Institutionalized Education · 2:23am Apr 30th, 2023
My governor, Ron DeSantis and Florida in general are under fire from so-called progressives. They're concerned with schools and what's really being taught in them. Critical Race Theory(CRT), among other new theories and ideas are being taught in places, ideals and opinions are being enforced, students in all grades and areas are being influenced for good and for bad. A school is a place for learning and where students are indeed influenced, an impact is made on them, impressionable minds are molded and guided.
I'm influencing you right now if you're reading this. Just as your influence will affect me in some way if I read your comments. This is the way the world works and I understand that. Florida understands that. But despite the fact I'm speaking my mind, influencing people with my own opinion, your decision is ultimately still yours. What you do with my views is your choice. A good teacher, a good reporter presents information and makes clear how it got here, how things got to this point to the best of their ability without casting blame or personal bias, or minimizing it.
It is a fact that Florida's political offices are occupied by Republicans at this time. It is a fact they are passing legislation dealing with education. It is a fact that self-identified progressives have raised quite a lot of alarm and laid upon heavy criticism of this legislation because they feel it suppresses rights and imposes restrictions. It is also a fact that many self-identified progressives have criticized the removal of books from the public school system, which they have called a book ban. It's also true that those same books are available to download from the places they are supposedly banned from and books have been restricted from schools since the institution of schools was created.
These are all facts. Now, I'm going to give you my opinion AND my experience with the school systems of the great state of Florida. If you've read my blogs before, you probably already know what my personal views are on quite a few issues, so I'm also going to give you my EXPERIENCE.
My experience:
I'm going to avoid giving specific names. I was a student for many years and a college student as well. I graduated, obtained a degree in journalism and I might return to school at some point. I've had many great teachers and professors and they're all people. Some are characters, some are good, some are bad, I wasn't a perfect student and I got along with some of them and didn't with others. A few were truly awesome and inspired me when I needed it. For the most part, the teachers and the schools and the system in place was okay. In all, I give it a 75%. A C+. If you graded Florida's schools and compared them to the rest of the country, they probably average out to a solid 80% or B if you grade them on a curve. Maybe B isn't high enough.
So all in all, things were good for me.
I whole-heartedly support the Republicans and their efforts to investigate schools thoroughly, to limit the influence of teachers and restore parental rights to education.
I experienced classrooms where independent thought was stifled. Where asking a question, going against curriculum or questioning the professor and the blatant narrative they were trying to get across was grounds for dismissal. I made one question at the beginning of a class and was personally asked by a professor to leave and transfer to a different course- this was my second year of college. And this was years before Ron DeSantis was elected, it was even before Trump was elected.
They are trying to influence students. They have been for years. And their hearts are in the right places; they truly believe what they are doing is right. But they are doing it so ruthlessly that they don't realize they have become the very thing they fear. Fear has transformed them, fear of racism, fear of nationalism, fear of so many things that they are now desperate and have for years been desperate to force cultural marxism down the throats of young Americans. They want students that are ignorant, students that are less intuitive and use less reason, less insight, don't question them. They are desperate for them, desperate to indoctrinate a new generation that will vote Democrat or vote progressive and I witnessed it all first-hand.
Some of the teachers, one in particular was very nice and open-minded when I questioned manmade climate change. We had a dialogue and I truly wish him the best. But he was in the minority; there are Leftists that DO fit the worst stereotypes out there, the stereotypes of Leftists just as I know there are many Rightists who fit the redneck stereotype, the gun-toting, bearded, beer-drinking redneck. These people exist and that is a fact.
Yes, you know what I'm referring to- the obese, shorthaired woman that wears multi-colored clothes that subtly emphasize a certain culture. The kind that is always just a little bit aggressive and bureaucratic underneath their demeanor... these are just individuals. Just people, people with jobs and families and homes. It is not a skin color or a hair color or a shoe size or anything else trivial that makes them this way; it is simply how they were raised, the life they led to get them here. And they are using their position to shovel race-baiting, guilt-tripping politics on thousands of impressionable, vulnerable students. A captive audience.
And when you dare go against them, they ask you to leave. They ask you to be quiet. They tell you that this is not the time or place for debate, when there is no other time or place for it. They tell you to keep it to yourself. When you think maybe a word shouldn't be censored, or maybe that true equality means treating everyone fairly and not lifting up one and pushing down another, or maybe that America's culture is just as fine to celebrate in America as any other culture, and countless other things, these people asked myself and others to leave. I wasn't welcome in the temple of progressivism.
I never had a problem with progressives. When I asked them, when I dared these people to show me their true ideals, they did and they are not progressive. There are no real progressives today; there are only authoritarians, people who desperately want power and influence, who want conformity to THEIR views.
They don't care about white people or equality, they don't care about men or Christians or any other religion, they don't care about Asian-Americans or any other Americans really; they think we are ALL privileged and that we have had these privileges for long enough. They are entitled and they want their fair share. You have no reason to believe me and I have no real way of proving what I saw, what I experienced. But these experiences molded me and the miracle is that I'm somehow still open-minded after witnessing it all and I owe that to my faith in Christ that we should love our fellow man no matter how opposed they are to our very existence. Love thy neighbor. I see myself in these people, the good in them... even as they curse every fiber of my being and upbringing.
