[carlsonjok]

Originally Posted by G1911

It very literally and directly states that the path to slavery, the slavery experience, and the achievement of African-Americans are required to be taught, already cited. Nowhere does it ban or imply could be banned any of the things you claimed before reading the bill. You want a section specifically stating Jackie Robinson (and every other baseball player, again, the bill is "any race" except the section specifically stating black achievement and several other topics promoting a positive narrative) can be taught? This bill would be over a million pages if it had to very specifically state everything it does not affect. This is just fundamentally not how law works. No law does this lol

Strawman. Those are bumper stickers, not guidelines that can be used by teachers and administrators to make good faith decisions about what to teach. Curriculum guidance needs to be detailed enough that a random sample of educators would come to essentially the same decisions. This law doesn't do that. Quite the opposite, as we are seeing play out in real time. How should a bill affecting curriculum should be constructed. I would say that it isn't a list of what is disallowed, but rather an outline of what is allowed. For the topic of racial discrimination what are the subtopics that can be covered and what evidence introduced to illuminate those topics? Can current events be covered? Etc.

We have already covered and I have provided the evidence that the claims of books bans made are fake news, and that these obscure texts were not banned or even on the shelf in the first place. I am still awaiting any evidence of said ban and removal. The county themselves stated the Pen report is not correct: "After requesting more information about the report from the district, a DCPS spokeswoman told News4JAX Tuesday afternoon there are nearly 200 books being reviewed by the district but none of them were challenged by members of the community and the books were never on the library shelves." This whole subject appears to be a lie. Happy to be corrected by evidence.

I am not sure who you are responding to here, because it isn't me. I never said books were banned. I said that, faced with ambiguity, educators are erring heavily on the side of caution and pulling anything that could even result in some fired up parent wasting their morning complaining about CRT infiltrating the schools because a book points out Dixie Walker's role in the integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Well of course, that's how law works. If it isn't in the law, it's not impacted by it. Of course it's not going to list a thousand things it doesn't affect. There's nothing in here about empowering parents to go after teachers for saying something they don't like. That was just completely false. Of course it doesn't overturn the first amendment and remove a parents right ("gunny ass", whatever that means, or otherwise) from speaking, or eliminate parents from attending school board meetings. Why would anyone expect it too? Parents attending school board meetings and being permitted to speak has nothing to do with this bill at all.

Textually, no. And I am certainly not advocating for an abridgement of the people's First Amendment rights, if that is what you are setting me up for here. What I am concerned about is that this bill makes all curriculum subject to the heckler's veto. At some point, you have to stop privileging ignorance. And a properly constructed and detailed curriculum is a good first step.

This is again, plainly and unequivocally false. It bans advocacy of certain racist views, which are very specifically stated. It very, very specifically states that the matter may still be discussed, it just must be addressed objectively (79-83). There are plenty of reasonable arguments against this bill, but they are weakened when it's opponents just make things up that are directly contradicted by the actual text instead.

One man's recitation of facts is another man's advocacy. Take my voter ID example.It is a demonstrable fact that Voter ID laws disenfranchise minority voters because those voters disproportionately do not have the required ID. That is just a statement of fact. And look at how that spun off into it's own argument. Now imagine how that plays out when it involves real educators and real parents, not just a bunch of baseball card collectors wasting time on a discussion board.

First, what definition do you need for "person"? It's incredibly obvious what a person means, no? That's an objection?

I did myself no service by how I stated that earlier. My apologies. My preference is that this language, along with the language about psychological distress, not appear in the bill whatsoever, because it privileges unprovable claims over demonstrable facts and opens it up for the introduction of absurdities.

Where does it say anyone cannot observe that Bull Connor was a racist, or teach that? It says they cannot recommend instructional material that reflect unfairly on any person specifically because of their race. "Bull Connor was a racist and did X, Y, Z" is just fine. "Bull Connor was a terrible person and a racist because he was white" would be banned. This section does not say what you are claiming it does, not even close.

This is exactly the type of absurdity I am talking about. Bull Connor was a racist. Racism is prejudice against a person because of their race. Bull Connor was white. Bull Connor was a white supremacist. Are educational outcomes actually improved by dancing around the obvious?

I get some people are really upset by this law, but dealing with what it actually says makes for a much better argument than making blatantly false claims about the text.

And, to restate myself, the advocates should be less concerned about what it says and more concerned about how what it doesn't say can be used to strategically create chaos. Which is already happening.

The left would be much better served by not playing into Desantis' hand

And, in my opinion, the right would be much better served when they realize that stunts like this bill aren't meant to solve a problem, but rather keep Ron DeSantis' name in the news and burnish his credentials as a culture warrior in advance of the 2024 GOP Presidential primary.

The whole point on their side is that this bill is a very liberal approach - just without a clause exempting teaching racism towards whites while still banning it against every other race. This is why I am having a hard time seeing anything wrong in the actual bill (not leftist op-ed's), it's a liberal take of a liberal value to not allow teaching racism and prejudice (again, it very, very directly bans advocacy, and advocacy only) to children.

If teaching about racism was solely about teaching that it is wrong to be prejudiced against someone because of their race, it would be a 30 second conversation. The history of racism in the US, though, is about racism coupled with control of the levers of power that enables someone to act on that prejudice under the color of law. And that is not a solved problem. To be sure, it is certainly better than it was in the 1860s and also the 1960s. But, it isn't solved. We still have to create a more perfect union. But, is it any less advocacy to teach the comfortable fiction that we have truly achieved a color-blind society?

In sum, I think we are each talking about a different topic. While you are talking about what is within the four walls of the bill, I am talking about what happens out in the wild as a result of the bill. You are asking "Does this sound reasonable?" and I am asking "how can someone abuse this bill in service to some other agenda?" I am not sure how we reconcile that.