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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34533 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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A couple of weeks ago, in the week of Jan 16 thread, there was a discussion of the kerfuffle re Florida refusing to offer the pilot of AP African American Studies. There were a couple of minor developments last week. First, the course description is available here

Second, Florida specified its objections here

Now, I am not a fan of most "studies" courses, because, in my limited experience, they tend to lack rigor and often push a political viewpoint, which is both a disservice to students and, to the extent that students are required to parrot that viewpoint, a First Amendment violation when the course is taught in public schools (and in private schools as well, in California). I have not looked closely at the course description for the AP class, so I don't know if it has those flaws. That being said, this decision by Florida seems to be more a part of the DeSantis for President campaign than a principled objection. That is because the course description is not a curriculum, and the course description, like all AP course descriptions, says:

Individual teachers are responsible for designing their own curriculum for AP courses and selecting appropriate college-level readings, assignments, and resources. This publication presents the content and skills that are the focus of the corresponding college course and that appear on the AP Exam. It also organizes the content and skills into a series of units that represent a sequence found in widely adopted college syllabi. The intention of this publication is to respect teachers' time and expertise by providing a roadmap that they can modify and adapt to their local priorities and preferences.

I have attended several AP trainings in my day, and can attest that they make a big deal about individual teachers being given autonomy, as long as their syllabus addresses the content and skills set forth in the course description. So, none of the readings complained about are required, and teachers are free, as required by Florida's "Stop WOKE Act" to assign readings on all sides of the issues in question.

And, btw, the claims on the other side that Florida does not want to teach African American history is also nonsense, because teaching of African American history is mandated in FL schools

Edit: PS: There is a very odd complaint in the Florida DOE's list: It objects to a reading by one author in part because, "Kelley's first book was a study of Black communists in Alabama." Not, 'an adulatory study," but merely a "study." It is like objecting to a reading by Donald Horowitz because he wrote a study of ethnic riots.

I find the autonomy listed a bit misleading for a couple reasons. First, they know exactly what kind of teacher is going to sign up for teaching this course. But more importantly they control the fundamental curriculum with the test design. AP teachers teach to the test, they'd be failing their students their valuable college credit if they didn't. We can pretend like the teachers get to pick the curriculum all we want but if critical theory is on the test critical theory will be taught, simple as that.

But you are confusing content and curriculum. Yes, it will be taught, but as I noted, Florida law explicitly allows it to be taught, as long as it is done objectively. In fact, perhaps the best way to learn about a topic is to criticize it.

perhaps the best way to learn about a topic is to criticize it

I'm struggling to think of examples of this being true. If you don't know a discipline, how can you accurately criticize it? If you don't know a topic, wouldn't you just be satisfied with counterarguments which someone conversant in the topic would know to be inaccurate? It's like people in favor of gun control, but who have never shot a gun in their lives or deigned to learn anything about how they work or how they're used. We know how that ends up - bans on purely cosmetic features which do nothing to actually limit gun proliferation or shootings.

I said the best way, not the perfect way. My point is simply that if student A were asked to read article X and summarize it, whereas student B is asked to read article X and criticize it, student B will probably* walk away with a better understanding of article X than will student A.

*note that I said, probably. Not every student, every time.

Edit: And, btw, I said the best way to learn about a topic. Not the best way to, as you said, 'accurately criticize it."

as long as it is done objectively

So you fully support and expect such a course to include (given it is a matter that, though not fully settled, still has much objective evidence in its favor) the influence of the quite possibly genetically limited black average IQ on their history and current state of affairs? Since after all if you're studying blacks and black history, surely any genetic specifics of their race are objectively relevant, right?

Your reasoning reminds me of the classic "Just make your own Reddit if you don't like its moderation!" line, in that it retreats into the technicalities of what is formally not impossible to pretend that it is not so blatantly improbable, unwieldy, and unreasonably/unduly burdensome for their interlocutors to be worth seriously advancing as any sort of solution to them (a fallacy I am not quite sure of the name of, but perhaps you could call it "appeal to possibility" or the "akshually fallacy").