The Left and the educational system across America has become something hateful. I started seeing more of it in 2008 because of a certain presidential election. I don't know what happened exactly but it was like some sort of great and angry change in the modern progressive from advocacy to violence and hostility. It was a radical transformation. Now, far too many teachers are angry and bitter about companies, about the state of their lives or they have friends and family affected by something in another part of the world and they use their position as teachers to influence students to action.
School is where the American Cold Civil War began. Amplified by media outlets and talk shows, the United States are now more divided than ever. Because people with power in places with influence, people with platforms used their platforms and their influence to try and change the world. And they did it in a way that was biased and wholly one-sided, when a lasting positive solution, an ideal solution will only come from all of us setting aside our differences, respecting one another and working together. Gone is the goal in the modern progressive vision of a world in harmony, of a world where all races come together and drink from the river of prosperity, free from the thirst of oppression. Now, they want to drink it all for themselves and the rest of us to simply die.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was indeed a true progressive. Not a perfect man, but one who is so determined to not let violence taint their message is one who is concerned more with how they achieve progress, truly realizing the ideal that they don't resort to desperation. Dr. King is dead and his dream is alive in the hearts of far too few. People who can truly look at a person and see a brother, a sister, a family member... we need more of them right now. They are not professors right now.
But they need to be.
This was my experience. And although it was just one person's experience, I was far from the only one asked to leave a classroom. I was far from the only one who questioned things and was silenced. I was far from the only one who saw racism from the OTHER side and was turned a deaf ear towards because of it.
These people calling themselves teachers need to be questioned. They have occupied safe positions of power for far too long. They're too comfortable with it. It is time for parents to get the rights for their children so that the next generation isn't a group of mindless sheep, guilty of things from decades ago and letting it control them.
Arm yourself with real knowledge. Make decisions for yourself. Ask those you trust for common sense and do your best to respect people. Right now, schools don't respect you but you don't need them to learn. There's plenty of books and knowledge out there and you don't need to be in a classroom to get it.
Agreed, fellow Floridian.
Sounds about right, unfortunately.
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They have gotten away with far too much for far too long. They feel safe, comfortable in their ivory towers where respect to them is demanded, where they command the attention of a captive audience. And we have to remember that like cops, there are far more good ones than there are bad. But the bad few are causing massive amounts of damage.
I spoke to one that was open-minded and despite I challenged climate change, and am more open to both sides of the discussion now, he was patient with me. He did the right thing and I felt accepted in his classroom. I want name him, but he was a marine biologist. Some other great teachers were both my English Literature professors, who emphasized immersion and in their teaching and works, and my civilizations and histories professor who I firmly believe is one of the greatest teachers of our time. His lessons were like performances and were incredibly fascinating, as was his demand for respect for his lectures. He didn't tolerate anyone who was tardy and his guest speakers included a survivor of the Holocaust.
And then there were the ones who wanted students to feel bad for being white, for being American. You don't have to make someone feel ashamed of their culture just to celebrate someone else's.
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Mad respect for your willingness to openly discuss this. I see this becoming all to commonplace in this nation. My experience was thankfully free of the politicking that is oh so common in the education system and by providence I was able to avoid seeing or becoming involved in it while in school.
On a goverment jobless training course I had just started, where the local paper was coming round to check in creation in the afternoon, I tried to comfort someone in the morning.
I just barely got away without not just a criminal record but also from their reaction and behaviour with teh course tutor the next chair over I barely avoided the registry, and was asked to leave the course, and the building, given it was approaching lunch time, and not come back.
I walked down the hill t the job center, and said to them due to circumstances Im afraid Ill ahve to ask if I could sign off the job list as sick.
The woman in charge of the job center came down to see me, gave me the signed note to take to teh doctors, and effectively said, Its about time. She used to be my teacher when I was a child at primary school amost 20 years prior. Out the building, on the bus, next town down, into see the docs, got a medically unfit for work signed note, back on the bus, back to first town, n to Jobcenter and signed off.
It took the system an hour and a half to erase me from unsuported monetary income, and most of that time was sitting on teh bus, waiting for the bus, and walking.
The extended families knowledge of going through the process said the fastest ever known, was two weeks.
This was 25 years ago, before all teh current hype and distrust, social media rumormongering etc made thinbgs a lot faster and more extensive.
Accepted mainstream research, as far as I understand, has shown that a large proportion of govenance and leaders, have the psychological profile of a psychopath, because in a general natural enviroment, those are the ones that float to the top on the bodies of the more passive.
At least one rich persons should now be panicking, because now the rich have aquired half the total worth of society, theres an ever decreasing amount of wealth left to aquire, which is far harder to aquire than wwhat they already have, so is going to cost more to aquire, leaving them even less to have.
Eventually paleoarchaologises scraping over the wastelands are suprised to find extensive buried foundations of immense constructions lost to memory and recorded history.
