Gdanning
2yr ago
Yes, you're right. I meant to say that my comparison was white to white and black to black.
But note that the article says that, at Ford, "Black employees are much more likely to have less desirable and more dangerous foundry jobs (39.9% of Black workers compared with only 4.3% of White workers)." It is safe to assume that companies will have to offer somewhat higher pay for dangerous and unpleasant jobs.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Yes, I am agreeing with you. it was OP who opined that it was not true ("Ford was late to unionization and I'm not aware of their workers having been poorly paid prior to it")
Edit: forget the below. You have misconstrued what I said. The linked data [edit: I meant what I said] does NOT show that Ford paid its black workers better than its white workers. It shows that Ford paid black workers more than its competitors paid black workers ($14.53 versus $13.55), and that they paid white workers substantially less than its competitors paid white workers ($14.14 versus $17.38).
It indeed passes the smell test because, as I noted, the obvious explanation is that black workers at Ford were employed in more highly skilled occupations than the black workers elsewhere. Again, it says that black workers made up 38% of the workplace at Ford but only 6% elsewhere, So, the black workers elsewhere were probably almost entirely janitors and the like.
Gdanning
2yr ago
by your description of your approach you'd have to teach every possible theory out there.
No, as I said, the responsibility is merely to address the standard arguments on the issue. Again, perfection is impossible. But if the practical alternatives are 1) address the standard arguments on the issue; and 2) ignore all arguments and evidence other than that favored by the school, then option #1 is best.
It absolutely is relevant, and as far as I can tell, the only way to claim otherwise is to move the goal posts from "should the parents be allowed to purge all but a single viewpoint, if this is what they want to do" to "should libraries purge all but a single viewpoint". I have not claimed the latter, FC did not claim the latter, and the Supreme Court quote is not about the latter.
But that is precisely the issue that we are talking about, because that was my precise proposal: "How about a law to preserve the substance of the Pico plurality decision, which is probably no longer good law, to prevent red schools from removing ideas they don't like, and blue states from doing the same?" Those were the original goalposts. It is not relevant who the specific school-level decisionmaker is.
All that means is that the quote you gave is not the actual justification for the law as it is being enforced, so it was irrelevant to bring it up in the first place.
I have no idea what you mean. The quote distinguished between curriculum and libraries. They are different in various ways, and porn has nothing to do with the matter.
Hardly. The amount of things not taught in school vastly exceeds that of things taught.
Again, the point is that there are certain things that have to be taught, and in economics and the social sciences, there is no "correct" answer to any of them.
I'm not about to dox the schools I went to, the way the industrialization of England is covered is that it happened, and the question of why is left for the curious, and you quickly move on to how it spread to the rest of Europe. And unless you live in a conquered nation like Germany, American history is hardly given any thought.
Re industrialization, I think you are probably misremembering. It is a standard part of world history standards and textbooks. Re the American Revolution, we are talking about American law and American schools. I am sure there are similar topics covered in German schools (why did Weimar fail?).
My own link says that, while Ford paid black workers slightly more ($14.53 versus $13.55), they paid white workers substantially less ($14.14 versus $17.38).
Note also that black workers made up 38% of the workplace at Ford but only 6% elsewhere, so the higher salary for black workers at Ford probably reflects the fact that more were working at more highly skilled jobs. It sure seems tough to infer anything other than that, at any given job description, Ford paid less.
One reason the (majority white) workers voted for unions was to reduce labor market competition by colored workers
This is common knowledge. Just as it is common knowledge that employers sometimes brought in black workers as strike breakers. But how does any of that support the incorrect factual claim that pay at pre-unionized Ford was equal to that at its unionized competitors?
Gdanning
2yr ago
You were teaching the age of the Earth a second ago, so where's the problem?
Dude, I was referring to a generic teacher, not me in general.
The difference is that I'm only exposed to the particular topics the smartass bothers to raise his hand about, and "shut up and eat your french fries" remains a valid response, while you've committed to going down every conceivable rabbit hole, even when no one is interested in it.
No, it is not a valid response to a serious question. As for non-serious questions, you obviously never taught. Everyone -- most importantly the other students -- know when a question is serious. And if it indeed serious but no one else is interested, then the obvious response is to tell the student that you will provide him with relevant resources outside class, and to then follow through. Just as one does when an advanced student asks a question that is beyond the ken or outside the interests of average students. There are certainly some difficult challenges when teaching, but dealing with this particular eventuality is not one of them.
