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 -
The question is not whether parents should ever be informed that a child is experiencing gender dysphoria; ideally, the child should tell them immediately.
The question is what happens in the rare cases where the child feels that it would not be safe to do this.
Child protective services does exist; some parents are bad parents, and the state is aware of this and has policies that acknowledge it.
Acknowledging that some parents are bad and need to be treated differently from other parents is in no way at odds with saying parents should generally be trusted to make good decisions for their children. It's just that every rule has exceptions.
The question here is what to do about exceptions. So far it has been up to the student and teacher's best judgement about what to do in each case, based on their local precise knowledge of the situation.
The proposal here is for the state to override that local judgement and regulate that all parents be treated the same no matter what, ignoring the possibility of legitimately dangerous exceptions.
This is big government overreach into people's private lives, in a way that's legitimately dangerous as well as onerous. And it's being done for clear culture war reasons, there's a reason we have 50 high-profile bills about trans kids in school and few to none about school funding or other things with much bigger impact.
And how do we decide if the parents are bad in any given case? On this issue, the progressive answer seems to be "if the child says so". That is pretty close to just letting the child make the decisions in the first place. You cant really claim to agree that "parents should make the decisions in most cases", if you support overriding this default at the childs asking.
In the vast majority of cases, everyone involved agrees what to do. Saying "well in those cases we let the parents decide" does not count as parents deciding most of the time.
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps the teacher is simply rescuing the innocent child from an evil GSM-bashing family. (Perhaps the teacher is simply rescuing five innocent children from five evil GSM-bashing families.)
And perhaps the shoplifter is simply a Jean Valjean, stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. (And that he's stealing cigarettes could perhaps be explained by his family having tastes like Fat Tony's.)
And perhaps the pet in the no-pets-allowed zone is simply a seeing-eye guide dog for a poor blind man. (Perhaps that the guide dog is actually two "American Bully XLs" is just because his problems are really tough and need special treatment.)
And perhaps the maniac tearing down the highway at thrice the speed limit is simply hurrying a medical emergency to the hospital and can't afford the ambulance fees. (Perhaps the several other cars who seem to be racing him just don't want to miss a moment by their loved one's bedside.)
And perhaps the email in the spam filter really did come from a Nigerian prince who needs your help moving his money. And perhaps the candidate really does mean to keep his campaign promises. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.
Of course, all of these are theoretically possible (maybe not the cigarettes one, though.
Or the campaign promises.) but living on edge cases is not a safe or sustainable way to live. (For every one with a Legitimate Excuse, there are x who are taking advantage of the grace afforded, where x is proportional to the ease of faking and the magnitude of the benefit divided by the costs and probability of getting caught - something like that.) So one has to think each case through, if one really does want to be careful.Because breaks from plain-sense like these are typically justified on utilitarian grounds. I mean, the deontological way would seem to be against them: stealing is wrong, breaking rules because one pleases is wrong, driving unsafely is wrong - but even the utilitarian argument often fails. Tolerating theft probably pushes more families towards poverty than it saves Valjeans. Tolerating reckless driving probably causes more medical emergencies than it saves.
In my experience, the argument at this point tends towards demands for perfection, I suppose: "in order to save both the center and the edge cases, we must make this massive change, and nothing less will do." No traffic safety without universal healthcare, I suppose. No punishment of theft before ending poverty. No trust in parents before total acceptance of everything LGBTQ+, perhaps. Often this feels to me like an attempt to hold a problem hostage until something much bigger and more ambitious can be granted instead. Usually it doesn't happen; often the bigger goal is utopic and can't happen.
But erring on the side of saving the edge cases, heedless of false positives, can ultimately be bad for those edge cases, too, come the next turn of the cultural wheel. Soft-on-crime light-handedness get followed by tough-on-crime crackdowns, and, well, pardonnez-nous, Monsieur Valjean. And perhaps here's where we're headed in this case.
I agree with you that no major change is needed. People can use their common sense to navigate their individual situations and do better than any massive externally imposed rule could hope to do.
Again, that is already how it works. What we are discussing here is a proposed law to force teachers to report.
The thing you're against in the abstract is also the thing I'm against in the specific. Because it turns out that in this specific case, the side you seem to be on is the one doing the thing you seem to be against.
Your speaking of "big government overreach" in the context of public schools seems to me like "get your government hands off my Medicare." Unless this is a situation where, in Canada, the meaning of "public school" is reversed from America, as in Britain (I think.) - it seems to me like that Rubicon has been crossed already. I'm reminded of objections (though not applicable north of the border) to state curriculum mandates on the grounds of teachers' First Amendment rights. Truly so, if their ability to speak as private citizens to private citizens was what was being curtailed - but as agents of the state to their captive audience? Not so much.
And particularly in Canada, one might suppose that a takeaway from the latest hullabaloo involving the legacy of residential schools would be that having schools usurp parental authority, no matter how backwards those parents are considered, should be something they might want to be more shy about. But maybe that's not the lesson they want to learn.
I disagree about 'crossing the Rubicon', if I'm understanding what you mean. Just because the government has overreached some, does not mean the seal is broken and they may as well overreach more. Every additional violation still causes additional damage and should be avoided.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and so forth.
As far as 'they are acting as government agents, not expressing their freedom of speech', I totally agree with that. We're not talking about what teachers should have the right to do as citizens, we're talking about how they should be instructed to behave as government agents.
In this case, I am arguing that our instructions to them as government agents should be to use their discretion to do what they think is best for the safety and wellbeing of the child.
This is a fairly normal thing to tell government agents to do, it's not like they're automatons where every word spoken and every movement taken is precisely and deterministically proscribed by strict policy. They're not Chinese Rooms. Working for the government ussually entails having a goal, and working at your discretion within broad guidelines to achieve it.
In this case, I think more children would be harmed if we took away the school's ability to exercise their own discretion as to what is best for the individual students in their care, and instead laid out a centralized blanket policy of universal disclosure. Yes, a government agent is involved either way; I'm talking about which set of rules for that government agent would lead to better outcomes.
And, yes, I do think that you can fairly describe leaving it to their discretion as 'less government overreach' than mandated disclosure. In the same way that 'CPS must take all children away from their parents if there is a report of suspected abuse' would be more government overreach than ' CPS must investigate all reports of suspected abuse and have the discretion to take the child away if they think they are in danger'.
I might be misunderstanding something, but it seems to me like this does not, in fact, mandate disclosure. It mandates disclosure iff social transition is to happen. There is an out here of "the kid withdraws the request for social transition upon realising this is going to involve disclosure to parents" (note the requirement for the school to "work with" the kid to plan the disclosure, so the kid will know this). Thus, this is not equivalent to "CPS must take the kids", because "do nothing" is still in fact an option. The only option closed off is "a government organisation socially transitions the kid without the parent's knowledge or consent".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just disagree. Yes there are bad parents. There are of course bad teachers as well. The question is who gets to decide who is a bad teacher or a bad parent. I don’t think it should be within the teacher’s discretion to make that decision because well teachers can be both bad and they lack skin in the game (despite wanting to do good they may have ideological motivations that cause them to do bad).
That is, allowing teachers to keep secrets is also “dangerous.”
Also it is bad form to complain that there aren’t high profile bills about funding schools but are about the trans issue. Funding schools is a relative normal issue for the last hundred years. Trans issuers are new. Of course there will be high profile bills there when there won’t be for discussing a 1% increase in funding etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link