site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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.

40
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The NYTimes piece suggests that Hasidic schools do have worse outcomes on the 12-year-old reading and math tests than most low-income public schools. Hasidic schools counter that their students do better in (voluntary) high-school-aged tests, though it's not clear that those are much more representative. A lot of the rest of the numbers and arguments seem to be pulled or supplied from this YAFFED report, although they're a single-issue non-profit focused on this issue.

That said, the breadth of the difference looks wonky enough that I'd like to see the actual measurements, especially since I can't find any mandatory testing for private schools in New York or NYC specifically, and that the numbers don't make sense -- YAFFED repeatedly highlights the breadth and importance of this topic, with tens of thousands of students effected, and... I can't see how that matches with a total of 12 boy's schools, especially given the Hasidic preference for tiny classrooms. A different YAFFED report looks like it found low scores in a NYC-specific subset, but the numbers there don't look to match either. That report points to NYSED, which seems to love 40+MB Access or Excel files (why?!), and doesn't seem to cover non-charter private schools anyway.

EDIT: actually, the extent that this doesn't seem to match the internals of the NYSED researcher files worries me a lot about its general accuracy.

In terms of broader results: Hasadic communities have high poverty and welfare usage, but low reported rates of violent crime (although there's some controversy about how much domestic violence is not reported).