The "subtractive" one, where you get rid of the things people disagree about, until only the ones everyone agrees on remain
I have addressed that. As I have noted, that doesn't work in economics nor in any of the social sciences. Many major topics do not have one correct answer.
First, as already pointed out, there will always be curation, and it is better that the school library reflects community values than the librarian's values.
That is irrelevant, since the question is not whose single viewpoint should be reflected, but whether the library should purge all but a single viewpoint.
Second, I don't even believe the person who wrote that. I'm sure they could come up with a post-hoc justification for not doing it, but they've made a fully-general case for stacking the school's book shelves full of porn.
And yet, despite that effectively being the law of the land for decades, school libraries are not full of porn. That is because:the issue is censorship of viewpoints, and porn is not a viewpoint. That is why one can make the sale of Hustler to minors illegal, but not the sale of Mein Kampf. Schools remove material with sexual content from libraries all the time. Prominent examples include The Bluest Eye, The Kite Runner, and Beloved.
not teaching social science is a perfectly valid alternative. This is proven by the fact that even though the questions you mentioned are indeed interesting, many schools never come close to touching them.
- If your solution to how best to teach a subject is not to teach it at all, you might want to rethink things.
- Really, many schools do not teach about why England industrialized first, nor what caused the American Revolution? Name them. Because unless you are referring to these schools, you are clearly just making that up.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Where would employers prefer the election take place? At the union hall, where a majority is guaranteed to vote to form a union? Isn't it to the benefit of employers to hold the election on site, during working hours?
Gdanning
2yr ago
Ford was late to unionization and I'm not aware of their workers having been poorly paid prior to it.
Then why did their workers vote to unionize? Why vote to pay union dues for no benefit? The data here indicates that wages at Ford in 1940 were quite a bit lower than the industry norm ($14.34/hr in 2021 dollars, versus $17.09 for the industry as a whole).
Gdanning
2yr ago
I saw the other day chicago public schools costs $40k per child. That’s unions being able to close the market and fucking over all citizens and tax payers. I see elsewhere it’s 30k but that’s still stupid.
In 2019-2020, the Chicago school budget was just shy of $ 6 billion. Enrollment was 355,000. That is per pupil spending of $16,900. LAUSD, which is also unionized, spent about the same that year. So, if per pupil spending now substantially higher, as it is in LAUSD, it obviously is not because the districts suddenly became unionized and the unions were able to "close the market."
The most obvious reason for the recent increase, in order of magnitude, is 1) the large COVID enrollment decrease, which obviously is going to push per-pupil spending up; 2) an increase in state and especially federal revenue (in LAUSD, it rose from 631M to 1.85B) ; 3) the expiration of the old collective bargaining agreement in LAUSD and the signing of a new one; and 3) inflation.
Gdanning
2yr ago
The Union is weird in that they are fully created and defended by government laws with few versions of them existing in places that don’t have those carve outs
Unions are not created by the government. Workers must vote to unionize a workplace. Unions existed back when unionizing was illegal, and laws simply protect the right to unionize.
Gdanning
2yr ago
You are not engaging with either limitation in any principled fashion.
Because you are talking about something different. There is a difference between 1) not going out of your way to provide the means for someone who wants to speak; and 2) silencing someone who is already speaking.
Gdanning
2yr ago
I take people at face value in general until I've observed them enough to conclude that they're being deceptive
I think you are ignoring the very real possibility of self-deception. After all, even most perpetrators of violence, even mass violence, tend to convince themselves that their actions are justified, and often even morally mandatory.
Gdanning
2yr ago
There is no right to an audience for your personal views.
Whatever the merits might be of that argument in some contexts, in the contexts of removals of books which are currently on library shelves, it amounts to a claim that the majority has the right to silence the views of the minority. Which they don't.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Yes, like all human endeavors, laws are regulations re unions are not perfect. They include some pitfalls, one of which you identify here. But why would you form a judgment that the entire system is "insane" without assessing all of the costs and benefits, rather than only one? By your logic, the Defund the Police folks are correct, because they can certainly point to an instance in which a police officer acted not only lazily and stupidly, but also maliciously. But, the Defund the Police folks are not correct, because, on net, having police is sound policy not "insane" policy.
