• joe@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Ron DeSantis’s slew of laws attacking teaching of race and gender issues sees state’s colleges struggle to fill faculty posts

    As intended.

    • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 years ago

      Good luck finding right-wing professors, Ron. Alumni of the Florida Universities are going to be really mad when the schools can’t fund football and basketball in the coming years. They already have a recruiting crisis due to Ron’s actions.

      • joe@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        It’s a lot like that quote:

        If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.

        If conservatives become convinced that an education makes people less conservative, then they will not gaze inward to wonder why that might be, but instead reject education.

          • Shalakushka@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            I’d agree, which is why we shouldn’t be presenting slavery as a circuitous jobs training program, like Ron DeFascist wants to.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            At some level, education is about instilling certain ideas and theories within an audience for the purpose of driving some kind of social activity. Whether that activity is academic research or religious proselytization depends on the information being conveyed. But every form of education does require a certain set of axioms be taken at face value.

            People tend to lose sight of the fundamental and necessary techniques used in imparting new knowledge while fixating on the relative values that the new knowledge provides when they toss out words like “indoctrination”.

          • joe@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Can you articulate the difference to me? I’m curious to see what you come up with.

            • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              Yeah, sure, I’ll bite.

              Education is teaching kids to think for themselves while giving them the ability to tell fact from bullshit.

              Indoctrination is forcing your own ethics, morals, and beliefs onto children who lack the ability to discern fact from bullshit, usually early enough in their development to ensure that the bullshit you’ve forced onto them becomes permanently encoded into their brain structure.

              Nobody’s indoctrinating college students. The students are being taught to critically analyze information and are using that critical analysis to realize that the worldview they’ve been spoon-fed is bullshit.

              • joe@lemmy.world
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                2 years ago

                I think some confusion has happened since I made my last comment. I was under the impression that Education != indoctrination was saying that DeSantis wasn’t going after educators, but instead, getting rid of “indoctrination”.

                I wholeheartedly agree that the major difference is that education teaches to question your world, and indoctrination tells you to shut up and get in line. What DeSantis is getting rid of is education, and making room for indoctrination.

            • spriteblood@kbin.social
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              2 years ago

              Education is the act of imparting knowledge, usually with the goal of improving general understanding and critical thinking skills, while indoctrination carries inherent connotations of partisanship - usually about believing a specific doctrine or ideology, even if facts or evidence suggests it to be untrue.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Good luck finding right-wing professors, Ron.

        Absolutely no shortage of right-wing academics and ideologues who would be happy to take an $80k/year stipend to tell their RAs to play PraegerU videos for an auditorium-sized classroom while they clumsily flirt with freshman co-eds in the back office.

        Once you abandon the idea of education as a real thing that colleges are actually supposed to do, its basically just a no-show job that functions as a kick-back to your cronies.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        For real?

        Dude once they are desperate it’ll be the PTO warriors that become “professors”.

        • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 years ago

          Professor isn’t a title many on the right can achieve. A Education PhD, published research, and the clout in the education community play a role. The education community rarely produces any right wingers outside of the business related schools.

              • foggy@lemmy.world
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                2 years ago

                You do not need a teaching degree to be a professor.

                Most universities are private institutions, and can employ whomever they see fit in whichever positions they seem appropriate. They have a vested interest in employing accredited individuals.

                What I am saying is Florida will run out of such individuals at which time, it will become very easy for anyone to become a college professor.

                Also, I have been a college professor, and I only have an undergrad. Not in teaching. It was my actual title.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      I’ve wondered how long we’ll go before universities across the country start refusing to accept Florida high school graduates because their coursework does not meet basic acceptance criteria.

      This is exactly what DeSantis and his ilk want. Conservatives are scared shitless of their kids going off to university and finding out that their parents and schools have been lying to them their whole life.

      Solution: Ensure no out-of-state schools will accept your students so they’re stuck in your shitty system forever.

      • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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        I remember a homeschooled kid the first year of college. Their whole life was turned upside down. Couldn’t finish the year, then they enlisted. Never heard what happened after

    • kite@lemmy.world
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      having taken classes like “Cell Biology and Jesus”, “Why God Made Calculus”, and “The Physics of Heaven” from their mom.

      I see you’ve met my cousin! I wish I was kidding. :(

  • YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.worldOP
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    Florida is in for a rough time, in the next ten years will have a massive shortage of medical workers, teachers, and professionals. It will be the most uneducated state in the western hemisphere and likely a major center of criminal activity.

    • mercano@lemmy.world
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      They’re also loosing agricultural and construction workers as DeSantis’s anti-immigration policies drives away illegal migrants who filled those positions in under-the-table jobs.

    • fubo@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Content warning: Fascism, sexual abuse.


      The people who matter to the Florida Fascists all have investments in other states and countries. They aren’t dependent on the local economy prospering; and they benefit from keeping state and local taxes low.

      They can import doctors and other skilled laborers from overseas. Then by eliminating birthright citizenship and restricting naturalization, they can ensure that those skilled laborers’ children will not become citizens. Uppity immigrants will be stuffed in a box and mailed to California.

      By destroying public education, they ensure that those skilled laborers (and everyone else) must pay far-right private schools to educate their children. Only far-right schools and teachers will be permitted to operate; all others will be prosecuted as “groomers” and/or just lynched by outraged “mothers’ groups”.

      Crime is very good for fascists; it keeps rich people scared of poor people, and thus willing to support politicized-militarized police violence, private militias, etc.


      The goal is to replicate a fascist social structure, which is a parody of a traditional conservative social structure — with the aristocracy replaced by the loyal Party elite; church replaced with Party rallies; and multigenerational family replaced with atomized nuclear families whose man-of-the-house must be tested for Party loyalty. These all stand above the racial underclass — who do the doctoring, landscaping, and cocaine importing, and who don’t get to do things like vote, question the police, or get their rape kits tested.

      Being a trad dad isn’t enough, men; if you tolerate political dissent among your children, they will be taken away from you and given to a Party-loyal abuser. Today it’s your trans kid; tomorrow it’s your teenager who’s a Greta Thunberg fan. Permitting your daughter to attend an illegal protest is proof that you’re a bad father — so you go to prison for child abuse, and she goes to the basement of some Gaetz-lookin’ dude who attends Party rallies every Sunday with his terrified wife.

  • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Most likely this drain of academics was an intended effect of the laws passed under DeSantis. The loss of academics hobbles institutes of higher learning while positions remain unfilled, resulting in a more ignorant populace. It also opens the possibility for far right extremists to infiltrate academia to corrupt academic thought and principles from within. The danger of ultra right wing, bigoted, nationalistic, authoritarianism continues to grow. How long before more right wing states follow suit?

      • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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        The voters may not want the economy to suffer but DeSantis and his cronies do. It’s part of the GOP playbook. Damage the economy with tax cuts and other legislation, then blame the Democrats for the bad economy. Their voters always fall for it.

        • tipicaldik@lemmy.world
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          My wife has extended family from Mississippi. They are some of the stupidest people I have ever met. They all, and I mean ALL, send their kids to private schools so they won’t have to attend alongside black kids. One of her cousins was just down visiting with us and I walked in while she was ranting about how “I know trump is blahbidyblah, but things were so much better under him… just look at the GAS PRICES screee scrawww hurr durr”. I did the ol’ Grandpa Simpson about face and checked tf out before I said something ugly and upset my wife (not that she actually agrees with her cousin or anything, I just need to be nice…)

    • Boddhisatva@lemmy.world
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      Conservatives have been gutting education for 40 years. Look at the educational outcomes in Republican run states. They like ignorant, meaning uneducated voters. Crippling higher education is definitely their goal.

    • cath@lemmy.world
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      Chasing left leaning people out is how they think they can fight demographic change and continue to survive at the polls.