The Cult of Ignorance had spread to Canada a couple of decades ago.

Longer than that. As an undergrad if we were crashing and burning in a course we just took that as evidence that we had to work harder. By the time I finished grad school if students were having difficulty in a course they'd complain that the course was "too hard" and that the prof was unfair.

Fact is, my first teaching job after finishing my doctorate - the Dean actually stopped me in the hall and asked me if I really had to go "so fast" in class (seems some students had complained to him). When I pointed out that I was actually two weeks behind where the syllabus said I should be (i.e., I was moving too slowly) he just nodded and walked away.

True. Time gets compressed when one gets older. I can't believe that it's been 13 years since my wife went to war with the school board/provincial government.

Ron DeSantis plotted an all-out assault on public universities
Records show Florida's governor drafted plans to strip autonomy from individual universities and colleges, centralize power in Tallahassee, and impose more restrictions on what students are taught.
Jason Garcia

Over the past year, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies in the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature have been on a crusade against public universities, tarring them as “intellectually repressive” and “socialism factories.”

They have passed laws ordering community colleges and state universities to dig up details about the personal political beliefs of their employees, making it harder for professors to maintain tenure, interfering with university accreditation, and threatening funding for schools that don’t fall in line with the governor’s efforts to control the teaching of slavery, segregation and institutional racism.

And DeSantis may just be getting started.

Records obtained through a series of public-records requests show that DeSantis’ office recently developed a sweeping plan to ...

https://jasongarcia.substack.com/p/ron- ... ssault?s=r

As for that edjumacashun stuff ...

Over 40% of Americans believe humans and dinosaurs shared the planet
Many believe that dinosaurs and humans once coexisted, but most know that current technology doesn't allow for cloning dinosaurs from fossils
Peter Moore

The recent release of Jurassic World broke records for the best opening weekend ever, taking in $208.8 million in North America. The film, which is a reboot of 1993's original Jurassic Park, focuses on a theme park which displays dinosaurs that have been cloned by taking the DNA from fossils.

YouGov's latest research shows that 41% of Americans think that dinosaurs and humans either 'definitely' (14%) or 'probably' (27%) once lived on the planet at the same time. 43% think that this is either 'definitely' (25%) or 'probably' (18%) not true while 16% aren't sure. In reality the earliest ancestors of humans have only been on the planet for 6 million years, while the last dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

There is a religious split on this question. While most Americans who describe themselves as 'born again' (56%) believe that humans and dinosaurs once shared the planet, most Americans who do not describe themselves as born again (51%) think that they did not. Only 22% of born again Americans think that dinosaurs and humans did not coexist.

When asked about the science that provides the fictional basis for the Jurassic Park movies, most Americans (54%) say that ....

https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifesty ... ssic-world

But Jurassic Park....

And the Flintstones is a documentary.

Yes, i believe the Flintstones are the propagandists here.

While this is from 2017 it's just as true today (if anything, it's even more true today)

The right wing war on facts: The new partisan divide that's destroying our nation
Forget red state vs. blue state. Now the line of separation runs between those who prefer facts to fantasy
SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN

In Stephen Colbert’s epic performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner he ironically stated that “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” During the George W. Bush era, comedians like Colbert and Jon Stewart tackled what Stewart referred to as “bullshit mountain.” Less clearly a partisan project, the satire of Stewart and Colbert was directly aimed at the way that concepts like truth and reality had become politically polarized.

And they had a lot of work to do. Back in 2008, we learned that the Bush administration made 935 false statements in the lead-up to the Iraq war. In a 2006 interview, Colbert explained how important it was for him in the Bush years to defend the concept of truth:

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the president because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?

While Colbert imagined his battle as a fight to rescue the truth, such efforts started to be more and more aligned with party politics. Around the turn of the millennium it became increasingly possible to connect fact-aversion to the GOP. Partisanship was no longer driven by political differences on how to deal with reality; it was divided over what constituted reality itself.

Chris Mooney has documented the allergic reaction the Republican brain has to truth. Focusing on attitudes toward science, Mooney points out that “politicized wrongness today is clustered among Republicans, conservatives, and especially Tea Partiers.” Mooney found that Republicans didn’t only deny the scientific facts behind climate change; they also resisted facts connected to economics and American history.

It’s important to remember this recent history, because without it we can’t ...

https://www.salon.com/2017/06/24/the-ri ... ur-nation/

"help our kids get caught up"?

Why are they so far behind in the first place?

One side effect (which I'm sure was planned) - it will allow charter schools to hire whoever they want because those teachers don't have to be qualified.

#767

Is it a real problem or a created one? How debilitating is it to learn stuff a year or two later than anticipated?

Depends - if a student wants to go on to college or university they're going to have problems (especially in STEM subjects) if their high school background is too weak.

And the article also goes on at great lengths about disproportionate impacts on poor (as in not wealthy) students who don't have access to the internet at home etc.

I'd not thought it through, forgetting that the "system" shoves students through whether they've actually learned the subject or not.

Strange how backward-ass states like Texas and Florida are experiencing the biggest difficulties in attracting and retaining teachers… Could it be due to shitty pay, being forced to teach religious propaganda or outright lies, or being expected to act as some kind of paramilitary anti-school-shooter squad? Or all of the above?

Sauce: https://www.washingtonpost.com/educatio ... -shortage/

A thousand years ago when I graduated from college with my teaching degree, Dallas Texas offered me a very high paying job with lots of benefits. My husband at the time wanted to move to Texas so it seemed like a good opportunity. Teaching jobs in most places were scarce at the time. About two weeks before I was to report, I took a different job at a small Catholic school in the northeast for less than half of what Dallas was paying. There just wasn't enough money in the universe to get me there and I never moved to Texas.

Definitely...and not above, either.

"The dumbest people in the country run America, and America is what happens when you let the dumbest people in a country run it."

The Age of Stupid, Or Why It Feels Like the World Is Ending a Little More Every Day
The Central Problem at this Juncture of Human History Is that Stupid Wins
umair haque



I must do it two dozen, maybe three dozen times a day by now.

I’m at the dog park. One of my neighbors and friends greets me. And says: “Wow. It’s hot again today. Is every summer going to be like this now, only worse?”

Another one arrives: “Guys. Did you see the latest inflation numbers? I can’t believe how much I paid for my weekly groceries!! And the winter’s coming. What about energy bills? Shudder.”

The dogs spin happy circles around us. Us troubled humans.

I’m at the cafe. The girls who work there are all best friends with the little guy. “Snowy!!” They say happily, and reach down to give him little fluffarinos, which is what it’s called when you fluffle a tiny white cotton puff. Snowy grins up at them. One of them says: “God, the planet’s melting. And another Marvel Movie?” Idle chit-chat.

Another one says: “Hey, do you really think the economy’s going to get worse? I can barely pay my student loans. What am I going to do?”

Guess what I say?

I walk back towards home, crossing my little neighborhood, this ancient bastion of artists and poets and writers. A neighbor with a little dog stops me. Snowy and his friend leap at each other in delight. She laughs. Then she frowns, and says: “Is It true that in America, they’re doing all these terrible things to women?”

I’m at home. My lovely wife’s sitting on the sofa with me. She laughs, in horror. “What is it,” I ask, worried. She shows me her phone. “Check this guy out,” she says. It’s the infamous pic of ...

https://eand.co/the-age-of-stupid-or-wh ... 809ba521fd