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.

There has to be a difference between "trying and failing to teach reading in English" and "refusing to teach English at all".

That's true, though in turn it raises a few awkward questions. One of the possible explanations for a bunch of 'schools' that have very long classroom hours and culturally-encouraged out-of-classroom study, yet get these test results is that they're learning to read, write, and do math in another language.

((You can find the ELA and math questions online.))

I don't see a functional difference that society should care about. Either we're ok with public money going to private enterprises because we don't want poor kids going hungry, or we are so enraged by a pack of religious nutters who figured out how to game the system that we are not.

Personally I don't really care which, but I find the sudden surge of interest when the religious scammers are jewish to be depressingly predictable. This article could have been written about any charter school in the country. The NYT is publishing it, and we're arguing about it because the position of jewish people in the progressive stack is in question.

To be clear, I don’t mind state resources going to catholic or Mormon or evangelical or Islamic schools separate from the local public school in large part because almost all catholic, evangelical, Mormon, and Islamic households have at least one working adult.

Generational welfare scammers shouldn’t get catered to by the state, even if it doesn’t cost any more than sending them to public schools. If I had my way, the kids of these communities would get bussed to inner city public schools with high percentages of households on welfare until the community boosted its male employment rate to match the surrounding community.

I'm fine with fixing the welfare laws to prohibit lifelong moochers in the vast majority of cases. I'm fine with banning public funds from going to religious schools.

I don't think it's logical to construct a just-so scenario that lands exclusively on one out of thousands of religious groups. Seems really specific.