly believe what they do helps and have no intention to harm anyone but so do the Scientology people. It just not what a school should do.
I'm trying to say this in the nicest way possible, but filling in the blanks with assumptions and then arriving at this conclusion is not the right approach. The right approach would be to talk to real life young people and young adults in this position and come to an understanding based on their experiences. The nuances of medical gatekeeping are at least a book-length treatise, probably multi-volume. Please, talk to some trans people in your life and parents of trans people with an open mind. Middle ground positions sound ok, but this this a squishy topic with infinite dimensions and designing systems that try to take a balanced approach do harm in unobvious and subtle ways.
I'm not filling in anything with assumption. The data we have is just rather minimal and incomplete.
The 10% "assumption" was made for the sake of the example. Since we dont know the real percentage but we know its statistically there and its positive. Could it be just 5%? Maybe, but 5% is still more than 0%. The numbers don't change the overall moral/ethical problem of creating more harm by tying to help people.
Does it really matter how much more harm it causes?
>The right approach would be to talk to real life young people and young adults in this position and come to an understanding based on their experiences.
Why would you assume I have not? And understanding their experience is fine but their experiences don't change numbers, studies, statistics etc.
You can argue the numbers are weak and that is true (we need better data to make informed decisions) but that still does not give "their experience" any kind of value as a counterargument.
If there is evidence that shows that lives can be saved by not doing certain medical treatments, especially early treatments and instead postponing them with minimal negative side effects, how would the "understanding the experience" of individuals affect this? They might disagree but that doesn't make it not true and in their best interest.
We generally dont ask people with comparable problems what they think is best for them and then just do that. We may ask them to study the problem and even as part of the decision making process how to treat them. All of this is fine if done on an individual level. But if we make an overall statement it certainly should not be to "understanding their experience" by listening to the affected people and then do as they wish. There is literally no medical condition out there that is treated this way.
>Middle ground positions sound ok, but this this a squishy topic with infinite dimensions and designing systems that try to take a balanced approach do harm in unobvious and subtle ways.
Well we are expressing opinions here and sometimes you cant get them across in a "middle ground" way.
But looking at each case individually seems kinda middle ground to me.
> Does it really matter how much more harm it causes?
Yes, the quantity and quality are the most important part of this whole discussion. Anyone should have a handle on these before drawing conclusions that intend to reduce harm. I'll make an analogy. How many times have you had to remind someone to profile before making optimizations? Studying harm is the profiling and making changes to reduce it is optimizing.
> Why would you assume I have not?
That's fantastic! What did they say about this?
> There is literally no medical condition out there that is treated this way.
There's literally no medical condition that intersects society this way. Why apply a blanket approach to all medical conditions?
> looking at each case individually seems kinda middle ground to me.
It sounds nice, but the outcome is that individual practitioners will exert their individual biases[1]. This is why we have things like DSM[2] in psychology, and in this specific case WPATH[3].
1. Don't mistake this that my goal is zero biases. We're talking about reducing harm, not eliminating it. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
I said "Does it really matter how much MORE harm it causes?"
Context matters. The question was "does it matter if its 5% more or 10% more? (or any other number more)"
The answer is: No, it does not matter, because its more and we want less.
You dont do something because it "only" 5% worse and stop if its 10% worse.
You dont need to know how much worse it is. If its worse its worse. If it cause preventable collateral damage then its not okay to do it anyway.
Maybe read the Context?
"take into account" doesn't mean we medicate people as they wish, with what they wish to be medicate with. Else you would need to give a dug addict more drugs. And you cant improve quality of life of a few by causing overall more harm to others, that would be unethical.
You're ignoring that, as I pointed out, all of the choices are bad, and all of the choices are permanent. You want to make the choice for others, which is clearly worse.
You're also confused into thinking that the school is encouraging one option when the article doesn't even suggest that is happening. Instead, it says teachers encourage students who show interest into joining Gay Straight Alliances to help prevent violence against LGBT people regardless of their personal medical choices.
No, this untrue. There is no long term harm associated with puberty blockers.
I wish the anti-trans crowd would be more honest. Just come out and say that you hate trans people, that you wish to roll-back the hard-won rights they have at the moment; that you disagree with the international scientific and medical community about best treatment; that you're happy to lie about the evidence to try to sound more reasonable and less hate-driven.
