the conservative end game on education

[jfish26]

[Sparko]

slave skills?

See Florida's educational standards for teaching history of confederacy

[japhy]

I read about a job opening in an Oklahoma School District earlier this morning. They are looking for a band director and they have had multiple applicants turn the job down. Hard to imagine they are having trouble finding teachers in Oklahoma.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/okla-schools ... 30254.html

One of my business partner's son just graduated from Booker T Washington High School. The kid's name is Max. My daughters and I refer to him as "Emperor Maximus", because we thought from an early age he would grow up to be the "Supreme Ruler of the Universe" some day. He got his pilot's license last summer. This year he got a full ride scholarship to Texas Tech to study engineering of some flavor. And Ryan Walters wants to cut off the school's funding.

Meanwhile back in KS, my youngest quit her teaching job in May. It has been her dream since Jr High School to become a high school band director. She had been on that career path for about 4 years when they got a new principal. He made it known fairly early that he was a "Christian conservative", and a homophobe. As he told her, "parents have a right to know if their kids confide in you that they are gay." So a couple of days later she gets to school early and there is a preacher in the band room leading a prayer service. No teachers there, no school supervision or oversight, just an outside person leading a room full of students in a private room. She asked the principal if the school had parental permission forms for the kids to attend the meetings. The principals said "no, he didn't think that was necessary". "Do the parents know their kids are meeting with his guy on school property?" The principal said he had no idea, but he and the preacher talked it over and it seemed like a good idea. She told him, "so the parent's right to know isn't so much a child protection thing as a homophobic thing?" I guess she got a blank stare in response. She turned in her resignation later that afternoon and took an offer from a private company the next day. She told me the school was looking for 25 new teachers for this school year.

She has been on the new job since June 1. Her main focus has a been putting together a music festival as part of a conference the organization was holding. She found bands, put together venues, rented the equipment needed and set up stages. She had a summer internship at Lollapalooza in Chicago her senior year at KU, so she had some idea of how this worked.

She said it was like band season except it was concentrated into one weekend instead of multiples during football season. She worked 16 hour days, away from home for a week, living in a hotel. It must have gone well. She finally got home on Sunday and the CEO sent her a text saying she should take the entire next week off with pay. Does not count as PTO, just take the week off. And there was a $12K deposit in her checking account as a bonus for a job well done. She called me that afternoon to tell me, and marvel at how "someone had noticed her hard work" and there were even tangible financial rewards. I told her that if a company wants to keep really good people, this is how you do it in a tight labor market. Let them know you appreciate their hard work and dedication.

The Kansas education system lost another dedicated young person who wanted to teach. She is disappointed, but she has all week to get over it.

[KUTradition]

just saw that some ~850 districts nationwide are going to a 4 day week due to teacher shortages

‘murica

[randylahey]

A lot of teachers have quit because of the trans agenda being pushed on young children. I knew one who's been teaching 20+ years then suddenly had to explain to a "boy" why he was getting his period

[randylahey]

The teaching gig just doesn't pay enough to be put on the political front line. Also not being able to actually discipline America's soiled youth has been taking its toll for awhile now

[Shirley]

The decades-old "conservative" republican effort to dum the American populace down and promote anti-intellectualism, marches on!

A policy expert explains how anti-intellectualism gave rise to Donald Trump

For decades, the Republican Party has worn a "know-nothing" facade to appeal to ordinary Americans, but it’s no longer just talk — they have truly created a “know-nothing” candidate with Donald Trump.

That’s according to Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. He recently wrote a New York Times op-ed, "How the 'Stupid Party' Created Donald Trump," which argues that Trump is the product of years of anti-intellectualism within the Republican Party.

“It’s actually been part of the Republican Party brand for a long time,” Boot says. “Republicans going all the way back to [Dwight D.] Eisenhower have masqueraded by pretending to be dumber than they actually were by attacking elite intellectuals and snobs and so forth [as a way] to identify with the common man. This was a strategy pursued by Richard Nixon, by Ronald Reagan, and by George W. Bush.”

In his 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” Reagan aligned himself with the ordinary American rather than the "little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol." Similarly, Bush sided with the C students in a 2001 Yale commencement address.

But according to Boot, Trump is different.

