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HelmedHorror

Still sane, exile?

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joined 2022 September 04 21:47:40 UTC 

				
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HelmedHorror


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Still sane, exile?

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 21:47:40 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That system, which is what we have and has existed for a very long time, is not communism. The government telling a paper mill that they can't set up their mill in the middle of a residential neighborhood does not make the system communist, so it certainly doesn't make it so when it comes to regulating where houses can be built. If you want to advocate some new understanding of the word "communism" that means something that no one else means by it, you can certainly try to do so, but I doubt it will catch on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now, you could argue that grammar isn’t all that important, but if it is, I don’t see how you’re going to teach it in history class.




I just want to make sure I understand: you are claiming that you don't understand how one could teach grammar in a history class?


You could teach grammar using any written sentences. You could teach grammar using the comment you just made!




Or take metaphors and figurative language.




Perhaps it would be helpful to use a made-up sentence or short dialogue for the purposes of educating a student about metaphors and figurative language. I guess that technically counts as fiction. But do they really need to read a Shakespeare play or Swift or Lewis? I'll be honest, it seems to me that you really want students to read classic literature and are perhaps reaching for whatever justification is handy. Am I way off?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it still looks... fairly peaceful?




Then, by my estimation, you're no different than the people who stood in front of the scenes of riots in the Summer of 2020 and declared they were Mostly Peaceful. Sorry.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Only if you believe there's a finite supply of "racial purity" (when did it appear, by the way? The Neanderthals?) and brown immigrants permanently dilute it. Otherwise, it's just cultural change. That is no less reversible than communism.




I do happen to think that races differ on average. But even if they didn't, cultural change is absolutely irreversible. For example, American culture irreversibly changed with the introduction of Irish, German, Italian, and Latin American immigrants. And even if cultural change could be reversed, real people have to live real lives over decades while enduring this change.


It is little consolation to those experiencing the soul-crushing pain of watching their communities deteriorate to be told, "It's okay, you only have to put up with this every single day for a few more decades, because then you'll die. Oh, you have descendants who will outlast you and you care about what your country and community is bequeathing them? Don't worry, the Multicultural New Economic Zone is all they'll ever know. They won't know what could have been. (We'll make sure of it.)"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Even granting everything you just said for the sake of argument, I still don't understand how that can or should result in someone actually believing in the privacy of their own mind that Jan 6 wasn't violent and bad. Or do you suspect that the people on The Motte claiming such things are being mask-on even here?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll probably get hate for being a buzzkill with this, but, what's the culture war angle for AI posts like this? I get that the broad rationalist community is interested in AI, and certainly there are times when AI and culture war intersect. But I don't see how this is in principle different than posting a top-level CW roundup comment about a new operating system, phone model, GPU line, medical technology innovation, or crypto scandal.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Maybe it not being easy to understand is the point? It is a skill to stick with hard, somewhat alien material and learn to interpret it or, more likely, give enough of a bullshit explanation to get by.




We could also have kids decode, by hand, arbitrary sequences of words written in ROT13. The question is, is this more useful than anything else we might have those kids spend that time on?




(Obviously, for Westerners, keeping in touch with the canon of one's civilization can have its own intrinsic value).




This is indeed probably the best argument for literature, but I don't think it's compelling enough. For one thing, I think kids understand and internalize their civilization without formal instruction. It's just "in the water", as it were. But secondly, I suspect much of the Western canon is more likely to turn off any interest a kid might have had in their civilization. These works of fiction tend to be extremely difficult to make any sense of or derive any value from. Some of that is because the metaphors and allusions are completely lost on a child (or in many cases almost any modern person) or there's a reference to something contemporaneous that's long been lost to time. But, frankly, a lot of it is because the language is just sorely outdated and teachers seldom want to "sully" the work by using modern translations. For example, Shakespeare uses "a haggard" to refer to a falcon. Just fucking say "falcon"! But noooo, that's not "poetic" or "authentic" enough.


If anything, subjecting kids to this stuff and telling them this is an iconic and beautiful important part of their civilization is just going to result in kids thinking their civilization must be pretty fucking boring and unimportant. And I care too much about Western civilization to inculcate indifference to it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Most of it is humiliating, because what makes you look non-dangerous to police is an abject display of submission.