This is totally absurd. Of cause it has long therm effects whether these effects are declared as "harm" or not is subjective and whether they can be "legally" associated to puberty blockers is p much irrelevant.
It obviously has long term side effects and some are potentially unwanted and permanent.
And declaring everyone who disagrees with you as anti-trans who want to take people rights away and what not, make you the intolerant, hate-drive person you seem to see in others.
>You want to make the choice for others, which is clearly worse.
No I don't. But there is a consensus that certain people can not make such a decision i.e. kids and I think that is correct. I dont want to decide for them at all. I just pointed out who should not make the decision, a non-mature person who has a very limited view on the magnitude of the decision, has zero medical expertise on the topic and is possible in a very complicated mental and emotional state.
I also pointed out that statistically speaking some strategies cause "collateral damage" and other don't. While each case has to be looked at individually one should not ignore the fact that contrarily to people wishes, no swift medical treatments are probably favorable.
>You're also confused into thinking that the school is encouraging one option when the article doesn't even suggest that is happening.
No. I'm not confused and that's not what I'm thinking or said.
Beside that, separating people by letting them joining different alliances is an absurd way to prevent violence.
>Kids don't make medical decisions. Their parents do.
Yes and and that should not change.
>Separating people is not what a Gay-Straight Alliance does. It's in the name.
Not sure if naiv or trolling but obviously the name is completely irrelevant.
If certain people are included and other excluded its not an alliance between these people.
So based on her other blog posts she looks to be hard right leaning so this post doesn't really surprise me. No proof other than her retelling of "leaked" documents. Same crap, different day..
Those activist teachers are also teaching the kids about MLK, Jr. and civil rights. Learning how to function within a heterogeneous society isn't what we send our kids to school for!
But seriously, if society is failing due to not enough citizens understanding math, and the parents don't want their kids to learn math, but society has deemed it important that the schools teach math to those kids anyway, that's part of the social contract for public schooling. Here we have a case of sections of society perpetuating violence on an outgroup, and the voters as a whole deciding that one prong of the fix is educating the children. This technique has worked before on the same type of problem.
Teaching history is for the history teachers, not the art teacher who took a single critical race theory course in university, and now thinks Ibram X. Kendi, and Robin DiAngelo are great sources of historical truths.
An activist is a clearly biased source of information, they have already picked a side, and should not be trusted that they're teaching accurate history, and not just manipulating kids for their own ends.
You're under the assumption that these "teachers" could never do wrong, but how would you feel if some Christians were having secret clubs teaching your kids about Christ?
Wouldn't you want to make sure the teachers running some of sort of bible club were from some sane branch of Christianity and actually respected your children personal opinions and not Westboro baptists, shaming and them in to thinking they have to attend the club otherwise they're bigots...I mean sinners going to hell.
Parents should be worried about these clubs and how they're teaching kids, because there's a fundamental difference between liberal interpretations of rights, and non-racism, and the radical subjectivism of modern LGBTQIA+ groups, and CRT anti-racism.
You're confusing civics with history. We absolutely do expect teachers to teach students how to get along with others and how to regulate their emotions to be productive contributors to society. What, specifically, is the radical subjectivism of LGBTQIA+ groups that you object to that the article says is happening in schools? What I see is teachers suggesting students get involved in Gay-Straight Alliance groups to help their fellow students.
Your comparison to teachers encouraging students to join a Bible club doesn't fit because that is illegal.
> What, specifically, is the radical subjectivism of LGBTQIA+ groups that you object to
There have now been numerous cases of children having been encouraged to have a sex change and now deeply regret the decision. Not to mention they are now infertile.
As an adult, do what you like, but I find groups such as Mermaids to be borderline abusive.
You left out the second half of the question including the question mark. Nowhere does the article say that what you claim is actually happening. Instead, it talks about encouraging students to join a Gay Straight Alliance club if they show interest in helping gays, and the city, the author, and several misguided people in this forum are freaking out about that.
The article clearly says, though, that (a) there is a secrecy around what goes on in these clubs and (b) the people running the clubs are activists. This means, that people with unclear qualifications and goals do things with my child nobody else has visibility into. This might be fine. This might even be desirable if I’m not fine with it. But it _can_ go horribly wrong very easily because of lack of any systemic control over who these people are, what agendas are they following and what’s actually happening.
