> although the article content itself is far from neutral
Can we admit how pernicious it is that the school system itself is manifestly captured by ideological motives and that simply criticizing that is impossible to be "neutral" by any standard people that agree with the program would define?
I guess I'm saying: how do you voice criticism in a neutral way when the program being criticized frames itself as basic human decency.
This is the same logic that lies at the center of something like the Patriot Act. Capture language and you've perniciously twisted language so as to be unimpeachable. This is Pandora's Box.
I only meant to comment on the article's neutrality with regard to evaluating the meta aspect of the headline quality. I personally think that the kinds of measures proposed here are counterproductive (I am, among other things, a mathematics educator) — but my opinion on that isn't really relevant to the question of helping keep HN submissions at the desired level of quality.
I get what you're saying. I think there's an issue though, that neutrality is hard to come by for lots of reasons and especially nowadays when preference falsification is prevalent because critique of DEI/CRT is social suicide in certain sociopolitical milieu.
So naturally you're only going to find critique on the other side. As the CRT folk are keen to say - you can't be neutral - pick a side!
It's absurd to diminish talent (never mind maintain that it doesn't exist), this is used to marginalize accomplished people (like minorities) and frankly it's hard to see this than anything other than a tactic of bullying and dogmatic ideology.
> "Teachers can support discussions that center mathematical reasoning rather than issues of status and bias by intentionally defining what it means to do and learn mathematics together in ways that include and highlight the languages, identities, and practices of historically marginalized communities."
This part beggars belief. It seems to declare that they'd like to maintain the pretense of teaching math by redefining math to mean critical race theory topics.
What's puzzling is that based on the CDC hospitalization data, we'd have at best 1~2 thousand children hospitalized if every child in America were to contract SARS-2 (rates show an average 1 out of 100,000 hospitalized for <18yo). Presumably "long covid" is also not even remotely prevalent among children (if this isn't the case, where's the evidence?).
The idea that we should just be deploying vaccines (that have been pushed through an extraordinarily abbreviated regulatory process) ASAP is beyond ridiculous imo.
I suspect the issue here is that the public health lever-pulling expert class has decided on an authoritarian strategy and maskless children would disrupt the facade of absolute conformity.
You see people outright admitting this when they vaccinate and are afraid to unmask even though science would suggest otherwise - they want to get rid of the perception of individual autonomy.
But on the topic of children masking: it's clear that the panic-ridden doomsday people have continuously downplayed or flat-out not recognized the non-linear detrimental effects of disrupting normal education and socialization of children.
Social identity is a big one, and insofar as social media dispenses with the subtle social cues that we rely on to communicate and emote, I think we're stuck with this if we're going to rely heavily on public communication devoid of facial expression.
Also it's somewhat obvious that a certain side of the political spectrum has an obsession with literal enumeration. I'd be interested to see if there's a conservative parallel to the growing list that so many feel obligated to put forth: pronouns, vaccination status, race, political identity, gender, sex, romance orientation, mask-affinity, mental health identity, astrological sign, etc.
As a qualifier, I say this as a gay guy who's often in queer social circles and it seems to me not only pathological but cognitively dissonant: in a sphere that claims that labels and normativity are bad, they then go on making an ever-growing list of definitions of existence. None of this is pleasurable - it's robotic and authoritative. There is an obsession with definition instead of just living their lives and embracing the ineffable and infinitely complex nature of life.
> as long as the virus circulates, we have a serious problem
Sorry this is ridiculous. The coronaviruses that surfaced in the 20th and 19th c. are not as dangerous as they once were. And if they are, they're part of the array of viruses that we were able to handle before even though they're dangerous to the immunoincompetent (senescence, etc).
For all the people downvoting you, yes it's a bit obtuse to deny that his opponents (I'm very ambivalent about him, leaning towards distaste) didn't use any and every opportunity to call him a racist/xenophobe/authoritarian/etc.
He was like a drug to both his supporters and detractors.
FWIW seasonality, geography, and travel patterns seems to have played a large part in how long a country had to decide before enacting measures that would make a difference.
It would seem that any country that was in summer during the spread had the advantage to stomp out virus when the trend was low (and in the case of the islands - shut down all travel).
Can we admit how pernicious it is that the school system itself is manifestly captured by ideological motives and that simply criticizing that is impossible to be "neutral" by any standard people that agree with the program would define?
I guess I'm saying: how do you voice criticism in a neutral way when the program being criticized frames itself as basic human decency.
This is the same logic that lies at the center of something like the Patriot Act. Capture language and you've perniciously twisted language so as to be unimpeachable. This is Pandora's Box.