Can you elaborate on this? Generally, police just want you to:


    

  1. Keep your hands visible. Is keeping your hands casually at your sides humiliating?
    2. 

  2. Don't, without being instructed, reach for anything or walk to an enclosed location (e.g., into your car or home, within which might be a weapon).
    3. 

  3. I guess, uh, don't say that you're going to kill them? I don't know, I'm having trouble finding a #3, honestly.
    4. 



Is standing/sitting there with your hands casually at your sides (or on your steering wheel) until the conclusion of the interaction so humiliating?


For the very small proportion of encounters with police that involve the officers' guns drawn, they may ask you to walk backwards and get down on your knees or get flat on the ground with your hands out to the sides. Do you consider that humiliating? This is done to minimize the subjects' ability to put up effective resistance. It's to decrease the likelihood that they have to fucking shoot you! I'm terribly sorry if you feel like you're playing the hokey-pokey for that brief moment that the vast majority of the population will never even encounter in their entire lifetime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Agree and disagree. There is one big difference on these pardons. They have high mostly bipartisan support. Not sure on GOP numbers but I would guess it’s close to 50% or higher.






The student loan forgiveness was a bigger deal for executive action because it was not highly popular.




If it's so popular, have Congress pass legislation decriminalizing marijuana. If Congress can't/won't, then why should it be okay for a president to unilaterally decide something similar?




The whole notion of political capital and being punished in the next election for doing unpopular things is the checks and balances for this move.




This isn't a parliamentary system. We don't do that here. Separation of powers exists whether we like it or not, and in my opinion it exists for a good reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It's entirely valid to ask why someone may want a mod that turns this character white.




Why?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of me is tempted to respond to the individual complaints you cite (e.g., regarding quotas, apparently MSP expected 100 stops per month per trooper. That's 5 per shift. Let me ask you something: how do you think police supervisors should deal with a trooper who, upon review of his shift, has been sitting under an overpass all day making zero stops and playing Angry Birds on his phone?) But I hope you won't begrudge me for instead getting at what I think is the core of the disagreement. Let me explain.


In general, I've never been impressed by examples like what you're citing. Here we have an institution - police departments - who, unlike corporations, churches, NGOs, etc., are public-facing, held accountable by the public, and have a significant degree of open records. Along come actors (people working at leftist/libertarian publications) who are extremely ideologically and professionally motivated to find fault in this institution and its members, whether or not fault exists in general or in any given instance. And they have 18,000 police departments to sift through for ammunition, with all the evil and human failings that go along with the approximately million fallible people in those departments, and little to no motivation to identify innocent explanations or exculpatory context.


Given that background, don't you therefore agree that our baseline expectation should be that there will be virtually endless examples scattered throughout the year, for every year in perpetuity, of something that officers or departments are doing that's shady, abusive, corrupt, or (perhaps more often than not) merely cast in that light when framed a certain way, with certain information omitted, and with the author guiding the reader (who lacks domain-specific knowledge and context) to squint a certain way to see the optical illusion pop out? And, most importantly, would you not agree that the fact that there are perpetually frequent examples should mean virtually nothing for the layman who just wants a general impression of police as an institution or wants to know what to think of his home city's department and its officers?


To put it another way: Wouldn't it be astonishing if there weren't such frequent articles of alleged police misdeeds in these publications, given the trove available to reporters to sift through, the evil and imperfections inherent in any group of a million people, and given the reporters' ideological biases and the eagerness to click on those articles by their readers who share those biases?


Now, it would be very fair for you to point out in response to the above that my reasoning would seem to preclude ever finding widespread fault in any institution. I wouldn't take my reasoning that far, though. Let me use an analogy to help explain how I think about this.


