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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I mean I think there are a lot of philosophical reasons that we ended up here. First of all, you have the blank slate growth mindset memes that say that any kid no matter what can do literally anything and that the only failure is to stop trying. This isn’t true, or at least not as true as we would like it to be. You might get a 10% improvement if you’re putting in more work, but you can’t take a kid who in tenth grade can’t do basic algebra and send him through the MIT engineering program. A second related problem is that equality of outcomes is expected, and thus any attempt to put kids into skill appropriate classes is going to be illegally discrimination if the classes are not absolutely equal numbers of all races and genders in each track.
Im mostly a pragmatist in most social issues. The best solutions are the ones that work for the majority of people involved. And I don’t really care to pretend that blank slate is real when most of my practical experiences with real people across all kinds of contexts show that humans are individuals practically from birth. There are vast differences in skills, interests, personality, and diligence that affect what a kid is capable of doing from birth. What’s funny to me is that we are fine with this in sports. We don’t take the kids who throw dirt clods in the outfield and shunt them through select high skill baseball as if they are simply one outstanding coach away from a future million dollar contract with the Yankees. They have tryouts, and you either make the team or you don’t, and everyone understands it and accepts it.
As far as schools becoming everything a kid needs, I think this is a problem of the government taking on those roles. It happens all the time. The government starts offering a service and other groups that had been doing those things tend to step back until the government is the only game in town. Why would you take the time to teach your kids to be good citizens when the government will do it for you? Why would a church or community group do that when they can outsource it to government?
More options
Context Copy link