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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35377 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Couple of scattered thoughts on this:

  1. I have no opposition to public schools in principle, graduated from one myself without too much apparent damage. What I do have strong opposition to is this notion that an educator understands what a kid needs better than that kid's own parents and that we should just surrender the education of our children to the state without question or opposition. There are shitty parents to be sure but there are also shitty teachers in probably about the same proportion.

  2. When topline education funding takes a hit, I predict there will be no firing of excessive administrative personnel like diversity experts or secretaries or superfluous academic committees. The budge hits will be directly to education funding proper, textbooks and materials and the like, so the entrenched education interests can point to a shortage of textbooks and say "See what your ESA is doing to our precious children!?"

When topline education funding takes a hit, I predict there will be no firing of excessive administrative personnel like diversity experts or secretaries or superfluous academic committees. The budge hits will be directly to education funding proper, textbooks and materials and the like, so the entrenched education interests can point to a shortage of textbooks and say "See what your ESA is doing to our precious children!?"

This reminds me of the other thing I saw about Arizona education over the summer. I guess a couple years ago there was a bunch of organized protesting demanding a raise in teacher salaries, and the governor and legislature allocated money to give teachers a 20% raise over the next few years. But the public school districts did not pass that money on to teachers as promised, leading to another round of demands for increases in "teacher pay":

The Arizona Auditor General released a report earlier this year showing the average teacher salary increased by 16.5% or around $8,000, less than the promise of 20% by 2020. That report shows that while most districts increased pay, only 43% of districts statewide actually met the 20% goal since there was no requirement that districts spend the money on teacher salaries.

(I do wonder how widespread salary increases of 10%+ contributed to Arizona's inflation...) Meanwhile, Arizona district superintendents are pulling down $200,000 annual salaries, plus stuff like this:

She was joined by dozens of other educators who had gathered before heading into the first Buckeye Elementary School District meeting since the Arizona auditor general’s finding that the district paid its superintendent $1.7 million in retirement credits and unused leave and then failed to note it in public employment records.

The amount of money being poured into "public education" systems in the United States is absolutely gob-smacking. I don't know who first said that "think of the children" is the root password to all government systems, but it certainly seems to be true. It will be interesting to see how things change as more parent groups catch wise to the scam. Something else I saw on social media somewhere, was that the biggest mistake Democrats made during COVID was turning "parents of school-aged children" into a special interest voting bloc opposed to Democrat policies.

Meanwhile, Arizona district superintendents are pulling down $200,000 annual salaries

Hm, I think Superintendent Chalmers could afford much more than a 1979 Honda Accord these days.

But why would he ever want to?

This strategy of cutting the most visible and useful parts of the budget first to argue the whole is necessary, is called the Mount Rushmore Syndrome.

The most successful counterstrategy I know is to signal boost (and even fabricate) cases of largesse that is not being cut:

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

This was sufficiently successful that, when the generally nonpartisan Yes, Minister TV series had an episode with Thames Marsh local council, who had cut all civil defence but kept open the "gay bereavement centre" (and a small bunker for the council leader) this was something that the audience could recognise and accept easily. It also meant that, even as the UK Labour party moved somewhat to the right between the 1983 and 1987 elections, they were still associated with radical socialism and social progressivism, due to their association with "loony left" local councils.

That article is fascinating. The "Baa Baa White Sheep" section is a several pages long explanation of how the whole thing was fabricated, with quotes and citations, how it was some private initiative, and how the council said that they support it but actually they said that it's none of their business, and how actually some reporter couldn't find any worker that confirmed the ban, and so on and so forth.

And then it ends with a single sentence: "In 2000, the BBC reported the withdrawal of guidance to nursery schools by Birmingham City Council that "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" should not be taught."

The way Wikipedia manages to lie its head off while still sticking to reputable sources is fascinating.

Yes, it's a good example of misleading by selective elaboration.

A contemporaneous American documentary on the loony left:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=COt65HZCJaA

The "Why is this English school only serving English food?" part is particularly amusing. And I also feel sympathetic: I would feel bad if my child was only eating English food, but for the psychological welfare of the child, not for reasons of objecting to an English school serving only it in England.

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