Care to enlighten the rest of us?
It’s not about facts. You can think Jefferson was a great man based on facts. Someone else can think he was horrible, also based on facts. You even brought up what it’s about without being aware of it: ideas. It’s the interpretation of reality that is the real issue, not reality itself. It’s about values, in this case the values my people developed while yours were living in caves.
Think of Cleisthenes, and Herodotus’ assessment of his accomplishments. Think of Demaratus counseling Xerxes. It’s values. And neither side is willing to defend them. Neither side cares about Western Culture. They both want a nation that is more like the Papal States. You really believe they want a population where people think for themselves? They want slaves. Look at Linda McMahon’s ideas about public (not private) education. She wants schools pumping out employees, worker bees, not leaders, rebels or revolutionaries.
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Um… There were two shootings here last night and our schools aren’t schools anymore.
I’m saddened to hear that. Don’t expect the godless to cure these ills.
Well, getting some of the people who are here illegally out will certainly go a long way towards allowing learning to take place again. The only thing being a sanctuary city really means is that you’re ready to sacrifice the future of the town.
Maine has already declared it will not be cooperating, as it believes Maine is best served when our local public schools are overcrowded with children from around the world.
But yes, same stuff on both sides if it makes you feel better.
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Learning what? This is the fundamental question. Will art history be taught? Philosophy? The foundations of Western Culture? Or will it be a pragmatic approach that views knowledge as less important than skills?
I know you’ve read Brave New World; Henry Ford is seen as godlike and Shakespeare was banned.
Lewiston is so, so far away from a discussion like that even mattering.
Learning anything at all would be a general improvement in much of the district. Lewiston has some of the worst schools in the country, and they are much, much worse than the statistics indicate. My kid has a great experience at Montello school in the last part of the 2000’s, when it was still staffed by long-time educators from the community and functioning about like you’d expect a working-class public elementary school to, which is to say pretty well.
Teachers there were lined up at this week’s school board meeting and some are even too afraid to speak up.
Maine Democrats, with a VERY different set of ideas than Maine Republicans, have enacted their ideas. This is the result, and there’s nothing good about it.
The ideology you say I don’t understand makes people AFRAID to speak against it, and has for over 20 years here in Lewiston.
That’s a fact.
Thankfully.
Speaking of rebels and revolutionaries, Ford revolutionized mass production and assisted in heralding an economic prosperity the world had never seen before, Shakespeare wrote gay stories that don’t really do anything. And nobody is really better for reading them.
I watched much of the school board meeting, @twojarslave, and you’re right, it’s extremely distressing.
And I know it’s happening in schools all over the country.
They are extremely secretive now, too. I feel terrible for anyone who can’t send their kids anywhere else.
Fear and violence are an important part of achieving equity.
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Important part? Is there another part?
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Without Shakespeare, you wouldn’t know how to think. Do you think Ford wanted his worker bees contemplating their existence? The fact you can do that is because of Shakespeare. When your ancestors were slaves, subjects and peasants, do you think they ever asked themselves what the point of life is, as Hamlet asks? Until people ask themselves that question, they will remain slaves, subjects and peasants. It’s why Shakespeare is banned in Brave New World.
You don’t need to understand something to fear it.
This attitude is ultimately bad for the nation and the Western world in general. The funny thing is, and it points to a lack of self awareness, that it is essentially the woke argument about old dead white men.
Why is the West the greatest civilization on the planet? Why do people from other parts of the world risk their lives to come here? What makes us different?: The fact we can produce a Shakespeare or a Twain or a Dante or a Homer or a Cervantes or a Michelangelo or an Aristotle or a Kant, etc. Why did we end slavery before anyone else? Why did we have democracy? Why do we have human and civil rights? It’s because of those old dead white men and their gay stories, paintings, statues and philosophy. It’s disgusting to me that people are unwilling to defend and preserve their legacy and what defines them.
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Do you sincerely believe this?
I doubt either one of us knew what Ford thought. But I bet he wanted the time his workers were spending at work to be more productive. You may want to do some research on other initiatives Ford introduced to his workforce, aside from productivity, before running with your point though.
Slaves to what, exactly? “The man”, ie corporations? An economic system with a free market they can tap as an owner/entrepreneur? An ability to homestead and farm if they prefer? I hear people bemoan “slavery” quite a bit but there’s never a viable solution offered. Hobo life and foraging?
Brave New World is a work of fiction, right? Totally imagined storylines and outcomes?
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Henry Ford made all the school children learn to square dance. For 60+ years.
That’s pretty messed up.
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I wondered why we had to learn that in music class.
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I think Ford, Carnegie, Pullman and some other huge industrialists of that era had the belief that their workers should develop their minds to elevate their existence.
I forget what the movement was called, but thats why we have the Carnegie library system and other artistic endowments. The Carnegie library in Homestead is pretty awesome.
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If only Lewiston, Maine could access the level of education that was provided to the children of the early 20th century as they were being prepared to manufacture model T’s.
That would be a big step in the right direction for the town.
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Yeah. It would.
Talk about a crucible for ideas, keeping what works and doing away with stuff that doesnt- stupid doesn’t live very long in a steel mill or a coal mine.
What is/was the industrial base of Lewiston? There has to be a reason it was founded and became a nice place.