Gdanning
2yr ago
What if you're discussing geocentrism, and they're a smartass that compulsively reads internet contrarians, and ends up making a compelling case that all the laws of physics can be reformulated into a system where the Earth is at the (0,0,0) coordinate, he's good enough with Math that his presentation is compelling to the less advanced students, and since your background is law you're caught on the back foot, and the entire class ends up believing the Earth is the center of the universe?
I am not sure why I am teaching a science class if my background is in law, but if I were, then I would bring in a subject matter expert. And if that doesn't work, oh well. As I have said, there is no guarantee that students will learn a given lesson. All one can do is choose the best pedagogy, and as I said, the best pedagogy is to give students the evidence, not to tell them, "this is what scientist say is true." Finally, the problem of the smartass would be exactly the same in either case: Suppose I just give a lecture on "this is what scientists say," and the same smartass raises his hand and raises the same point?
Even if you have the integrity to keep your promise, I have zero trust that the education establishment does.
So, the better alternative is to tell the education establishment that it is OK to silence all opposing views? I do not understand why that would be the case. That is exactly what I pointed out previously: My former colleague, who argued that, because perfect objectivity is impossible, it is fine for him to simply give students his one-sided (and very left wing) views and ignore all opposing views.
He's saying you can't be neutral
Yet, he also says, "they are supposed to be neutral." So, which is it?
What is it that you don't understand about that,
- I am taking about library books, not curriculum. To repeat the previous Supreme Court quote: "Petitioners might well defend their claim of absolute discretion in matters of curriculum by reliance upon their duty to inculcate community values. But we think that petitioners' reliance upon that duty is misplaced where, as here, they attempt to extend their claim of absolute discretion beyond the compulsory environment of the classroom, into the school library and the regime of voluntary inquiry that there holds sway." (italics in original)
- As for " it should not include things whose inclusion is contentious," as I noted, that is impossible in the social sciences, because almost every interesting question is contentious: Why did England industrialize first? (some say it is because of profits from the slave trade; others say that is bullshit). What were the main causes of the American revolution? (some say the desire for individual liberty; others say the desire of local elites for greater economic opportunity, which was denied them under British mercantalist policies). Not to mention every important issue in economics. And the fact of the matter is that all states require students to analyze evidence related to contentious issues. Eg, Florida asks students to "Evaluate, take and defend objective, evidence-based positions on issues that cause the government to balance the interests of individuals with the public good" and repeatedly asks students to "evaluate" various issues, which means to "use information to make judgments."
Gdanning
2yr ago
No, they have historically been anti-nuclear because nuclear power was seen as a threat to the environment, from the (supposed) threat of radiation to issues with nuclear waste to the effect of waste heat on local marine environments.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Having accepted this premise
Why would you accept this premise? Specifically, a) why would you accept these people's self-serving explanation for their own behavior (and behavior, btw, which most people find abhorrent nowadays), especially given that 1) anti-Semitism long predates the ADL; 2) anti-Semitism in the US has almost certainly declined since the advent of the ADL; 3) anti-Semitism is probably higher in other countries, where the ADL does not exist; 4) anti-Semitism is probably higher among people with less education, and who hence probably have never heard of the ADL; and b) why do you assume that the ADL knows what the people you spoke with believe?
Gdanning
2yr ago
Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing?
Because it is illegal
Are the people running factory machines inside of Ford and GM (or starbucks, or a hollywood writers room) really that highly skilled?
Autoworkers and screenwriters? Yes. Baristas? Not so much. Which is why unions have historically been more successful in skilled trades than in nonskilled trades; it is difficult for employers to simply fire skilled workers because it is difficult to replace them. More importantly, if it is more expensive to replace them than to give them a raise, well, that answers your question about why employers do not simply fire them.
Gdanning
2yr ago
And what will you do if they don't come to the correct conclusion? Are you going to let them go out into the world believing the Earth is flat or is 6000 years old, or are you going to start tweaking the materials and classes until they reach the right conclusion?
- No pedagogical strategy is perfect. No matter what, some students will walk out of class without learning the day's lesson. But they are more likely to learn the lesson, and more importantly, retain the lesson, if they are asked to assess the evidence therefor, rather than simply being told, "scientists say X is true."
