Sapper Redux said:

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Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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I've not found that this law limits anything I can teach nor am I fearful about being accused of breaker this law. Too many cowards in education or they can't read.

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Really? So dictating how slavery must be presented to fit in an ideological lens isn't limiting?

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How does this law change how we teach slavery? what must be excluded?

My kids are still reading primary souces like those regarding the Punch Case, Key Case, Dunmore's Proclamation, and so on.

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As an example, in the law it says,

"A teacher, administrator, or other employee of a state agency, school district, or open-enrollment charter school may not:

AArequire or make part of a course inculcation the concept that:
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"The advent of slavery in the
territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States or
(viii)With respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality;"

That's not a historical position or a matter of fact. That's ideology and opinion. And the idea that slavery was not an "authentic founding principle" would certainly confuse many revolutionaries from places like South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.

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Your quote and you summary are two different things. You put "Authentic Founding Principle" in quotes, but the passage your posted actually reads "The advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States " i.e. the 1619 project. These do not mean the same thing. It does not mean that we cannot talk about the role slavery played in the foundation of the country.

The "or" after that tells us that the principle of liberty and equality cannot be discounted because the founding fathers failed to live up to them, not that we can't teach about the failures to live up to those ideals.

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the principle of liberty and equality cannot be discounted because the founding fathers failed to live up to them

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They were discounted by the vast majority of Anglo-Americans for the first 350 years of English settlement in North America. This isn't actually that hard, historically. There was some discomfort with slavery beginning in the late 18th century that was only acted on in New England and then brought to a head by war. There was no widespread white discomfort with white supremacy until the mid-20th century.

Yes, I said that. And SB3 does nothing to limit the teaching that the founding fathers, and the country as a whole for much of our history failed to live up to those ideals.

The language is extremely vague and absolutely could lead to a teacher getting in serious trouble despite not necessarily violating the letter of the law. It's a pathetic, hackneyed law.

Sapper Redux said:

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The language is extremely vague and absolutely could lead to a teacher getting in serious trouble despite not necessarily violating the letter of the law. It's a pathetic, hackneyed law.

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Watch out, Sapper. Take that same critical approach to all laws, and you may end up finding yourself a classical liberal or even a libertarian.

As a lawyer, I can say with confidence that almost all laws are vague at best or even "pathetic, hackneyed".

But, I suspect, your criticism is not really about the law's allegedly poor draftsmanship, but rather about its purpose of trying to ensure that the teaching of history is balanced.

Bunkhouse96 said:

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Yes, I said that. And SB3 does nothing to limit the teaching that the founding fathers, and the country as a whole for much of our history failed to live up to those ideals.

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Agreed. I have no concerns teaching about slavery.

No it isn't, and no it won't. I have taught for 20 years and know a lot of History teachers. The only people concerned about this are leftist who have an agenda and are trying to make a political point by exaggerating this in law beyond what it actually says.

Bunkhouse96 said:

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No it isn't, and no it won't. I have taught for 20 years and know a lot of History teachers. The only people concerned about this are leftist who have an agenda and are trying to make a political point by exaggerating this in law beyond what it actually says.

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The only people who aren't concerned are those whose politics agree with the law.

Sapper Redux said:

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Bunkhouse96 said:

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No it isn't, and no it won't. I have taught for 20 years and know a lot of History teachers. The only people concerned about this are leftist who have an agenda and are trying to make a political point by exaggerating this in law beyond what it actually says.

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The only people who aren't concerned are those whose politics agree with the law.

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Man, Sapper, you are quick to see others' biases behind every bush an in every shadow, but completely blind to your own.

Jabin said:

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Sapper Redux said:

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Bunkhouse96 said:

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No it isn't, and no it won't. I have taught for 20 years and know a lot of History teachers. The only people concerned about this are leftist who have an agenda and are trying to make a political point by exaggerating this in law beyond what it actually says.

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The only people who aren't concerned are those whose politics agree with the law.

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Man, Sapper, you are quick to see others' biases behind every bush an in every shadow, but completely blind to your own.

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I'm aware of my biases. If you can't see the partisan slant behind this law, just how completely unnecessary it is aside from a partisan ploy, I don't know what to say. Now we have politicians openly promoting banning books and in Virginia, school board members promoting book burnings. But yeah, it's not political. It's just teaching good history, right?

I thought we were talking about a Texas law, not a Virginia law? And I suppose it's only your side that gets to engage in partisan politics?

I do agree it is unnecessary. This will not affect the way any decent teacher has been teaching their students. This law is political cover for the Republicans so it looks like they are taking a stance against CRT (and they are a little bit).

You keep saying teachers will "get in trouble" because of this law because it is so poorly written. My question to you is how? That does "get in trouble" mean, and what exactly do you think a teacher will teach that will get them in trouble with this law.

The sad thing is the extremes on both the left and right are screwing up the education of future generations. But the CRT crap is just that.

Trying to get back on topic.

This is a pretty niche topic that is really difficult to address in posts of reasonable length, especially in public with people present who are more interested in playing semantic hall monitor than they are in participating honestly. That said, I'll try to tack on a couple thoughts anyway.

I think there's an issue with socialism (loosely defined as "collective control of the means of production usually via a proxy agent") that tends to exacerbate other issues.

The exacerbation arises through a couple factors. First, because the controller has a moral authority that brooks no argument. Because it is acting on behalf of Everyone, a lot of things can be excused by invoking The Collective Good. The proxy has a moral hazard where it actually acts in its own interest, and "its own interest" gets rewritten as the collective good with all the moral authorization and authority that implies.

Second, as the OP mentioned, socialism is often divorced from efficiency or effectiveness. Other goals supersede an honest approach to measuring results and getting better.

Slavery, being evil under any circumstance, is possibly worse "on the average", under socialism than other forms of economic organization. It's actually interesting, possibly evidence, that the only concept able to convince 20th century economies to reinstate slavery is The Collective Good. Having justified slavery, converting it to organized murder seems to have been a relatively easy step. Killing those people makes everyone else better off.

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I think what you are missing is the level of insanity that society has to get to to think casting one group of humans as lesser than another and should be subjugated to the whims of the "superior" group.

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Define insanity.

What you just described is the norm in recorded human history. Humanity didn't start to reject slavery on moral grounds until relatively recently, the last few hundred years. It took Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Red China to bring it back as an explicit part of major world economies.

Slavery is still practiced around the world today: openly as an accepted practice in a few underdeveloped economies; underground and in disguise in other places, even here in the US.

I think it's dangerous to categorize as insane the mindset and behaviors you described. It's very easy for humans to fall into just that sort of behavior, even in modern times under modern forms of government and economic organization. See Solzhenitsyn, Neitzsche, Milgram, Arendt, and Browning's Ordinary Men.

We're seeing quite a bit of dehumanizing the opposition in today's political discourse.