Adventures in Babysitting: The Catch-All Anti-SJW Thread

[Bi_3]

List the civilizations throughout history that did not utilize slave labor.

Why? Almost all of history is people and countries doing things that other people and countries did too. What’s the point of this question?

If it doesnt matter to the students perception of the scientists that they were racists and colonialists, why are they teaching it? What is the motive behind the decision to teach it?

Unless it is a science history course, I don’t know why they feel the need to talk about Isaac Newton *as a person* at all. You don’t sign up for college math to learn about the life of d'Alembert, and you don’t sign up for physics to learn about the life of Isaac Newton. They could easily cover the calculus of their discoveries without so much as mentioning their names (in the case of d'Alembert, they generally do just that).

If it is a science history course, well then you have your answer. It’s a part of the history of the discovery.

I’m on board with this distinction. Nothing in history should be hidden because it is an “unpleasant” truth. What did Vonnegut say... something like “history, read it and weep”. The desire to inject this “so and so was also evil by our modern morals” stance under the guise of the need to make underrepresented students feel better is what I think rubs people the wrong way. How does attacking a person who has been dead for centuries help students sense of self, unless the idea is to convince them of something like “Whitey could only do this through oppression”?

[Orpheus]

I am always so relieved that the teachers of the board are people like McP and 4/5.

[elliseamos]

I am always so relieved that the teachers of the board are people like McP and 4/5.

I'll lean toward "often" instead of always.

[Bi_3]

Same theme, different author

Opinion: Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe
Opinion by Cornel West and Jeremy Tate
April 19, 2021 at 3:39 p.m. EDT

Cornel West is a professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and serves on the board of academic advisers of the Classic Learning Test. Jeremy Tate is the founder and chief executive officer of the Classic Learning Test.

Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to study the likes of Socrates, Cato and Cicero.

Long after Douglass’s encounters with these ancient thinkers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be similarly galvanized by his reading in the classics as a young seminarian — he mentions Socrates three times in his 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”


Yet today, one of America’s greatest Black institutions, Howard University, is diminishing the light of wisdom and truth that inspired Douglass, King and countless other freedom fighters. Amid a move for educational “prioritization,” Howard University is dissolving its classics department. Tenured faculty will be dispersed to other departments, where their courses can still be taught. But the university has sent a disturbing message by abolishing the department.

Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture. Those who commit this terrible act treat Western civilization as either irrelevant and not worthy of prioritization or as harmful and worthy only of condemnation.

Sadly, in our culture’s conception, the crimes of the West have become so central that it’s hard to keep track of the best of the West. We must be vigilant and draw the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other. The crimes spring from certain philosophies and certain aspects of the civilization, not all of them.

The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world. We should never cancel voices in this conversation, whether that voice is Homer or students at Howard University. For this is no ordinary discussion.

The Western canon is an extended dialogue among the crème de la crème of our civilization about the most fundamental questions. It is about asking “What kind of creatures are we?” no matter what context we find ourselves in. It is about living more intensely, more critically, more compassionately. It is about learning to attend to the things that matter and turning our attention away from what is superficial.

Howard University is not removing its classics department in isolation. This is the result of a massive failure across the nation in “schooling,” which is now nothing more than the acquisition of skills, the acquisition of labels and the acquisition of jargon. Schooling is not education. Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.


The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education. To end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage, vision and civic virtue.

Students must be challenged: Can they face texts from the greatest thinkers that force them to radically call into question their presuppositions? Can they come to terms with the antecedent conditions and circumstances they live in but didn’t create? Can they confront the fact that human existence is not easily divided into good and evil, but filled with complexity, nuance and ambiguity?

This classical approach is united to the Black experience. It recognizes that the end and aim of education is really the anthem of Black people, which is to lift every voice. That means to find your voice, not an echo or an imitation of others. But you can’t find your voice without being grounded in tradition, grounded in legacies, grounded in heritages.

As German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer emphasized in the past century, traditions are inescapable and unavoidable. It is a question not of whether you are going to work in a tradition, but which one. Even the choice of no tradition leaves people ignorantly beholden within a language they didn’t create and frameworks they don’t understand.

Engaging with the classics and with our civilizational heritage is the means to finding our true voice. It is how we become our full selves, spiritually free and morally great.

[B]

Eliminating education in classical literature is NOT the same as contextualizing Newton as a slave trader.

[Bi_3]

Eliminating education in classical literature is NOT the same as contextualizing Newton as a slave trader.

I get from the leftist perspective the ends are what matter, but doesn't it depend on the motive in both cases?

[B]

Eliminating education in classical literature is NOT the same as contextualizing Newton as a slave trader.

I get from the leftist perspective the ends are what matter, but doesn't it depend on the motive in both cases?

I'm not sure what your point is.

The ends in the Newton story is that some engineers might become aware that their work is built on the work and suffering of a lot of people, not just the famous scientists who make the headlines.

The ends in the Howard story is that students are missing large swaths of the work that modern literature is built on.

[BurtReynolds]

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[Bi_3]

His statement itself is a based on a faulty assumption as you don't need to persuade someone who driven by guilt and shame. They will volunteer as penance.

[Rob]

The predictions on where this woke stuff leads us always reminds me of religious people who see every anecdote as a confirmation that we’re one step closer to the apocalypse/rapture.

[BurtReynolds]

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[Rob]

His statement itself is a based on a faulty assumption as you don't need to persuade someone who driven by guilt and shame. They will volunteer as penance.

Yeah I don't think the tactic is so much about persuading anyone to submit, but rather telling the persuaded how to submit in order to be forgiven. It's about reaping the harvest. At some point, the televangelist has to get the brainwashed to give them stuff.

You seem blissfully unaware that you are on the other side of this equation, scouring the internet for anecdotes that play to your narrative. As the woke wars heat up, so does your infatuation. This is one of the annoying things in life that doesn’t just live on Twitter or whatever social media. I have family members texting me periodically because they are so riled up against the woke crowd, they can’t see how ridiculous they sound.

[BurtReynolds]

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[Rob]

You sure you don’t have another Matrix .gif to drive the point home?

[BurtReynolds]

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[Rob]

Well, I’ve done that with you, that’s really all I do here since I’m not on a first name basis with you all. But you don’t always respond when challenged, so... I draw conclusions. For the record I like posting with people I disagree with, so always take my posts lightheartedly.

[BurtReynolds]

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[verb_to_trust]

Rob spelled backwards kind of spells bore

[spike]

sick burn

[B]

You don't have to wallow in guilt to recognize your privilege. Life isn't a winner's bracket.