“Those leaders were not themselves actually stupid or ignorant,” he says. “If you think about Eisenhower or Nixon, they were actually incredibly worldly, sophisticated, and knowledgeable. The problem is that Donald Trump is every bit as ignorant in reality as his predecessors only pretended to be. In a way, the joke’s kind of on the Republican Party because after masquerading for decades, the Republican Party has actually become the ‘Stupid Party.’”

Uneducated voters are a core base for Trump, but Boot says that this group is being “taken for a ride” by the GOP nominee.

“They’re not necessarily stupid, but they’re not very knowledgeable,” he says. “[Trump] claims that he can solve all their problems when he can’t. He can’t even begin to solve their problems, and in fact he’ll make their problems a lot worse with his policies on protectionism, isolationism, nativism and xenophobia. All of these things will make America much poorer and much less safe, but I think he’s gulled a lot of people into thinking that ‘I alone can solve’ — his mantra.”

Boot argues that far-right populists within the Republican Party feed off of Trump’s anti-intellectualism because they believe elite intellectuals are to blame for their problems to begin with. Meanwhile, Trump is working to directly appeal to white working-class communities that have a “long tradition of hostility towards knowledge.”

“That is the core constituency that Trump is appealing to,” he says. “He’s not just ignorant, he’s proudly ignorant — he brags about how he doesn’t read books. For him, this is a point of pride, and unfortunately it is for a lot of his followers as well.”

[...[

[KUTradition]

the “i alone can solve the problem” schtick is echoed by almost every dictator and authoritarian (as well as the wannabes) throughout history

[Shirley]

the “i alone can solve the problem” schtick is echoed by almost every dictator and authoritarian (as well as the wannabes) throughout history

Speaking of demagogues, was that before or after, this:

[KUTradition]

i should add also (this is an education thread, after all), that another page in the authoritarian playbook is a takeover and remaking of education systems

indoctrinate and control the narrative…objective facts be damned

[twocoach]

A lot of teachers have quit because of the trans agenda being pushed on young children. I knew one who's been teaching 20+ years then suddenly had to explain to a "boy" why he was getting his period

Yeah, I call BS. Define "a lot" and then back it up with some evidence of said number. "This one person I know" isn't evidence as I chalk it up to yet another current topic that you just happen to know a person who (fill in the blank).

[ChicagoHawk]

A lot of teachers have quit because of the trans agenda being pushed on young children. I knew one who's been teaching 20+ years then suddenly had to explain to a "boy" why he was getting his period

Define "a lot" and then back it up with some evidence of said number. "This one person I know" isn't evidence as I chalk it up to yet another current topic that you just happen to know a person who (fill in the blank).

Conservatism really cooks your brain, man. Is it chronic overwork and lack of pay driving teachers out of the profession? No, couldn’t be. My fucking psycho friend told me it’s the trans kids’ fault.

[twocoach]

A lot of teachers have quit because of the trans agenda being pushed on young children. I knew one who's been teaching 20+ years then suddenly had to explain to a "boy" why he was getting his period

Define "a lot" and then back it up with some evidence of said number. "This one person I know" isn't evidence as I chalk it up to yet another current topic that you just happen to know a person who (fill in the blank).

Conservatism really cooks your brain, man. Is it chronic overwork and lack of pay driving teachers out of the profession? No, couldn’t be. My fucking psycho friend told me it’s the trans kids’ fault.

Keep in mind that there is no formal tracking of why teachers quit by any nationwide effort. Only anecdotal "evidence" based on a few small polls (none of which support his claim from what I have found) and whatever flows across his social media feed.

[KUTradition]

i would posit that more teachers are quitting because of anti-trans/lgbtq sentiments

[MICHHAWK]

if teachers are quitting. they are quitting because of that awful teachers union.

[KUTradition]

which one was that again?

[jhawks99]

Randoid.

In Kentucky it was Matt Bevin who lost a sure thing re-election as governor due to his constant demonization of teachers and teacher's unions. Seems the good folks of Kentucky like their teachers.

[MICHHAWK]

teachers are my favorite.

[MICHHAWK]

everybody loves teachers. it's the teachers union that the folks despise.

[ChicagoHawk]

“I love teachers—I just want to crush their unions.”