Consider academia. As someone who's been in The Motte for years, I hope my memory is not mistaken when I identify you as someone who, like myself and many people on The Motte, believe that academia is ridden with systemic progressive bias. How do we know that academia is actually systemically biased towards progressives, and that it's not just a bunch of conservatives scouring the thousands of universities in the Western world for isolated examples of bias like I claim that Reason et al are doing with police departments? While there's no slam-dunk proof, I think one major difference comes down to just how blatant, widespread, all-encompassing, top-down, and officially sanctioned the examples are from the firehose we have to draw from. We can see the universities' curriculum, hiring/tenure process (e.g., DEI loyalty oaths), official policies, statements by leadership, actions by strongly adjacent institutions like major academic journals, political donation records, etc., and it all points in the same direction and has a very strong magnitude. If you were parachuted into a few random social science classes for a few hours, you could expect to be positively nauseated by the intensity of the leftist bias.


By contrast, if you watched a random few hours of body cam footage, it seems you agree that you would not be similarly steeped in a display of corruption, abuse, and other malfeasance. And if police misdeeds were higher up the chain than mere body cam footage could reveal, we should expect a putatively widespread problem to be in evidence in vast quantities of large departments, with extensive networks of mutual corruption at the top levels, not these frankly pennyante, chickenshit, and/or extremely isolated examples that Reason et al restock the shelves with every so often. But you know where we can find that? In Latin America and other corrupt countries in the present, and in American departments generations ago when organized crime was a much bigger deal. So we know what to look for. We know how rancid is smells when it's a problem. It's just not there anymore, thank goodness. (Of course, that's not to say that isolated examples of misdeeds shouldn't be remedied, and they usually absolutely are. It's just that those examples should be be given approximately zero weight to someone trying to form an understanding of what a given police officer or department is like.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 2, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't have specific recommendations, but I would advise checking the index for any book you're thinking of getting (the index is often shown for free on Amazon's or Google Books' preview feature) and disregarding any book that doesn't have index entries for something like genes, genetics, heritability, or twin studies. Any non-RCT study of parenting or childhood outcomes that does not control for heritability (and most don't) is literally worthless.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You only say that because you have been saturated in a culture which bases 75% of its popular storytelling on remaking plays and novels from centuries ago. Without Shakespeare we don't have 10 things I hate about you, She's the man, west side story, the lion king, ran, brave new world, and way more than I can list here. Not to mention all of the phrases and sayings and aphorisms we use every day, like it's all Greek to me, love is blind, in such a pickle, heart of gold, cruel to be kind, pound of flesh, and wild goose chases. I mean for goodness sake, we even get for goodness sake from Shakespeare!




So what? Why does anyone need to know where phrases came from or who popularized a particular trope or whatever?




Yeah I'm saying you can't fashion allegory and metaphor out of real people's lives without upsetting people. Well you can for positive things of course, but not negative things. Like, pretend Helmedhorror is your last name. But it turns out the most vicious guard at Auschwitz was a distant relative also named Helmedhorror or some guy named Helmedhorror was a soldier in a war who got scared and ran away, getting his squad killed. Kids are vicious, and they will use that to ruin your school life.




We do teach nonfiction, even if it's not focused on as much as I'd like, and yet I don't have the impression there is an epidemic of kids bullying other kids for sharing a name with a bad person they read about. Since I don't expect there to be a way to resolve this difference in intuition, I'm quite comfortable letting the other readers decide for themselves which of us is most likely correct about this.




They literally always have and always will. At least if they are using old books and plays to do it they can't exclusively jam a bunch of current year bullshit down their students throats, and if some try their students will be able to find smarter and more sensible writing on the subject.




So use old nonfiction books.




I feel like you missed the point of this by skipping the next sentence. You removed all the fiction from the school because it's 'entertainment' and now you are worried they're going to get bored?




No, I'm not worried they're going to get bored. I removed the boring fiction books, remember?




Also please list three works from the past five years that you believe demonstrate the magnificence of our civilisation better than King Lear or A midsummer night's dream.




Who said that a demonstration of the magnificence of our civilization needs to come in the form of fiction?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Culture is what unites us. Our literature and plays and films and songs allow us to communicate with each other through metaphor and allegory, and when people can communicate prosodically they think more alike and don't have to spend all their time explaining in jokes and slang, or adding throat clearing in deference to the people who refuse to participate in the culture.