> What, specifically, is the radical subjectivism of LGBTQIA+ groups that you object to that the article says is happening in schools?
Well the article doesn't say because that's not the focus of it.
If we ignore the explicit requirement for it being included in the article, And look at what's happening in wider society.
There are two such notable cases, the shaming of J. K. Rowling, for daring to base gender on biology, and not just subjective feelings.
the 2020 Toyko Olympics inclusion of Trans-women, who very clearly have an advantage because of their male physiology.
So it wouldn't be surprising if these alliance groups were pretty radically deep in to the subjectivism, since it's already being institutionalized in places like the IOC.
I don't see grade 6, a time where 99% of students haven't even hit puberty, mixed with secretive practices, a good sign for things to come, if teachers were promoting any sort of political club to my 12 year old child I would be very worried.
Well we do have civics classes in California and Socio-Emotional Learning in elementary school.
The article doesn't say because it isn't happening. If it were happening, that would be the subject of the article.
Your comments about wider society, which have nothing to do with the article, shows that you have some very mistaken beliefs about trans people. To get at the heart of your mistake, if people could physically change their gender in a way that had all of their sexual organs working, would you object to them identifying as their new gender? That is ultimately what trans people would like to do.
The physiological differences between men and women that matter are due to development driven by testosterone. East Germany famously increased testosterone levels of women to help them win, but some women naturally have far more testosterone than others. The Olympics now requires those women to medically reduce their testosterone levels, just the same as trans athletes.
This "political club" simply brings gay and non-gay people together to fix society. Would you have objected to a black-white alliance club in the 60s?
Nobody cares that you teach the history of racism in the US, correctly educate children about the civil war and slavery or talk about civil rights heroes.
What most people object to are the Derrick Bell arguments that racial segregation is good, that racism is fundamental and unsolvable and that equality is not achievable or real. These are illiberal views that have no place being taught.
Derrick Bell is one of the original CRT scholars. He believes desegregation was a mistake. [1]
CRT holds, as a critical tradition, that there are fundamental unsolvable struggles. In critical gender theory this struggle is on the basis of gender, and in CRT this struggle is on the basis of race. The struggle can not be resolved, only inverted.
I have read the work of Bell and Delgado, well liked overviews supported by CRT proponents and quite a few essays on the matter.
I would recommend reading the source material and not the version of it touted in the press. Delgado in particular has many.. interesting views.
I don't think we have the time, nor is this the place to discuss CRT in detail. But nothing in your citation (wikipedia) says that he believed that the goal of desegregating society is a mistake, or as you put it "racial segregation is good", only that school desegregation might have had so much blowback that it did more harm to black communities than good. Which is not an "illiberal" idea.
> Bell concluded, therefore, that the focus for American educational systems should not be on national integration but, rather, should be on improving the quality of education provided for black students.
More depth is given here,
> "From the standpoint of education, we would have been better served had the court in Brown rejected the petitioners' arguments to overrule Plessy v. Ferguson," Bell said, referring to the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that enforced a "separate but equal" standard for blacks and whites. While acknowledging the deep injustices done to black children in segregated schools, Bell argued the court should have determined to enforce the generally ignored "equal" part of the "separate but equal" doctrine.
If you don't want the lights on, you are in fact asking for the lights to be turned off. There is no third option. You may prefer the answer to be stated in a given way - and this is a game that CRT proponents play - but logically the conclusion is the same. If you don't support desegregation, you are in favor of segregation.
I know a different group of people who are pro-segregation, believe racism is a fundamental non-resolvable struggle and think we should be keeping the races separated: that is literally the alt-right platform.
> If you don't support desegregation, you are in favor of segregation.
If I don't support vapes as a tool for quitting smoking, that doesn't mean I support smoking. There's more than two options. Nicotine gum, patches, hypnotherapy, cold turkey, etc.
You're getting caught up in the idea that not supporting "forcibly de-segregating school in the 1960s" is the same as supporting racial separation. "Desegregation" in this context isn't the idea of racial separation, it's a specific event where schools were racially unified over a period of a few years - but also probably caused a significant blowback (white flight) that some believe did more harm to black communities than good.
