site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29306 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

They did know it was bullshit.

But they found phonics boring and considered their own entertainment more important than children learning stuff.

“For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

https://archive.is/WdzIm

It's much the same story with Direct Instruction, which is basically the classroom version of spaced repetition (and also students get tracked based on ability). Teachers follow a very repetitive script and those scripts are organized based on spaced repetition principles. No creativity. No use of their professional education. Just follow the script.

Back in the 90s we did some great trials and discovered Direct Instruction was the best way to teach children. But teachers found it boring and revolted against it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_instruction

Back in the 90s we did some great trials and discovered Direct Instruction was the best way to teach children. But teachers found it boring and revolted against it.

I don't remember my reading curricula in elementary school (partially because I remember reading before kindergarten), but I was briefly attending a "trendy" (public) school that was trying all sorts of newfangled ideas. One year tried mixing K-2 in a single classroom on the notion that peer instruction would improve outcomes (spoiler alert: no, it's harder to match instruction to more varied students and the size difference between kids led to bullying).

I'll lump teaching in with a few other professions that are both difficult and have poorly-measured outcomes. This also includes things like parts of economics, medicine, policing, and social work. I've observed that these fields seem especially prone to groupthink and oscillation between questionable policy choices. We'll focus on a single small and poorly-controlled study showing that different reading curricula improved one classroom once, and use that to justify throwing out years of tradition and experience.

As much as we want a silver bullet to solve our problems, the sad truth is that phonics or direct instruction alone won't solve the problems in these schools, and I'm fairly confident that more total time (inside and outside the classroom) practicing reading is far more important than the marginal gains of the specific curriculum. And even then there are still students who will struggle with reading due to dyslexia and such.

These problems are hard and I think treating them otherwise does us all a disservice in finding actual improvements.

Phonics and DI aren't "silver bullets". They are merely interventions that reliably perform better than all known alternatives. Their inability to solve all problems is not a reason to give them up.

Also teaching outcomes are quite straightforward to measure, thanks to standardized tests.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats