Again, the usual scarecrow of "internet is corrupting our kids and our minds"...
The good excuse to push for population censorship and control.
The truth is that the problem is coming from the social society that we prefer to ignore: education collapsing, government and political world having arms wide open to dictatorship when it benefits to them,...
Just to remember that a few decades ago, same kind of persons were stating that books and free press are responsible for all of the moral corruption of the society...
> Just to remember that a few decades ago, same kind of persons were stating that books and free press are responsible for all of the moral corruption of the society
Sure, and those are not “the same kind of people” with the same motives nor rationale nor basis in knowledge as the people advocating for constraints around social media in the present day.
There are religious bookbanners today and they have very little overlap with the anti-social media crowd.
> There are religious bookbanners today and they have very little overlap with the anti-social media crowd.
I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on that. To me it doesn't matter whether there's any actual overlap between the groups. It's the censorious impulse they share. Believing that they have the right to make this type of decision for others is what makes them the "same kind of people".
I did nothing of the sort. You're trying to set up a classic slippery slope fallacy and I'm not going to play that game.
Me: I think alcohol prohibitionists are meddling busybodies.
You: Oh, well, I guess you think there's nothing wrong with injecting babies with pure grain alcohol starting at birth.
Me: I think furnaces and central heating are wonderful inventions.
You: Oh, well, I guess you think it's okay to go around setting houses on fire.
That's how the game is played. I stopped being impressed by it decades ago. Likely before you were even born.
Well the education system certainly needs attention and a refactoring. I don't think anyone can dispute that. The details of what the end goal looks like vary wildly based on who you talk to.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. The article you linked says they plan to remove federal involvement in education, delegating that responsibility back to the states. From my perhaps naive viewpoint, decentralizing government education seems like it would allow more competing ideas and approaches into classrooms. It's not clear to me why this approach would dismantle education.
Why do you think this approach would dismantle education?
Because we’ve done it before and it yielded segregation, embedding of (one) religion in schools, and gigantic gaps in educational attainment based on where a child happened to be born.
Is it that hard to foresee what’ll happen if Louisiana et al started teaching children that the earth is 6000 years old, evolution is a farce, the US is a Christian nation, and also don’t worry about learning much outside of our immediate local (failing) economy?
It would be interesting to see if much of that has changed since the DoE was created in 1980. Do schools in Louisiana currently not teach that the earth is 6,000 years old, that evolution is a farce, and that the US is a Christian nation? Do we no longer have gigantic gaps in educational attainment based on where a child happened to be born? Segregation is federally illegal, so the proposed decentralization would only apply to curriculum and funding. I have no idea how the centralization of the education system has positively or negatively affected education outcomes, so I don't find the outcome of decentralizing it again obvious.
By the way, it's sad that this needs to be written, but I'm commenting in good faith. Without any kids in the education system, and without having been through the education system in many years, I'm not up to date with the latest statistics. All I have to go on is the occasional anecdotes from the people around me, which seem to be largely negative, but which could also be based in fantasy. I recognize that I have these blind spots, which is why I'm asking these questions.
I would be extremely careful to dismiss this out of hand. The group includes a large number of people from the Trump administration team, and the main purpose of the plan is to reform the government through loopholes/grey area means to consolidate power in the executive branch - thereby allowing rapid and sweeping changes throughout the government as a whole. Trump would love that, and has sung the praises of dictators and openly said he plans to be a dictator "on day one".
The system isn't designed to handle anything like that, and a ton of damage could be done by a concentrated effort from a group that intentionally refuses to play by the rules/norms.
The demarcation line here is 2012 though, and I wouldn't say material wise things made a sudden shift between 2008 and 2015. Arguably things were worse back then with the GFC while this decade has seen incredible returns for investors.
I agree. The world as we knew it ended with 9/11 and the new one has been made progressively worse ever since; mostly because "the war on X" is currently a thing and requires you to give away some of your rights.
The good excuse to push for population censorship and control.
The truth is that the problem is coming from the social society that we prefer to ignore: education collapsing, government and political world having arms wide open to dictatorship when it benefits to them,...
Just to remember that a few decades ago, same kind of persons were stating that books and free press are responsible for all of the moral corruption of the society...