Sure, technically based on the written word of Floridan law if this course were to be taught in Florida then it should/could/would be fully objective, merely presenting the facts and allowing students to come to their own conclusions. In practice though, anyone with an ability to make predictions about the future based on empirical observations about the past greater than that of someone with Alzheimer's knows that the context and unavoidable partisanship (given that it's already happened) of the course's formulation and dissemination will inevitably influence its content and presentation in a non-objective direction.

The amount of resources it would take to actually realize a truly objective version of such a course (such as, for example, finding the hundreds of teachers required who would be interested in teaching "African-American Studies" and are also capable of being charitable enough to a right-wing view on the matter to be objective, while also rigorously excluding/avoiding the thousands who would almost certainly engage in any deception to become among those hundreds so as to have a bully pulpit for left-wing propaganda) is not even worth the intellectual/educational value even a truly fully objective version of such a course would provide, especially given how much blacks have tended to be the objects rather than subjects of history.

Your reasoning reminds me of the classic "Just make your own Reddit if you don't like its moderation!" line, in that it retreats into the technicalities of what is formally not impossible to pretend that it is not so blatantly improbable, unwieldy, and unreasonably/unduly burdensome for their interlocutors to be worth seriously advancing as any sort of solution to them

We are quite literally having this discussion on a “your own Reddit”! As Scott pointed out a while ago, any argument is made better with made up numbers, so let’s make some up!

I’ll claim that at least 10% of teachers would actually meet the criteria, which I believe to be an underestimate as some students will take those classes looking for trouble. Teachers would be aware of that; a few would probably aim for martyrdom… which brings us to avoiding a discussion in the concrete as shrewd politics. Allowing for an argument over the merits of “favorite teacher”, students rallied around, after the fact would be a strong and effective nucleation site for dissent. Canceling the class is comparatively easy - the courts could reinstate it, but they can’t turn back time to before the semester.

We are quite literally having this discussion on a “your own Reddit”!

Um, no. This is a forum formatted like Reddit. But it is still a fraction of the size and influence of Reddit. If I want to discuss 90% of the things I can discuss (albeit in an infuriatingly censored/muted fashion) on Reddit (hobby interests, etc.), this place is no alternative whatsoever. It's still better than having no alternatives at all certainly, but saying it is "your own Reddit" is like giving a 16 year old a Hot Wheels and telling them they don't need to be jealous of adults anymore because now they have their own car too.

So you fully support and expect such a course to include (given it is a matter that, though not fully settled, still has much objective evidence in its favor) the influence of the quite possibly genetically limited black average IQ on their history and current state of affairs? Since after all if you're studying blacks and black history, surely any genetic specifics of their race are objectively relevant, right?

Yes, I support the right of a teacher to include that topic in a course on African American Studies, if it is done so in an objective and intellectually rigorous manner.

Okay but that's never going to happen. So even seriously advancing it as a possibility is naive.

LOL, why did you ask the question, if any answer is going to be wrong somehow?

You haven't heard of a rhetorical question? The point is phrased as a question to highlight the obvious absurdity of its own premises.

Are there any course designs you would consider objectionable by this standard? AP race an IQ? AP Based altrightism? Especially if by teaching demographics data you know that nineteen out of twenty classrooms will be run by a rabid partisan of whichever side you oppose and the test at the end is designed by people you oppose.

I wouldn't be here if I didn't agree with the basic premise of your objection, that exposure to repugnant ideas is good and I'm even sympathetic to high school students getting a dose of this, but I think this is a maximally bad environment for it.

Well, as I think I made clear, any course that is taught with the purpose of pushing a political viewpoint is objectionable.

nineteen out of twenty classrooms will be run by a rabid partisan of whichever side you oppose ... the test at the end is designed by people you oppose

You are making a lot of assumptions there, I must say. Did you even look at the course description? The material that Florida has identified as objectionable are about four of 92 topics.

More importantly, your claim is not Florida's claim. Florida's claim was NOT that "the course seems OK as written, but will be implemented in a biased way." Rather, it was that the course** as written** is biased, which is a claim based on a misunderstanding (perhaps intentional, but perhaps not) on how AP classes work.