- If an individual student looks at the evidence and comes to the conclusion that the earth is 6000 years old, then I would talk to him or her and try to determine how he or she came to that conclusion. Perhaps he or she did not understand some of the evidence, or perhaps the evidence was not as clearly presented as it might have been. So, am I going to start tweaking the materials? Yes, of course, because the Earth is NOT 6000 years old, and the evidence clearly shows that. So, yes, I might *improve *the materials by making them easier to understand, or what have you.
are you going to restrain yourself only to the subject where we can reasonably believe that there even is a correct answer, and we know it, will subjects with more controversies and more unknowns also be subject to such tweaks?
Since I have repeatedly argued the opposite, no.
Why do you cut out the part of his comment where his reasoning is explained in detail, and then act like you don't understand where he's coming from?
I didn't. Let's review: My initial proposal was to codify Pico, so that schools cannot remove books on the basis that they include ideas that the school disagrees with. it seems to me that one can hardly oppose that idea on the ground that "libraries are supposed to be neutral."
Gdanning
2yr ago
- I thought you disagreed with the explanation, not that you still didn't understand it. Which part of the argument are you having issues with?
Again, I do not understand what is "radical and hostile" about a proposal to stop schools from silencing political views with which it disagrees.
Gdanning
2yr ago
No, it is impossible to serve their individual interests at all.
This is empirically false. Virtually every school permits parents to opt their children out of certain lessons, particularly sex ed, and many permit parents to have their children read alternative books if they do not approve of a particular book assigned in class.
No, obviously the former. If individual parents want their kids to have a book, they are free to supply their own kids with that book.
This is not germane to what I said, which is that one comes closer than the other.
Because parents controlling what their children are taught is a good thing,
Yes, it is, but again that is not germane to the issue, which is that when a majority of parents get together to do that, they are acting as the government. It is not different than if the voters of a local district passed an initiative doing the same thing.
You provide a number of examples of how a teacher can teach both sides. My answer to them all is the same: I would be a fool to trust teachers to do this in a fair and neutral fashion, so I do not want them doing it at all.
And so instead you would prefer that teachers tell students that your views are wrong? That makes little sense. You are making the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Atheists felt the same way about "teaching the controversy" when the issue was teaching evolution, if I recall correctly. Were they wrong then?
Yes, they were. Evolution, and all science (eg, heliocentrism v geocentrism) should be taught by giving students the major interpretations and the evidence, and let them figure out which is correct. They will come to the correct conclusion, because evidence, and they will learn the material better.
Yes, and that is a good thing. Public school teachers have zero legitimate interest in engaging in controversy.
I said they can be fired for ignoring policy on controversial issues, not "engaging in controversy." Talking about controversial issues is unavoidable in economics, government/civics, and history, and I assume some areas of science where there are unresolved questions.
I am worried that teachers will continue to use their position and the public resources they've been granted to indoctrinate children with values hostile to my own.
Right. And if you are worried about that, don't you want to preserve the possibility that your child will find alternative ideas when they browse the stacks of their school library? Or do you instead want those pernicious ideas to be reinforced every time your child goes there? I honestly do not understand how your conclusion follows from your premise.
In what way is it respecting the "rights of students and parents" to teach the students something a majority of the parents don't want you to teach them?
- I was referring to the rights of individual students and parents. The exact right you purport to be concerned with when you complain about schools indoctrinating your child.
- We are not talking about what is taught. We are talking about what books are in the library, and specifically about whether a school can remove every book that expresses an idea that the majority dislikes. This is what the Supreme Court said about this very issue: "Petitioners might well defend their claim of absolute discretion in matters of curriculum by reliance upon their duty to inculcate community values. But we think that petitioners' reliance upon that duty is misplaced where, as here, they attempt to extend their claim of absolute discretion beyond the compulsory environment of the classroom, into the school library and the regime of voluntary inquiry that there holds sway." (italics in original)
They [libraries] are supposed to be neutral.
???? And, they pursue that neutrality by removing books with which they disagree? You have been arguing against neutrality this entire time.
