Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Clever Pseudonym's avatar

"Others lamented the district was waging costly battles on fringe topics while ignoring the basic functions of a school district...."

This has been a go-to gaslighting technique for the Gender zealots as a way to project their mental instability onto their opponents: "Why are you so OBSESSED!?! What do you care if a kid reads a BJ manual in junior high? They see worse every day online...You seem to have an odd fixation with child sexuality, you might want to examine that..."

The sad part is it works, because fighting the Gender zealots is a lot like fighting a skunk, you know you're going to get sprayed with foul stink, and most people decide to just steer clear—and thus the Gender zealots have installed their propaganda in a generation of brains.

At some point in the last decade people on the Left decided that it was beneath them to explain, debate or compromise—who stoops to debate when they know they're righteous and infallible?—and instead have resorted to charges of moral pollution, moral contagion, various ISMs and -phobias, the all-purpose bigotry accusation, and when this doesn't work, banning and/or cancellation.

This illiberal and hateful form of anti-thought is the product of the American academy, and now it's spread out to the media and the larger culture, another sign of our cultural and intellectual degradation.

The only consolation for now is that this style of thought and writing is about as smart and fun as a Maoist Struggle Session and only appeals to True Believers and other adult children—thus rags like the LA Times continue to hemorrhage readers and cash.

Hope whoever wrote this article knows how to code!

Expand full comment
Victoria Chandler's avatar

This is a great article about the state of our public school system. The article begins with this:

"In 1942, there were 108,579 public school districts in the United States. By the 2020-21 school year, there were only 13,187.

"That massive consolidation of school districts was propelled by the belief that economies of scale created by larger school districts would lower costs and serve students better. Those presumed efficiencies have not, however, been demonstrated in practice. As Stephen Coffin summarized, “Large urban school districts generally have not been accountable for improving school and student performance…they have been constrained by their overly large scale…The typical large urban school district needs to be right-sized or disaggregated.” "

I think they are on to something here. All of the nonsense that has been foisted on parents over the last few decades has been allowed because they made themselves behemoths that are difficult to deal with. They need to cut them down to size.

https://www.aier.org/article/how-can-we-stop-serving-students-so-poorly/

Expand full comment
107 more comments...

No posts