It's not hard to imagine a scenario where from 1967 to 1977 the schools remained segregated, but black schools were funded as well or better than white schools (emphasizing the equal in "separate but equal"), at which point they were desegregated - but not forcibly and abruptly. The desegregation happened organically over the next 10-20 years. Would we be better off? Have more racial harmony, or less? Would we have prevented white flight, or just delayed it? I don't think exploring these possibilities is racist, illiberal, segregationist, or unproductive. Especially as we search for solutions to the racism that is apparent in america today (unsolvable? maybe... I hope not).
What is the third choice between segregation and desegregation? Bell does not propose any kind of half-segregation or slow re-segregation. He literally just says desegregation was the wrong choice. Some binaries do exist.
> In 1976, Bell said he came to the same conclusion in an article titled Serving Two Masters, which stated, "Our clients' aims for better schooling for their children no longer meshed with integrationist ideals. Civil rights lawyers were misguided in requiring racial balance of each school's student population as the measure of compliance and the guarantee of effective schooling. In short, while the rhetoric of integration promised much, court orders to ensure that black youngsters received the education they needed to progress would have achieved much more."
You're really keen to broaden writing about this single moment in history to apply it to all instances of racial segregation in the US. All he says is that given the choice between racial balance in schools as the target for the supreme court, and effective schooling as the target - he says that he believes the former failed where the latter might have succeeded. That's not "I support segregation" as your binary suggests - that's "desegregation didn't achieve equality, and we had another path available that might have gotten us farther". Nowhere in that is "and we should never desegregate" or "bring back separate water fountains".
> Critique of liberalism...Critique of liberalism: First and foremost to CRT legal scholars in 1993, was their "discontent" with the way in which liberalism addressed race issues in the U.S. They critiqued "liberal jurisprudence" including affirmative action,[86] color-blindness, role modeling, and the merit principle.[87] They said that the liberal concept—value-neutral law— contributed to maintenance of the U.S. racially unjust social order.
> Storytelling/counterstorytelling and 'naming one's own reality'":': The use of narrative (storytelling) to illuminate and explore lived experiences of racial oppression.
This doesn't sound like history or science, it sounds like personal, highly subjective anecdotes, maybe even propaganda (see Jussie Smollett).
> Revisionist interpretations of American civil rights law and progress.
this doesn't sound like teaching objective historical facts.
> Cultural nationalism/separatism: The exploration of more radical views that argue for separation and reparations as a form of foreign aid (including black nationalism).
Because we definitely want to teach our kids segregation is good.
Now tell me how CRT is actually teaching objective historical facts?
Because in my eyes, this is not a philosophy that cares about facts, or liberal values, or even racism.
>> Revisionist interpretations of American civil rights law and progress.
> this doesn't sound like teaching objective historical facts.
A revisionist means "examining and trying to change existing beliefs about how events happened or what their importance or meaning is"
I.e. we've understood the facts incorrectly, let's take another look to try to understand them correctly. This is literally what people who study history do every day. I read a great blog recently dispelling myths about what medieval life was like. Definitely revisionist, super interesting.
> noun Advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements.
> noun A recurrent tendency within the Communist movement to revise Marxist theory in such a way as to provide justification for a retreat from the revolutionary to the reformist position.
CRT, Critical Racial Theory, is a Marxist tradition. I don't mean Marxist as "bad" or "scary" but I mean as in descended from the Frankfurt School of thought which focused on the Marxist tradition.
CRT uses Revisionist reading as a tool to formulate reform of an existing system or dialog. It is a Trotsky-esque tactic of reading material with a preconceived notion to find a new end.
The second definition doesn't mean "revisionist" has some different meaning within marxist thinking. It means communists call people who back pedal the revolutionary language of marx to make it less radical "revisionists". The meaning is the same, it's just a special context where what you are revising and why are clearly defined.
> CRT uses Revisionist reading as a tool to formulate reform of an existing system or dialog.
The only way that re-interpreting the past as a tool to figure out how to change current systems is a bad thing, is if current systems are good. Given how things are for non-white people in america, I think it's clear that changing current systems is needed.
If you're worried because they are interpreting historical fact to fit their preconceived notion, well... yes, so are we all. We all have preconceived notions. Romans were clean and noble, while medieval people were filthy and never bathed. Every story I hear about either of those times is slotted into my preconceptions about romans or medieval people. Then one day an activist historian with an agenda teaches me that romans didn't have soap, but medieval people did... the facts support their idea that medieval people were cleaner than we portray them in movies and tv. Just because they had an agenda (the medieval period is maligned in culture) when they went looking for those facts, doesn't mean they're wrong.
