Gdanning
3yr ago
Are you aware that the source you cite misstates the statement made in the opinion and brief? Your source says: ""A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%."
But, the opinion and brief do not refer to all newborns. It refers to high-risk Black newborns. And, unless we know what "high risk" means, we can't actually know whether the claim is statistically impossible, can we?
Regardless, you have no data on how often justices uncritically cite factual claims, including stupid ones, so you have no basis for your claim other than your own preconceptions.
Gdanning
3yr ago
That would not seem to address OP's concerns re improving the quality of education.
Gdanning
3yr ago
I don’t have an opinion on that, because I try not to make generalizations based on n=2. And, given that Scientology is a religion, whereas QAnon is a political organization, I would certainly want to control for that. I would also want to control for the fact that QAnon has very much been in the news of late, whereas Scientology has not.
Gdanning
3yr ago
It is indeed relevant, because you seem to be claiming that Jackson is more stupid or more partisan than is the norm, but the evidence you cite does not distinguish her from the norm. Hence, it seems to be an isolated demand for rigor.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Why not just come out and say that you are referring to Black Panther?
And, I have seen neither film, but surely you can see that lack of realism is usually a more serious flaw in a film that purports to be a true story than it is in a comic book film. You seem to be falling victim somewhat to confirmation bias.
Gdanning
3yr ago
No, giving raises to current teachers will not improve teaching (Though my best HS math teacher, Mr. Gou5dge (the 5 was silent) left teaching for better pay in law). But increasing salaries for new teachers will. Eg, more of those TFA teachers I mentioned will stick with teaching,and more smart grads will opt for teaching instead of other careers.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Her commentary about black babies and black doctors was just a complete hash, as if neither she nor her clerks have even a rudimentary grasp of statistics.
That "commentary" amounted to one sentence: "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die." See page 23 of her dissent. The citation is to a brief filed by the American Association of Medical Colleges, which says exactly that, at page 4: "And for high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician is tantamount to a miracle drug: it more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live."
Justices uncritically citing statements in briefs is all too common, but it is not a phenomenon that is unique to any particular justice, nor to justices of any particular political persuasion. See this law review article from 2014, which says in part:
My research shows that 1 in every 5 citations to amicus briefs by the Justices in the last 5 years was used to support a factual claim-something I define as a theoretically falsifiable observation about the world. . . . And more than two-thirds of the time, the Justice citing the amicus brief for a fact cites only the amicus brief as authority-not any accompanying study or journal citation from within the brief.
Gdanning
3yr ago
I knew someone would miss the point. The point is NOT that it is unfair that lawyers make more than teachers. The point is that, if we want to get smart people to go into teaching as a career, such as by retaining the Teach For America people I referred to, then we have to compensate them a lot better.
Lawyers . . . spend 3 extra years in school.
No, two extra years, because a teaching credential usually takes a year. And if you look at the salary schedule in the link, a teacher with 2 years of experience is making under 57K in Los Angeles. And, of course, many law students have summer clerkships which now have a median salary of more than $3000/wk for 10 weeks.
Also the lawyer number is skewed upwards by big law that recruits from T14 schools and where you work insane hours
No, I cited the median salary, which unlike the mean, is not skewed by big law salaries.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Again. I really don't understand. Surely, just making the default decisions leads to working for some corporation or another. Very few grads become teachers and, as noted, doing so usually requires extra schooling beyond a bachelor's degree. Which is not the case for most entry level post-college jobs.
I don't know much about Canada, but in Los Angeles, a teacher starts at 56K and can reach 98K with a doctorate and 14 years of experience. Meanwhile, the median starting salary for an attorney in Los Angeles is $121,000.
Realistic raises aren’t going to fix it.
I didn't say anything about "realistic" raises. I referred to necessary raises.
all they have to do to become teachers is not opt out at any point. Make teaching something that has to be opted in to, you'll get better teachers.
I don't understand what this means. A teacher, at least in public school, has to obtain a credential, which means completing a credential program. How is that not opting in.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Criticism of the movie itself is weak, with the arguments boiling down to "it's not realistic" and "the plot doesn't always make sense", things that could be leveled at any summer blockbuster.