The material that Florida has identified as objectionable are about four of 92 topics.

"It's ok officer, for 90% of my drive I wasn't doing 30 over the speed limit"

You must be a big fan of banning gas stoves.

You must be a big fan of devoting 5% of biology class to Intelligent Design.

Nice try, but as it happens I have long advocated for including a unit in intro to biology that presents students with intelligent design and asks them to assess the evidence for and against it. As well as evidence for and against evolution by natural selection, and everything in between.

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I know at least one AP biology teacher who gets away with teaching YEC, but overall you’re probably right that the vast majority teach to the test.

We need to distinguish teaching what is on the test from teaching with the purpose of passing the test. Eg: When I taught AP World History, every topic that I taught was one that was in the course description and might be on the test. However, instead of covering every topic that might be on the test -- as one would do if the purpose of the class was to pass the test -- I chose to cover fewer topics in greater depth, and particularly emphasized teaching skills (such as analytical writing) over content.

Similarly, at the end of the class, and before the test date, I had students write a research paper, instead of doing weeks of test review, as would someone whose goal was to have the students pass the test.

I guess this is part of why I hated teaching. My viewpoint would have been that (ethically) maximizing the students' chances of passing the test should be heavily prioritized. Even if the fun stuff is better for their psyches, they're paying for a leg up on the competition.

So the worry is that -- if one prioritizes passing the test at all -- the bare facts being tested militate strongly towards certain ideas, and that ethical use of class time does not allow room to introduce complementary material. This is compounded by the fact that so much of the test seems to be free response, and teachers need to be convinced that these would be rubric-ed tightly enough so as to not be graded on ideological parroting. Professionally, I've only seen how the AP grades calculus, so maybe you can tell if such a thing is even possible? My own high school experience was that one wants to approximate ChatGPT's response as well as possible, which is what we'd like to avoid here.

Finally, I found the sample questions to be interesting and challenging (IANA historian). Students would presumably find the course valuable, but (IMO) Florida would be right to claim that the Black experience is better understood with every bell hooks reading replaced by Tupac Shakur.

My viewpoint would have been that (ethically) maximizing the students' chances of passing the test should be heavily prioritized. Even if the fun stuff is better for their psyches, they're paying for a leg up on the competition.

Well, that is an unavoidable dilemma, as is the content v. skills dilemma, and breadth v depth dilemma. But, btw, I don't know that most of my students would call writing essays "fun stuff," though it is probably more fun than lots of rote memorization.

Professionally, I've only seen how the AP grades calculus, so maybe you can tell if such a thing is even possible? My own high school experience was that one wants to approximate ChatGPT's response as well as possible, which is what we'd like to avoid here.

There are obviously no scored tests yet for the new course, but scoring guidelines, sample responses, rubrics, etc for old AP World tests are here, and for old AP US History classes are here

Florida would be right to claim that the Black experience is better understood with every bell hooks reading replaced by Tupac Shakur.

Yes, Florida is free to offer or not offer whatever course it wants (and, as noted, it does in fact offer African American studies classes). But the "culture war" aspect is why Florida rejected this particular course.

But the "culture war" aspect is why Florida rejected this particular course.

Did they explicitly say that?

Yes.

Did they? Iirc, the stated motive was an apparent lack of academic rigor.

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But the "culture war" aspect is why Florida rejected this particular course.

Yes. It's also the reason this particular course exists.

Except that Florida high schools offer non-AP versions of the course already.

And, the course exists for one reason: to get more African American students to take AP courses.

And, the course exists for one reason: to get more African American students to take AP courses.

That sounds both very counter-productive (see Goodhart's law) and extremely condescending. Like, since they can't take AP math, so we invent AP bullshit and pretend it's the same thing. Nobody would think it's the same thing.

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And, the course exists for one reason: to get more African American students to take AP courses.

Is this because it is intended to be extremely non-rigorous so anyone with a pulse can get a 4 or 5?

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