Comment by daft_pink

Comment by daft_pink 5 days ago

27 replies

Personally, I have high functioning autism. I would do terrible at interpersonal relationships, but then get near perfect scores on all the tests.

Teachers would anticipate that I would be terrible and then when I got perfect scores on all the tests, they would be pissed off.

I think there are a lot of tech people that are neurodivergent and had terrible experiences in school and would love to avoid my child having that experience.

Also, I’m not super happy about the extreme views on race, sex and religion that are going through the school system. I would like the opportunity to teach a more moderate view. I feel like people who don’t have kids who make comments about this trully don’t understand many parents perspectives on this.

Also, when you are a parent, you find that you have to move to specific areas to get good schooling and homeschooling would allow you to live where you want to and not pay and go through the application for private school.

It’s interesting that everything in this article that’s anti-homeschool relies on the parents not doing something correctly, which I think most people just assume they correct for that. I’m not worried about abusing my own kids, because I’m not going to abuse them. Honestly, my mom was a teacher and she was anti-homeschool and many of the anti-homeschool bullet points were provided by the union and I think she just wanted to get full funding for the school and the state wouldn’t provide funding to the school when the homeschoolers didn’t show up and wasn’t really caught up in those arguments.

However, my wife is never going to homeschool our kids or allow me to do it, so it’s just not going to happen.

PaulHoule 5 days ago

My son's district has a black superintendent and at least one black principal but otherwise black (and other) kids don't get to see the example of black teachers (and learn school is a "white thing you wouldn't understand" the same way that boys come to the conclusion that school is for girls when they don't see any male teachers -- the problem here is representation-ism that stops at the very top, if they do get a black teacher they get promoted out of the ranks immediately)

When my son was in middle school he was quite inspired by a curriculum unit on the Harlem Renaissance and liked the school's black principal.

Later on he felt the attitude about gender (man vs women as opposed to something else) was very oppressive and that it contributed to him and other students falling victim to incel ideology and sometimes body dysmorphia. Today he struggles to talk to girls not because he's afraid of being rejected but because he's afraid of being reported.

  • dyauspitr 4 days ago

    The support of trans ideology is destroying the progressive movement. What a shame because they’re driving people straight into the arms of fascists.

    • alxjrvs 4 days ago

      If support of trans folk is "Too far" for someone, they were already running towards fascism. There's nothing progressive about denying folks their gender identity, and to the extent that "Progressivism" is a force in America, it is better off without the Anti-trans contingent.

      • dyauspitr 4 days ago

        No it isn’t. The vast majority of progressive people don’t buy into any of the gender/trans discussion. It’s definitely not a core tenet of being a progressive, but a very vocal minority is definitely trying to make it so.

      • PaulHoule 4 days ago

        I write about my experience here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682305#42688501

        My best friend in college was transsexual, knew who she was in childhood, couldn't be talked in or out of it. She was kicked out of the Air Force Academy which was my gain but our nation's loss. I was proud of my country when I heard this policy changed, not just for the individuals but because the US struggles to attract officers to match the quality of our enlisted warfighters.

        I've cross-dressed at times (high heels, fishnets, all that) such as for Halloween and I also know the undercurrents of violence you can feel from ignorant people. Sometimes I bum around the house wearing a long skirt.

        I was inclined to be supportive of the modern transgender movement when I first heard about it and when my exposure was through the media. It is their own speech that has alienated me from them.

        Once I met people affected and after I joined Mastodon where I've had to add rules to completely block out their continuous hateful spew which frequently gets reposted by people who should know better. I'd be glad to hear "I'm so happy I found a new way to put on makeup that makes me feel like myself" or "I'm really inspired by electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos" or "Thank Lynn Conway for that phone in your pocket".

        I can't deal with large volumes of negativity from strangers and on leftie corners on the web people from that community are the worst. [1] Whether or not they should exist is beyond my pay grade but I don't want them in my feed at all.

        For that matter I feel less safe and not more safe expressing non-conformant gender characteristics because: (1) so many people have gotten inflamed, and (2) I don't buy into the politics.

        [1] I just plain couldn't stand the MAGA nuts on Twitter, never mind all the equally hateful people who spew hate against transgender people (who I suspect want people to spew hate at them to justify their world view as much as Benjamin Netanyahu likes Palestinian attacks that justify his world view.)

