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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   32761 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Eh, from today's Short Circuit:

Allegation: Colorado middle-school teacher invites student—who has never questioned her own gender identity—to an after-school art club. Student is surprised to arrive at what is actually a Gender and Sexualities Alliance meeting, where she is told that students who are uncomfortable with their bodies are more likely to be trans and is encouraged to come out as trans, which she does. Although the guest speaker warned students that it might not be safe to tell their parents about the meeting, she does. The parents sue the school district and its board of education, alleging violations of their parental substantive-due-process rights. Tenth Circuit: We're not sure what the scope of parental SDP rights are, but it doesn't matter because this wasn't official district policy.

Reading through the factual background in the opinion, I could see this stuff being a pet project of a teacher (and apparently a substitute teacher), just with the district administration providing cover for them. My sense is that all of the university teaching programs have been captured by folks who teach all the new teachers that the most important part of being a teacher is being an activist.

My sense is that all of the university teaching programs have been captured by folks who teach all the new teachers that the most important part of being a teacher is being an activist.

My sense is not that, based on acquiring an education degree and teaching in public schools for quite some time. The trainings lately are so anodyne they are actually contentless -- like to the point of having the ice breaker take up literally the entire training time. For hours if necessary. "Have you heard about the iceberg? Let's talk about your Meyers-Briggs type and your own set of lenses for a few hours."

My sense is more that the teachers lately are very low on autonomy, mastery, and purpose in respect to their main job duties, and some of them have a savior complex which comes out in things like that, or filing false abuse claims against families they don't like.

My sense is that all of the university teaching programs have been captured by folks who teach all the new teachers that the most important part of being a teacher is being an activist.

Once upon a time, when my wife was in her 20's she worked at an organic grocery store. The pay was shit, management were assholes, and the benefits sucked. While this is broadly true for grocery, it was especially true there. Anybody with any sense went to go work for Whole Foods or Trader Joes instead. The people who stayed were true believers in organic food. They'd do all kinds of weird shit, like refuse to help customers find products (like honey) because they were vegan and they didn't think it was ethical.

Increasingly I'm finding the same to be the case with teachers. They are overworked, underpaid, and increasingly the only ones sticking around are the ones with some sort of radical agenda that it's worth sticking around to push. Vaccine mandates, like most ostensibly public institutions, flushed out a huge proportion of the dissenters. Though they occasionally still shitcan a few especially stubborn teachers who've manage to hang on this long over their conscientious objection to trans policies.

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