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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Unfortunately some of our professionals like to ban teaching phonics and think Gender Queer is good content for 8 year olds.

You're referring to American schools here, so clearly Tyler's whole "we control the schools thing" isn't going so well lol

There are a number of options here, assuming that government schools exist. ("Every school a charter school" type approaches are clearly possible, but they don't have a particularly good record in practice) In order of desirability I would put them as:

  1. Elected politicians of the normal level of competence for national politics (or state politics in well-run US state) supervise teachers
  2. Headteachers/school principals supervise teachers and nobody supervises them
  3. The sort of person who becomes a manager in a large school district supervises teachers
  4. The sort of crazy retiree who ends up holding unpaid local elected office in a small town supervises teachers. PTA mums supervising teachers is a minor variant of this, which is why British schools ended up sidelining elected parent-governors.

In the UK, (1) got us acceptable outcomes under Blair's rotation of education secretaries, and very good outcomes under Gove, (2) got us okay outcomes for most kids but some schools decided not to teach the kids to read, (3) got us "The perfect Ofsted lesson - how to impress school inspectors by never, ever teaching the kids anything" and (4) is outside the Overton window.

I suspect most Motteposters would disagree with me and rate (4) above (3). They may be right in a US context.

hmm? school boards across the country were deposed and much of this stuff was stopped in localities across the country, including my locality

the "professional experts" were booted over their political insanity and covid insanity and now not a single one has a seat anymore and the explicit progressive politics has ended with teachers being sanctioned and punished for attempting to push it

what are you talking about?

I'm trying to imagine this scenario except instead "the whims of a bunch of parents who don't know shit about pedagogy" have no power and their only option is a march through institutions to retake the professional expert class (sacrificing a few generations in the meantime) or just move away to some other place?

You're referring to American schools here

unless you're claiming the progressive politics rearing its face in gender politics and racial politics in education generally or of children is some uniquely American thing, which is hard to swallow, I'm trying to craft a decent point out of this

even if it's true, like every one else who swims in the American empire's culture, when it's happening here you can look forward to it happening in your county as well (BLM protests coming to a town near you!) and then you can tell us your surefire effective way to depose an entrenched professional class

I know it's easy for euros to feel they know quite a bit about America, American politics, and Americans, because they're steeped in our culture and read discussion of our politics on the American internet, but it's important to remember their understanding and knowledge is quite limited and heinously manipulated. Being American and not blue-tribe, living in Western Europe and watching the media the Europeans consume there is quite eye opening. The whole continent's (or at least the Western part of it) accurate understanding of America is a casualty of American media's attack on typical Americans.

what are you talking about?

Mostly just being snarky.

unless you're claiming the progressive politics rearing its face in gender politics and racial politics in education generally or of children is some uniquely American thing, which is hard to swallow

My point was that this ideal of the best way to run schools "parents in the suburbs control it" has resulted in (edit) mediocre educational outcomes in the western world, and generally a system full of absolute fucking insanity like gender and racial politics. Maybe having technocrats would be even worse, but the status quo is extremely far from "good".

when it's happening here you can look forward to it happening in your county as well (BLM protests coming to a town near you!) and then you can tell us your surefire effective way to depose an entrenched professional class

I'm Canadian, it's too late for us, we went full retard a while ago. I'm not actually sure what the most effective way to depose an entrenched professional class is, maybe american suburban parents are the dominant strategy. Given their efficacy however, we might be fucked if they are.

the worst educational outcomes in the western world

adjusting for demographics, the US school system is one of the best in the world as measured by proxies like PISA, with the school systems with the most involved parents, i.e., suburbs, scoring near the top

homeschoolers do even better than that

to be fair, I think this is despite the school systems and not because of them; what made you think US primary schools were "some of the worst educational outcomes in the western world"?

and generally a system full of absolute fucking insanity like gender and racial politics

racial and gender politics were imposed from above and through institutional capture; it was never imposed because parents wanted it or through parental control

parental control was the check and moderation on each of the "professional educators" newest idiocy from abandoning phonics to gender politics to common-core

what made you think US primary schools were "some of the worst educational outcomes in the western world"?

I was being too snarky, I amended to "mediocre"

Middle of the pack in achievement

Pretty expensive but again, with middling outcomes.

adjusting for demographics

I would posit that having massive demographic achievement gaps is a failure state.

it's a failure somewhere, but unless you're trying to imply blacks in Mississippi would do as well as asians in Singapore if only they were swapped it doesn't have much to do with systemic comparisons

when comparing demographic groups against each other, the US performs better than almost every other country in the world

human groups aren't interchangeable

Now imagine how poorly American pedagogists would behave if they could run wild and never answer to voters or parents. Which is my response to BurdensomeCount rather than Tyler.

I'm deeply skeptical of would-be technocrats. Self appointed "experts" aspiring to shape society free from petty concerns like consent from the governed so consistently go against my preferences. This happens to be a good example of the "experts" not clearly aligning with broader societal preferences, expectations or goals. Maybe American school administrators are especially unaligned with any positive societal outcomes and BurdensomeCount is fairly pointing out how British schooling is well managed by competent professionals. That's certainly not a point in America's favor given how school administrators seemingly run rampant. But that is especially not an argument for why they should be freed from the last bit of voter influence over them.

Now imagine how poorly American pedagogists would behave if they could run wild and never answer to voters or parents

Fair point!

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