The romans had soap and were well aware of both lye and unrefined ammonia for cleansing. They actually used ammonia for laundering clothes. Medieval people had soap too, but probably used a different process for making it than romans. (As to who was cleaner, it depends heavily on class, region and specific year.)
That's the problem with preconceived notions, they lead to bad scholarship. It's what made so many victorian era analysis of historic artifacts so poor - they were trying to reconstruct them with Victorian values.
No person can be truly neutral but you do your best to set aside preconceived notions. CRT argues that in some cases we shouldn't do that and reinforces storytelling - a fictional process - as an interpretive lens. That is not aligned with traditional scholarship and part of why Critical Theorists (at large) reject traditional scholarship. CRT is not a fact based tradition. (Crits would say it is a "critical" one)
CRT is a Marxist tradition but instead of a class divide it views through the fundamental lens of a racial divide. Just as the class divide is innate in Marxism so it is too in CRT. Re-reading existing texts to "contextualize" them and reframe them in alignment with this racial divide is the usage of Revisionism in the CRT (and likewise for fellow Critical Theories) nomenclature.
You can reject CRT wholesale AND still petition for better racial equality or the correcting of faults in any given country. CRT is not the only solution, nor does a rejection of CRT mean you accept the world as it is currently.
So... my point was that we have a cultural bias towards representing the romans as clean and medieval people as dirty - "As to who was cleaner, it depends heavily on class, region and specific year." So you agree with the core of the idea I was presenting, but you then immediately dismiss it as bad scholorship. Apologies, I didn't think I needed to google the details for this conversation - but let's correct the record: romans didn't have soap during the republican era, but they did during the roman empire. At least by 200CE, perhaps as much as a century earlier. Happy?
> That's the problem with preconceived notions, they lead to bad scholarship
I agree. E.g. missing the forest for the trees. As you just did.
Because I see what they teach in schools and have asked them if they understand.
Here's an easy answer: Hard work is not racist. If you are now wealthy, you are less oppressed than an equally wealthy black man in America.
Here's another series of easy questions:
Should we educate all of society to the best of their ability? Are black people inherently a standard deviation below whites in educational ability? If so, why can charter schools like Kipp get their black students to perform exactly the same as their white students, who also perform better than they do in public schools? Are Koreans smart or stupid? How did they go from mostly illiterate (stupid) to top of the world (smart) in two generations?
The National Museum of African American History and Culture disagrees. They also say that promptness is also racist.
It's not hard to find people who argue that math is racist...
> If you are now wealthy, you are less oppressed than an equally wealthy black man in America.
Malia Obama is far wealthier than I am, so these programs teach that I'm more oppressed than she is, right? (We both know that they don't.)
> If so, why can charter schools like Kipp get their black students to perform exactly the same as their white students, who also perform better than they do in public schools?
Because public schools suck.
Now - who runs public schools? Hint - it's the same answer as who runs public and (most) private universities. Also, most urban regions (including their police departments). This is not a new phenomena - it's been true for decades.
Given that those folks have failed so badly, should they get more or less power?
BTW - While black parents are very strongly in favor of vouchers for private schools, who opposes them?
> The National Museum of African American History and Culture disagrees. They also say that promptness is also racist.
No, they don't. They said that the belief that hard work will naturally lead to success is more prevalent in white culture. Slaves worked hard without much success, so it is easy to see why this would be less prevalent in black culture, but this difference in beliefs is something that society should strive to fix.
These programs teach that people who are poor are more oppressed than people who aren't. It appears only I knew that, but now you do too.
> Because public schools suck.
Charter schools are public schools. Some charter schools like Kipp perform far better than schools run by local school boards, including top ranked magnet schools, as Angrist showed in Chicago. Private schools in places with vouchers in the US tend to be worse than public schools, wasting time on religious indoctrination. The solution is to expand charters for organizations that run effective schools and examine what they are doing that works, not to completely deregulate and let kids be educated by charlatans.
Are the kids or their parents aware that their searches, e-mails, and chats are being monitored this way? And how exactly does this surveillance work? Are their teachers the only ones that get this data, or is there a private company the schools are partnered with that also hoovers up everything?
This gross violation of privacy is the bigger story, in my opinion.