Gdanning
2yr ago
Well, if you see "we have to agree to disagree" as a statement that "we all should agree to" I don't know what to say. And I have not portrayed my proposal as conciliatory at all: It is the best interests of those on either side who find themselves in the minority in a particular school, but that is no more "conciliatory" than is the ban on chemical weapons. And I do not understand what is "radical and hostile" about a proposal to stop schools from silencing political views with which it disagrees.
Gdanning
2yr ago
It is categorically impossible to serve individual parents' individual interests through a public school system, and no part of the existing school system attempts to do so, ever has, or ever will.
It is impossible to completely serve individual parents' interests, but which comes closer: 1) permitting the majority to remove all library books that express ideas with which they disapprove; or 2) forbidding that? Obviously, the latter.
No, they do not. The federal bureaucracy and the teacher pipeline it accredits are two intertwined systems, among a great many others, that local parents have zero influence over despite their overwhelming impact over the school systems those parents must use
Yes, yes, and what does that have to do with the topic at hand? As I said, parents elect school boards, and school boards set curriculum, and candidates routinely pledge to eliminate "bad" ideas and then do so through altering curriculum. If they also remove books expressing views they dislike, then "parents" are indeed "the government" and are engaging in precisely the destruction of individual parental interests that you claim to be concerned with.
There is never going to be a neutral way to enforce the interests of the minority on the majority, my own minority interests most of all.
That's why the minority needs the books to be kept, because those books are written by them, from their perspective.
Your colleagues at least have the virtue of being honest about their intentions. If you do not share my values, I do not trust you to engage with those values honestly enough to be paid out of my pocket to teach my children about them. If you are not teaching my children about them, I see no reason for you to bring them up. If this makes it impossible to teach a thing, then maybe you shouldn't be teaching it.
I don't know why you are talking about values. I am talking about political and economic ideas. An Econ teacher can teach "markets bad," or they can teach "here are the benefits and drawbacks of the market." A teacher can teach, "crime is caused by racism" or they can teach "here are several common theories about the causes of crime."
And of course, none of this solves the problem of teachers pretending that their politics are simply objective fact, as they do and have ceaselessly for decades,
Which is why it is important for teachers to always present opposing views. It really is not that hard. Can it be done perfectly? No, which I already said. But that does not mean there is no duty to try as best as possible.
"A teacher" and perhaps even "a school" may be capable of doing so, in the same sense that "a man" with a severed spine is capable of summiting Everest. I have seen zero evidence that "teachers" and "schools" in the general sense even intend to try,
And, the last time you walked into a classroom was? Teachers can get fired for ignoring curriculum policy, including policy on controversial issues. And, again, the issue is what teachers and schools should be doing; your position of "the majority of parents can silence all ideas they don't like" is hardly going to improve the problem.
I am not terribly confident you did it well. If you did do it well, I am not terribly confident that it added significant value to your teaching.
- It is trivially easy to present the major arguments on most political, social, and economic issues that are likely to crop up in a K-12 classroom.
- The question is not whether it added significant value to my teaching; the question is whether it was necessary in order to respect the rights of students and parents. Which, as I recall, you claim to be very concerned about. It is indeed necessary, regardless of whether it added value to teaching.
I don’t understand where this is coming from. I haven't said anything about who creates the curriculum, nor do I particularly care. As I said in the post you are responding to, "It is not relevant who the specific school-level decisionmaker is."
There is nothing wrong with removing books because no one wants to read them. That is not the issue at all. The issue is whether schools should remove books because they disagree with the ideas expressed therein and wish to suppress those ideas.
No, it is my contention that no material should ever be removed from a library over majority objections to the viewpoint expressed therein. Content is not the same as viewpoint. Removing Playboy because it has pictures of naked women is removal based on content. Removing Playboy because it advocates for the legalization of drugs is removal based on viewpoint.
No, I am not concerned with balance at all. My concern is to prevent the majority from silencing minority views, whatever the local majority happens to be.
But, if you want examples, as I noted at the beginning, see cancel culture. As for specific examples of viewpoint-based removals, those are very difficult to find on either side, because 1) viewpoint-based removal is arguably* currently illegal under the Pico plurality opinion; 2) most school districts and libraries have policies which explicitly forbid removal based on disagreement with the views expressed therein. See, eg, this standard Texas policy
*It is complicated, since it was a plurality opinion, but most lower courts have adopted the reasoning thereof.
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