Octopus Overlords

Grifman wrote: ↑Sun Jun 26, 2022 3:44 pm

Several South Florida high school educators are alarmed that a new state civics initiative designed to prepare students to be “virtuous citizens” is infused with a Christian and conservative ideology after a three-day training session in Broward County last week.

...

“It was very skewed,” said Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade government teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School. “There was a very strong Christian fundamentalist way toward analyzing different quotes and different documents. That was concerning.”

The civics training, which is part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, underscores the tension that has been building around education and how classrooms have become battlegrounds for politically contentious issues. In Florida, DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature have pushed policies that limit what schools can teach about race, gender identity and certain aspects of history.

A review of more than 200 pages of the state’s presentations shows the founding fathers’ intent and the “misconceptions” about their thinking were a main theme of the training. One slide underscored that the “Founders expected religion to be promoted because they believed it to be essential to civic virtue.” Without virtue, another slide noted, citizens become “licentious” and become subject to tyranny.

Another slide highlights three U.S. Supreme Court cases to show when the “Founders’ original intent began to change.” That included the 1962 landmark case that found school-sponsored prayer violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which Judd said trainers viewed as unjust. At one point, the trainers equated it to the 1892 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.

“Ending school prayer was compared to upholding segregation,” Judd said. In other words, he said, trainers called both those rulings unjust.

The civics training is the latest effort in a long line of education policies that aim to fight what DeSantis and conservative education reformers say are “woke ideologies” in public schools.

It also provides a snapshot of how national groups, including Hillsdale College, a politically influential private Christian college in southern Michigan, are working with the DeSantis administration to reshape education in the state. The goal is to put a greater emphasis on civics than on socially divisive issues such as race and gender identity, which DeSantis has said is an effort to reorient teaching away from “indoctrination and back towards education.” But to several educators who went through the state’s training it felt like a broader effort to impose a conservative view on historical events.

Hungary has a population comparable to Michigan’s and a G.D.P. close to that of Arkansas, but, in the imagination of the American right, it punches far above its weight. Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister since 2010, is now the longest-serving head of state in the European Union, and one of the most fiercely nativist and traditionalist. Starting in 2013, he made a political foil out of George Soros, the Jewish financier who was born in Hungary but hasn’t lived there in decades, exploiting the trope of Soros as a nefarious international puppet master. During the refugee crisis of 2015, Orbán built a militarized fence along Hungary’s southern border, and, in defiance of both E.U. law and the Geneva Conventions, expelled almost all asylum seekers from the country. Relative to other European nations, Hungary hadn’t experienced a big influx of migrants. (Out-migration is actually more common.) But the refugees, most of them from Syria or other parts of the Middle East, were an effective political scapegoat—one that Orbán continues to flog, along with academics, “globalists,” the Roma, and, more recently, queer and trans people. Last year, Hungary passed a law banning sex education involving L.G.B.T.Q. topics in schools. Nine months later, in Florida, DeSantis signed a similar law, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. DeSantis’s press secretary, talking about the inspiration for the law, reportedly said, “We were watching the Hungarians.”

Experts have described Orbán as a new-school despot, a soft autocrat, an anocrat, and a reactionary populist. Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of international affairs at Princeton, has referred to him as “the ultimate twenty-first-century dictator.” Some prominent American conservatives want nothing to do with him; but more have taken his side, pointing to Hungary as a potential model for America’s future.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:36 amTrump was a complete trainwreck, but it was a chaotic trainwreck that kind of pushed the GOP "agenda" forward in a broad haphazard way. DeSantis's policies are calculated and cruel, targeted with laser-like precision to hurt people as efficiently as possible.

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 9:04 am

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:36 amTrump was a complete trainwreck, but it was a chaotic trainwreck that kind of pushed the GOP "agenda" forward in a broad haphazard way. DeSantis's policies are calculated and cruel, targeted with laser-like precision to hurt people as efficiently as possible.

Agreed and the hurt is just acceptable collateral damage plus a side helping of 'fuck those degenerates!'. The goal is delivering punishment against the others to foster building power.

Scraper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:00 am

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 9:04 am

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:36 amTrump was a complete trainwreck, but it was a chaotic trainwreck that kind of pushed the GOP "agenda" forward in a broad haphazard way. DeSantis's policies are calculated and cruel, targeted with laser-like precision to hurt people as efficiently as possible.

