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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35547 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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I think that at least part of the issue is that pre-school/elementary age education is an overwhelmingly female-dominated field, which makes it far more influenced by emotions rather than reason. Phonics may teach kids how to read, but if it causes them to become anxious or bored or feel bad about themselves, the teachers aren't likely to think the trade-off is worth it - and they tend to empathize with their students, making them feel bad as well.

Basically, the feminization of early education has resulted in coddling at the expense of results.

That really doesn't explain it. Education in America has always been that way. Teaching schoolchildren was at one time one of the few professional opportunities open to women, provided they were unmarried. Women have always played a very large role in teaching, that's not a new thing.

The real reason is probably that whole word learning is less work for the teacher and its failures can be blamed on student laziness.

I'd like to see some evidence for that.

Early childhood education has been "feminized" since before the 1880s. Yet somehow literacy survived.

Yes. I somewhat anticipated a pushback there; what's new is the hyper-focus on emotionalism and safetyism.

Kids may have been taught by women, but the attitude towards it was a lot less coddling, I think.

My view is that the transition from strict rules, enforced by corporeal punishment to the present situation (with a hyper-focus on mental and emotional health) represents a feminization of education, in a way that is independent of the sex of those doing the teaching. Kind of like the sex/gender distinction, I guess, with the worst aspects of femininity taking the lead. So, I guess it would be fair to say that I view early education to be captured by toxic femininity.

Early Soviet and communist education, for how much it was insane, was founded on the idea that Socialism was superior because it was more rational, and that maths and logic could improve the capitalistic education system.

A good chunk of it was tossed away with Stalin, but at least they produced a very good STEM system.

This is beyond communism or left-wingism, is purely emotional-based policy made by emotional people and women.

It is not Lenin, it is the insane Church Lady with mental ilness.

Ironically the church ladies hate whole word learning and refuse to use it in their homeschool curriculum, for equally stupid reasons to the ones its proponents put forth.

My view is that the modern incarnation of Leftism largely is driven by the feminization of society - the modern Left with its concerns about "inclusion" and "representation" - making sure people don't feel bad, basically - may share some concerns with the Communists, but the focus is very different than the muscular, STEM and heavy industry focused Soviets.

This is probably a good thing; it means that it's quite a bit further of a stretch for the modern Left to get into torture, gulags, and mass murder.

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