I totally get that and don't disagree at all. I just don't see how reading plays from 400 years ago or novels from 150 years ago does much for that. We all effortlessly absorb our culture by simply growing up in it and living in it.




You can't do that with non fiction, because people get really upset when you use them or their family as examples, not to mention removed relatives and very common names.




I'm not I understand. You're saying that people would be upset about, say, learning about the Irish potato famine or Newton or the causes of WWI or the invention of the telegram because some students might be related to some of the people involved in these incidents? I'm genuinely not trying to strawman or make you look stupid, I'm just totally lost. Maybe we're talking about different things?




Beyond that, real life doesn't play out like stories, which makes it much harder to work into teachable lessons, fables and parables, and those are the tools with which we teach morality.




Why should a high school teacher be teaching morality? That makes me bristle.


I do see some value for very young kids being taught simple stories, which is why I went out of my way to specify middle and high school.




As for older literature - for starters why do you care what modern readers can understand or are interested in?




Because if students can't understand it and aren't interested in it, it's going to be harder to teach them whatever you're using it to try and teach them (e.g., grammar, reading, metaphors, whatever). Additionally, they're going to have a rather dim view of the magnificence of their own civilization if that tedious and stodgy sludge is what we put in front of them as the supposed crown jewel of it.




Also that last line about snobbery makes me think this is more personal than you are letting on.




Yeah, I harbor quite a bit of resentment for English class, and I don't care who knows it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


To push back on that: we force kids to leave their families for like 8 hours a day to go to school. We kindof do need them to teach everything that is good, because the government is forcing their parents not to.




So don't force them.


Also, it's not as many hours as you make it sound. On average, American students spend about 5/6th of their waking hours outside of school.




To say that they're going to take our children away for most of their childhood, and then also restrict them from physical activity, is well past just borderline evil.




Not having gym class is not restricting students from physical activity. Recess is still a thing. I'm not even in principle opposed to having more recess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think you need to differentiate killing humans versus killing animals. I think it's common for people to be more disturbed by videos of animal cruelty than even the most gruesome tortures and executions of human beings. I wouldn't assume that someone who has difficulty killing an animal would have difficulty killing a person that they felt justified in killing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I also wasn't going to give my opinion on this ban because I don't consider myself a high-quality contributor. But if no mod notes is indeed the bar, I'll chime in (I have 842 comments here and on the subreddit with no warnings/bans and, to my knowledge, no mod notes).


I'm in favor of the ban and think way more banning should be done in general. I think way too many people treat warnings and bans like it's a fee they get to pay in exchange for getting to be rude to someone they disagree with. They know exactly what they're doing - they know it's against the rules when they submit their comment. They just don't care. They think the other guy deserves it, so they'll pay the ban tax and take a day off.


I think most of these people would bite their tongue if there were real, significant consequences.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yes, evil bastard cops and good noble cops are very different. The bastard cops are doing their bastardly deeds, and the good cops look the other way and close ranks to defend their brothers at any cost. Such great difference.




Why do you assume that the good cops are even aware of the corruption? It's not like the corrupt cops are telling the other cops about their misdeeds. And if an accusation of corruption appears, it's appropriate to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. If an accusation of inappropriate force comes to light, the appropriate response is usually "Look, I wasn't there. I'm not gonna Monday morning quarterback what he did based on hearsay. If the investigation reveals misconduct, then by all means he should be held accountable."


People seem to think corrupt cops are telling all their cop bros about the shit they're getting away with and they all snicker together about it or something. And they think that the non-abusive cops hide and protect the power-trippers (for reasons that are seemingly never specified by ACABers - somethingsomething brotherly solidarity?) Do they not realize how much harder it is for cops to do their job when a power-tripping asshole shows up at the scene? Cops hate those sorts of cops!


I could see isolated incidents in very small departments (e.g., tiny towns and counties) of things like this happening, but mostly because of the tight social and kin networks in places like that and the far more limited resources and oversight. But it's rarely those departments that ACABers express issue with; it's almost always the big city departments.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If you don't like the practice, don't practice it with your kids. There's no need for laws, you can just let people make the decision for their own children as they see fit.