  • squigz 4 days ago

    > Today he struggles to talk to girls not because he's afraid of being rejected but because he's afraid of being reported.

    Why would anyone be reported to any authority figure for speaking to girls?

    • csande17 4 days ago

      It's pretty standard for middle schools to hold assemblies discussing sexual harassment and healthy relationships, but they don't always do a great job communicating those concepts.

      Back when I was in middle school about a decade ago, the principal got up on stage with a police officer and explained that sexual harassment is when you talk to a girl and she feels uncomfortable. He then went on to assert that the school had zero tolerance for sexual harassment, describe various authorities to whom victims could report instances of sexual harassment, and implore students not to risk their future by engaging in sexual harassment.

      If you weren't super confident in your ability to predict or control other people's feelings, probably your takeaway from that assembly was that talking to girls was a risky thing to do.

      • squigz 4 days ago

        "Don't make people uncomfortable" and your takeaway is you shouldn't talk to them at all. I don't think the problem there lies with the sexual harassment narrative.

    • tbrownaw 4 days ago

      I believe there is an SNL skit on this topic.

GrantMoyer 4 days ago

> Also, I’m not super happy about the extreme views on race, sex and religion that are going through the school system.

Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going through the school system?

  • protonbob 4 days ago

    You might be being facetious and trying to imply that the political views taught in school are actually moderate, but I'm going to take the question literally anyway.

    One example is the idea that a bio man should and must be called a woman if they declare themselves to be so. Regardless of whether or not you agree, it is an extreme viewpoint that has only just now become acceptable to believe in terms of history.

  • csa 4 days ago

    > Maybe I'm living under a rock; what extreme views are going through the school system?

    Not op and not taking a stance on any of these here, but:

    1. Critical race theory (CRT)

    2. Gender fluidity

    3. Endorsement and use of Christianity/Bible in public schools

    These are all hot-button issues in education today, at least in some states and districts.

    • NoGravitas 4 days ago

      No one is learning about Critical Race Theory anywhere other than law school (or possibly undergraduate sociology classes that pre-law students would be likely to take). It's a heterodox thread in legal scholarship. Whatever you think primary schoolers are learning about race, it's not Critical Race Theory.

      • csa 4 days ago

        > No one is learning about Critical Race Theory anywhere other than law school (or possibly undergraduate sociology classes that pre-law students would be likely to take).

        Yes and no.

        You are correct that almost no one is learning full CRT legal theory in K-12.

        That said, CRT principles have expanded beyond legal studies, and they have certainly made their way into classrooms. Here is an example of an article that makes a case for it:

        https://www.uclalawreview.org/yes-critical-race-theory-shoul...

        I’m not sure if you know many education academics, but I assure you that CRT and derivatives thereof have been some low-hanging fruit in education research for over two decades (i.e., relatively easy to get published).

      • hyeonwho4 4 days ago

        There were two definitions of Critical Race Theory. In 2021, the National Education Association adopted a Business Item [1] to "Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT) -- what it is and what it is not; [...] and share information with other NEA members as well as their community members."

        This included "Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project." [1]

        Which is pretty wild, because that's a great summary of everything conservatives were objecting to in social studies classes, and provides a good wording for Christopher Rufo's redefinition of CRT.

        However, I agree with you that this was a very recent redefinition of the term Critical Race Theory: As far as I can tell, the application of legal scholarship's CRT to education scholarship in the late 1990s was focused on the Critical analysis of teaching outcomes [2, 3, 4], especially racial discrimination in school districts. This seems to have been focused on administrative things rather than course content. There was a subsequent movement around 2016 to bring "Critical Race Praxis" into school districts, which again seems to be focused on removing inequities from school administration and teaching counter-narratives to "K-12 leaders". So I think that this is where conservatives found the term and decided to repurpose it to label the antiracist content which was being incorporated into social studies courses.

        [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210705234008/https://ra.nea.or...

        [2] https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/22/02/state-critica...

        [3] https://thrive.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/Just%20what%2...

        [4] https://ed.fullerton.edu/lift/_resources/pdfs/multicultural_...

        [5] https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Envisioning-a-Critical-R...

    • dyauspitr 4 days ago

      CRT is a boogeyman. It’s not ”taught” anywhere.

      • protonbob 4 days ago

        Its principles are most certainly taught. They were 10 years ago in my high school. Come to find out these were from CRT sources.