florida and maths texts
Apr. 20th, 2022 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdWe don't know what the Florida @GOP in meant by rejecting maths textbooks for "critical race theory" (clearly a lie), but it likely has to do with the decades-long fundamentalist hatred for teaching how to think critically and analytically.
This would be in alignment with decades of fundamentalist attacks on anything that teaches children how to think, vs. teaching children what to think.
Like everything else, this is related to religious culture, and specifically, the fundamentalist culture that took over the Republican Party.
Fundamentalists of all sorts prioritize received knowledge, passed down from older sources, preferably god. The Bible, as they read it.
Sure, you can pick up technology maybe, but for what matters? God's Word or GTFO.
(That "God's Word" means their word goes without saying.)
Empirical knowledge - the idea that we can observe the world and make better decisions based on what we learn - falls by contrast somewhere between inferior and evil, if it contradicts what they've decided God Said.
Thinking critically is empirical thinking. That makes it bad.
Fascists think the same way. You've seen fascist "Reject modernity, embrace tradition" memes? That's just how they phrase it.
That's why they're so often found flocking together, and so easily align with each other.
God is Authority is Power is Good. Doing what God|Authority|Power says is right thinking. Everything else is somewhere flavour of the enemy, a.k.a. Satan.
So, teaching children to think critically - to engage with problems and solve them without deferring to received knowledge (God's Word / Authority's word / their beliefs) - is teaching children how to be evil.
Therefore critical thinking/analysis is evil, and must be expunged.
That's the level of difference we're dealing with here.
They used to say outright that things went wrong with the Renaissance, that that's when Man turned from God and where things started to go wrong.
That played badly, so they shut up about it.
But they still believe it.
If they have their way, so will everyone, Because God, or them, as god's spiritual warriors on Earth. (As they used to say.)
So to come back around:
We don't know, but that's likely what DeSantis is doing. Who he's making happy and why.
Education be damned, just learn to obey.
(original version on twitter)
This would be in alignment with decades of fundamentalist attacks on anything that teaches children how to think, vs. teaching children what to think.
Like everything else, this is related to religious culture, and specifically, the fundamentalist culture that took over the Republican Party.
Fundamentalists of all sorts prioritize received knowledge, passed down from older sources, preferably god. The Bible, as they read it.
Sure, you can pick up technology maybe, but for what matters? God's Word or GTFO.
(That "God's Word" means their word goes without saying.)
Empirical knowledge - the idea that we can observe the world and make better decisions based on what we learn - falls by contrast somewhere between inferior and evil, if it contradicts what they've decided God Said.
Thinking critically is empirical thinking. That makes it bad.
Fascists think the same way. You've seen fascist "Reject modernity, embrace tradition" memes? That's just how they phrase it.
That's why they're so often found flocking together, and so easily align with each other.
God is Authority is Power is Good. Doing what God|Authority|Power says is right thinking. Everything else is somewhere flavour of the enemy, a.k.a. Satan.
So, teaching children to think critically - to engage with problems and solve them without deferring to received knowledge (God's Word / Authority's word / their beliefs) - is teaching children how to be evil.
Therefore critical thinking/analysis is evil, and must be expunged.
That's the level of difference we're dealing with here.
They used to say outright that things went wrong with the Renaissance, that that's when Man turned from God and where things started to go wrong.
That played badly, so they shut up about it.
But they still believe it.
If they have their way, so will everyone, Because God, or them, as god's spiritual warriors on Earth. (As they used to say.)
So to come back around:
We don't know, but that's likely what DeSantis is doing. Who he's making happy and why.
Education be damned, just learn to obey.
(original version on twitter)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 05:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 06:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 02:00 pm (UTC)Interestingly, I have also heard extreme liberals gripe about "the tyranny of math." Apparently, a lot of people just plain hate reality, regardless of their politics. :-)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-21 02:15 pm (UTC)Okay, now I have the tune "Particle Man" running through my head, only the lyrics are "Florida Man..."