Agreed and the hurt is just acceptable collateral damage plus a side helping of 'fuck those degenerates!'. The goal is delivering punishment against the others to foster building power.

Beau of the 5th Column has been nailing it for a while with his predictions as to what the Trumplican party will do next. All he does is apply the characteristics of what a Facist regime would do and it works 100% of the time.

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:04 am

Scraper wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:00 am

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 9:04 am

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:36 amTrump was a complete trainwreck, but it was a chaotic trainwreck that kind of pushed the GOP "agenda" forward in a broad haphazard way. DeSantis's policies are calculated and cruel, targeted with laser-like precision to hurt people as efficiently as possible.

Agreed and the hurt is just acceptable collateral damage plus a side helping of 'fuck those degenerates!'. The goal is delivering punishment against the others to foster building power.

Beau of the 5th Column has been nailing it for a while with his predictions as to what the Trumplican party will do next. All he does is apply the characteristics of what a Facist regime would do and it works 100% of the time.

Sooo what is next?

Only in Texas: the Texas Education Agency is proposing to the State Board of Education (who decides state curriculum) to change the word “slavery” to “involuntary relocation”. The SBOE hearings on social studies curriculum are this summer.

The head of the TEA is the Commissioner of Education, who is appointed to this post by the governor.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:08 pm It's all about slowly pushing the ratchet to the right and having more and more people forget or even know things were once different. Just like there's an entire generation that doesn't remember a time where you could fly without taking off your shoes or going through security theater. Or for many (most?) not being able to smoke in a bar or restaurant.

The Roe v Wade decision took us back 50+ years. The EPA decision now has that needle potentially moving 75-100 years.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:20 pm Here you go - another one:

Only in Texas: the Texas Education Agency is proposing to the State Board of Education (who decides state curriculum) to change the word “slavery” to “involuntary relocation”. The SBOE hearings on social studies curriculum are this summer.

Why am I posting this here?

The head of the TEA is the Commissioner of Education, who is appointed to this post by the governor.

malchior wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 12:50 pm I also don't think they'll nuke the filibuster. It represents too much restraint on the Democrats if they happen to get some power back.

noxiousdog wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:23 pm This originally came up in 2010. I haven't found anything to confirm it's a thing again.

Public schools in Texas would describe slavery to second graders as "involuntary relocation" under new social studies standards proposed to the state's education board, according to @TexasTribune

In this case, the group proposing these second grade curriculum revisions was given a copy of Senate Bill 3, Texas’ law that dictates how slavery and issues of race are taught in Texas. The law states that slavery can’t be taught as part of the true founding of the United States and that slavery was nothing more than a deviation from American values.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:35 pm EDIT: Now being reported by the AP:

Public schools in Texas would describe slavery to second graders as "involuntary relocation" under new social studies standards proposed to the state's education board, according to @TexasTribune

malchior wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 5:25 pm For anyone watching Cheney is losing to the utterly insane lady in the blue by thirty points right now in the polls.

Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Jul 01, 2022 10:27 pm What's the over/under on the general election? Do the Ds have a candidate who could take this nutjob?

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:36 am DeSantis could be stopped at the state level if companies/people really wanted to. That's how Pat McCrory got stopped in NC - the state hemorraghed millions of dollars from companies boycotting and pulling dollars out, and the voters responded accordingly.

Unfortunately that doesn't work at the federal level, which is why the thought of a President DeSantis is so nightmarish to me. He will absolutely use the might of the US government to crush LGBTQ rights and any whiff of racial education.

Trump was a complete trainwreck, but it was a chaotic trainwreck that kind of pushed the GOP "agenda" forward in a broad haphazard way. DeSantis's policies are calculated and cruel, targeted with laser-like precision to hurt people as efficiently as possible.

McConnell in Kentucky on how he'd like to end the labor shortage:

"You've got a whole lot of people sitting on the sidelines because they're flush for the moment. What we've got to hope is once they run out of money, they'll start concluding it's better to work than not to work"

Labor expert points out that more workers aged between 25-54 are actually in the workforce now compared to before the pandemic