Don't you see how that seems rather like saying "If you don't like the practice of double mastectomies, don't practice it with your kids"? Obviously double mastectomies are vastly more destructive than circumcision, but I don't see any principled difference. The foreskin exists for a reason and I suspect most guys who have one will testify to the anguish they'd feel if they learned they'd henceforth be deprived of it. For example, see the responses to the relevant question in the ACX survey.


I implore you to let your psychological guard down for a moment and sincerely examine whether your attitude towards circumcision is simply a result of having been circumcised (which I'm assuming with 95 percent confidence that you have been) and the distress you'd experience if you were no longer able to avoid truly reckoning with what was inflicted on you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it would be an act of insane hubris to imagine that you could know better than him.




Would you still feel this way if you discovered that God said raping and murdering strangers for fun is always good?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If you care about your family, then you probably don't want your kids to grow up to marry their siblings or cousins. You want them to marry members of different families. Loving your family necessarily implies that you want your grandchildren to have fewer of your genes than your children, and for your great-grand-children to have fewer of your genes than your grandchildren. The long term health of your bloodline depends on it being mixed with other bloodlines. Trying to keep your bloodline unchanged for generations is a profoundly bad idea. Also, it's probably impossible without significant coercion. People generally don't want to marry their family members unless they are forced to do so.




Genetic problems from incestuous relations is a problem. There is no comparable problem for people of one culture interacting with people from that same culture.




If your ancestors had been effective at doing this, your culture wouldn't exist.




And I'd probably care about whatever culture I would have ended up having. Just like if I was born into a different family, I would care about the family I was born into and not the one I have in the reality we live in.


At this point, I am convinced this conversation with you is not worth my time, sorry.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Integration" is inherently give-and-take. Unlike your example with the house, you don't own your culture alone, it is shared, and so the extent to which it demands conformism is shared too.




And I advocate for other people who share my culture to agree to keep it from changing in a negative way, and that includes preventing too much immigration.




Would it be fine to start dressing and talking differently after being born there?




Yes. Just like I don't think people who are members of totalitarian ideologies should be allowed to immigrate to the US (and indeed they aren't, I don't think Americans who are members of totalitarian ideologies should be punished for it.


Residents of a country have more rights and freedoms in that country than people who aren't residents of that country.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don’t think my point hinges on it being exactly 8 hours, though.




No, but it does hinge on it being a substantial enough amount of time that parental substitution is required. I don't think schools need to take over duties from parents when parents have possession of the kid for 5/6th of the kid's waking hours.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Assuming school is 8 hours, and sleep is eight hours, it’s about half of a student’s waking hours on weekdays.




a) It's more like 6 hours; b) weekdays aren't all days; c) not all weekdays have school (because of summer and holidays).


I mean... I don't know how you can even contest this. It's all right there on the page I linked. 1000-1080 hours of school (varies by state) divided by waking hours (365*16) = ~1/6 of a student's waking hours are spent in school. Even less than that when you consider that earlier grades are <1000 hours.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
First, I'm not convinced that childhood fitness is that important. I suspect the negative health effects of fitness don't reveal themselves until many decades later, and that fitness habits started in early adulthood should be sufficient to stave off the effects of poor fitness. Yes, childhood obesity is a problem, but I'm not convinced that's due to lack of exercise.


Second, regardless of the benefits, I just don't see how that's the school's job. What's the limiting principle? Should everything that's important and beneficial be done in school? Should schools have classes on healthy eating? Healthy social media usage? General socialization? Driving instruction? Home improvement? Taking care of a baby? Household budgeting and financial prudence? I mean, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if you'd say "yes" to some or all of those if you already think schools should basically be in the business of being parents. I just emphatically disagree. One of the things I always hated most about schools was how fucking patronizing and infantilizing it was.


Finally, once you open the door to the idea that schools should be entrusted as quasi-parents with a broad mandate to do good things for children, you're giving your ideological enemies (whoever they are) license to indoctrinate your kids. They already have too much latitude to do that with reading, writing, and science curriculum, but I certainly don't want to make it any easier for them.