Just like the Amazonion mega builds that was lost less than a millenia ago.
Karens dont care about the past, they are their God Now, and so shalt be for all time. Or else.
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The world has increased in size, businesses have become more powerful, more power has been consolidated at the top and bureaucracy has increased even more. Businesses are the driving force of the world and government is more the maintainer of society. The government fixes and maintains things but progress is determined by the individual for the most part. They are interconnected but still divided.
What I'm seeing from economists these days and those critical of capitalism is more of the same. They rant about big businesses like Amazon being anti-union, they rant and criticize capitalism in general but I'm seeing something far more worrying than even communism. And honestly, if climate change is really that big of a concern, all these self-identified progressive idealists need to abandon all else and focus on that. I'm still skeptical of climate change, but I'm supporting reductions of greenhouse gasses and I'm just one guy on the internet. I recycle and I tell people to try and curb carbon emissions, that's all I can do.
But the worrying thing is how businesses are imposing regulations on themselves. Instead of concern the government is going to do this, going to overregulate private corporations, I'm watching them do that to themselves and I have for years. Entrepreneurship is a flagship, paramount characteristic and it's disappearing. The spirit of the free market is dying killed by greed.
Once, we were afraid of government imposing unnecessary regulations on businesses and even art. Censoring things for the public good, shielding things from the young and immature. There's an argument to be made on both sides but now, businesses are choosing not to do things and prevent other businesses, other innovators from doing the same by bullying them, squeezing out the competition, choosing not to cater to fans and consumers because of deadlines and shareholder expectations. Instead of environmental regulations and laws, what's stifling business is market research and over-adherence to analytics.
There is a further disconnect between the rich and the poor, between the classes in America. And the only solution I hear from Leftists and progressives is to eat the rich. And many of them are saying that literally. I see accelerationism becoming a more prominent philosophy, the desire for the system to be destroyed and a new one to rise. Progressivism is now ruthlessly desiring to change the status quo by any means necessary... and a lot of innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire.
I believe firmly that identity issues these days need to be resolved with mutual respect. Big business and big tech and big pharma and big media do all need to be broken up. They're monolithic. And schools do need to be investigated, but we cannot simply go after people because we think they're bad. We have to make absolutely sure that not a single innocent person is harmed from this. We have to have 100% accountability and 0% collateral damage.
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There's no body or agency left with the power or autonomy to actually accomplish a breakup of those, though. We saw from 2016 through today what they can accomplish working together, and not even the highest office could oppose them.
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And THEY collectively bow to the power of China. So what does that tell us about the world? We're fucked unless the Chinese people revolt en masse and overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.
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They're under the strictest and most invasive system of monitoring and control in the world, with only North Korea vying for that spot, and that system is being implemented in stages in the West. So for the big picture, yeah, we're fucked.
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I grew up with the rebellious since of attitude many Americans get. It used to be more prominent, we used to strive for more freedom and independence. There is one thing at the core of America that remains, one thing that has held us all together from 1776 onward and that is that the government without the consent of the governed is wrong, it is tyranny. Empires are not as good as a representative government, a government where the leaders are chosen by the people and govern with the expressed consent of the people is ideal. That is our way, that was always our way.
Now we're bowing to China because of their massive manufacturing prowess. It's been like this since Korea. The malevolence of the Chinese Communist Party using its people like expendable ants, brainwashing them and deploying them to overwhelm us. They're an Empire worse than anything King George III ever was and are killing on a massive scale. They have almost no regard for human life, like the Galactic Empire in Star Wars.
I've been taught my whole life this is wrong, I believe it's wrong and yet we're staring it right in the face and can't do a damn thing about it. Progressives advocate for the existence and rights of gays and others, yet China only waves the communist party's flag. Climate Change advocates warn about carbon emissions and burning of fossil fuels, yet China is continuing to burn anthracite and is going to open more coal burning plants. They're sending spy balloons and testing our boundaries and we do next to nothing about them. The only good bit of news was the report, which was likely just an educated speculation that our navy could beat theirs in a war at the cost of a lot of our submarines.
THEN LET'S MAKE SOME MORE FUCKING SUBMARINES.
And now A.I. is about to be unleashed. I might as well keep writing about cartoon ponies while we still can.
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I believe it is wrong too. Far more often than not, I share your feelings and beliefs about individual liberties, politics, and our country as a whole. The widespread testing and growth of various AI algorithms and models is part of why I think there's little to no chance any more of us avoiding a leftist system of total corporate control and ownership of everything, with no rights left to the
citizensconsumers.Images and reports can be fabricated on the spot with publicly-available models, and video creation is already entering the equation. We are entering a period of a fundamental lack of trustworthiness for what we see and hear without being physically present, even beyond the usual admonishment not to believe everything on the TV or Internet. 99.99% of people seeing or hearing something on the Internet fall into that category, and as Mark Twain once noted, "It is easier to lie to a man than to convince him he has been lied to." Endless targeted distraction and division generated in real time; "I can't worry about the country right now, there's a race/sex/nationality/
class/preference/consumer item war in progress!"