Yes, and those exact criticisms ARE levied by critics at summer blockbusters, all the time. I see that the film has a 74% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is the same as Elemental and Asteroid City, and better than the Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones and Fast X. Are you sure there is a culture war angle here?
Gdanning
3yr ago
If the problem is that teachers are stupid and allergic to nuance, then structural changes are not going to have much effect. We're going to have to attract smarter, less nuance-resistant people to the teaching profession. And that is going to mean raising pay substantially. Because when I was teaching, we had plenty of smart, nuance-friendly Teach for America teachers, but the vast majority of them left to go to law/medical/business school.
It’s never exactly been a secret that you can’t really fail out of university
That doesn't seem to be consistent with the high dropout rate, the fact that low GPA is the best predictor of dropping out, and that apparently 1 in 6 first-year students are placed on academic probation
Gdanning
3yr ago
The behavior seems just as intentional to me The action might be just as intentional, but the outcome is not. One is apparently meant to destroy the artwork. The other is not meant to destroy anything. There is a difference between painting "Kilroy was here" on a wall and painting "fuck you" on a car.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Is that particularly surprising? The average burnout is not intentional vandalism; moreover, no one is likely to even notice tire marks on a generic street.
Gdanning
3yr ago
This starts getting into murky territory and playing games with language, because I think that the Romans and Greeks of antiquity actually did have a national identity.
One thing it is not, is playing games with language. When historians talk about nationalism and national identity, they mean something very specific. I am no expert on the ancient Greeks, but when you say, "What exactly was it that united the Achaeans, Dorics, Ionians and Aeolians?," isn’t the answer, nothing? Did they see themselves as one people, or four? The mere fact that they saw themselves as related is not particularly relevant --so do Americans, Canadians, Aussies, and Brits. Nor is it relevant that the Romans saw them as Greeks, because the concept of the nation is all about self-identification.
More importantly, this is all a bit off topic. The modern concept of the nation might have had a precursor or two; after all, the idea must have come from somewhere. And the Jews, being the victim of an expulsion and having been treated as "others" for a long time, are a likely candidate, because self-identity as a nation often grows from being othered, as well as from historical events like expulsions (the residents of Palestine, for example, probably thought of themselves as Arabs, rather than Palestinians, pre-1948). But the initial claim, that a multiracial state is impossible to maintain, because look at the Austrian empire, is based on an assumption about the nature of identity which is inconsistent with the scholarly understanding thereof.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Yes, part of the issue is that it has to be based on something more than the defendant's dislike, etc, of the group, because of R.A.V. v. City of St Paul:
As explained earlier, see supra, at 386, the reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey. St. Paul has not singled out an especially offensive mode of expression—it has not, for example, selected for prohibition only those fighting words that communicate ideas in a threatening (as opposed to a merely obnoxious) manner. Rather, it has proscribed fighting words of whatever manner that communicate messages of racial, gender, or religious intolerance. Selectivity of this sort creates the possibility that the city is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas. That possibility would alone be enough to render the ordinance presumptively invalid, but St. Paul's comments and concessions in this case elevate the possibility to a certainty.
I am having trouble imagining how a statute would thread the needle such that painting a public bench to express disapproval of views would be punishable as a hate crime.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Almost certainly not. A "hate crime" is a regular crime that is committed because of the status of the victim. There is really no victim here. If I vandalize a mosque or some such, that might be a hate crime. But as I understand it, this is a publicly owned bench.
Gdanning
3yr ago
The homicide rate did not begin rising in those particular cities until 2015. And it continued dropping in NYC and Los Angeles.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Aren't France and Germany major arms exporters? Esp on a per capita basis?
Gdanning
3yr ago
Don't France, Germany, and the UK all have rather robust arms industries? Those Leopards and Challengers aren't made in the USA, after all.
Gdanning
3yr ago
Perhaps, but this case isn't about government speech; the government speech doctrine is something different.
Yes, I understand that your suggestion would increase the supply of teachers. But what I expressed skepticism about was that it would improve education. How is it that attracting slackers will improve education? I taught high school for many years, and there is no way that a slacker is going to be an effective teacher, with the possible exception of someone who is a genius.
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