Bomb#20
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- Sep 27, 2004
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Of course it was an opinion-driven forecast; we are talking about a hypothetical situation after all -- "as many conservative teachers as liberals" does not qualify as "mainly staffed by conservatives". In the second place, as Politesse pointed out, grade-school teachers generally don't just wing it -- they mainly teach to assigned curricula. Those curricula are heavily influenced by college-level academia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 8-to-1 in education departments and 17-to-1 in history departments. So an actual reversal of the present teaching situation would require conservative dominance in colleges as well as public schools. So you have no empirical evidence that my opinion-driven forecast is wrong.At least in my neck of the woods, there are as many conservative teachers are liberals in the public schools. Yet, my blue state is not passing laws to telling people what parts of history not to teach. There is an ongoing debate about what should be the curriculum at the state level. But to my knowledge (and I sort of pay attention), there is no ban on specific topics in US history.
At a minimum, the conjecture " If public schools were mainly staffed by conservatives then it would be blue states passing laws telling them which parts of history not to teach' is an opinion-driven forecast. Perhaps it is projection or value-signalling as well.
As for positive evidence I'm right, progressives' commitment to free speech has turned out to be about a millimeter deep in thread after thread here. We get told free speech is an alt-right dog whistle. People are prepared to throw the New York Times' First Amendment protection under the bus in exchange for getting to censor Citizens United. Where progressives' only club to silence critics is bullying and vilification, critics are bullied and vilified. Where they can get a professor fired for saying everyone's life matters, she's fired. In countries without a First Amendment, they have people fined for speaking verboten ideas. But we're supposed to believe if progressive legislators' own public employees were undermining those legislators' preferred narrative of history with contrary facts, the legislators wouldn't order them to cut it out and stick to the approved curriculum? Yeah, right.