The sound I just made https://t.co/V64v5okL54
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) September 29, 2021
Or maybe that should be ‘shart from the past’…
Can you sigh so hard you break something pic.twitter.com/xtea6r43Yd
— Jane Coaston (@janecoaston) September 29, 2021
Hey, Norman Rockwell’s painting was ‘controversial’ with a certain percentage of magazine readers — more than fifty years ago. I’m not sure this lady had even been born yet.
Every year I like to revisit this Vonnegut letter during #BannedBooksWeek. It’s about a North Dakota school burning 32 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five in 1973, but it’s unfortunately still very relevant today. https://t.co/fCwuZhYY9V pic.twitter.com/FsmR4znDcS
— Sarah McLaughlin (@sarahemclaugh) September 29, 2021
“Section 51, part 6 of the Tennessee law makes lesson plans illegal if students "feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish."
If only this was the law when I was in high school, I could’ve had the whole math department shut down.
— The Die Is Cast (@bombcola909) September 29, 2021
burnspbesq
Suck it up, Karen. The world is changing, and you’re on the wrong side.
Tony Gerace
Apparently there’s an urgent need for people in Tennessee to become even more ignorant
Raven
trollhattan
Brilliant letter. Loved this.
Chetan Murthy
Was the typo in the title intentional? (“Bla
st” ?)burnspbesq
@Raven:
I imagine The Grapes of Wrath would reallllly freak this poor snowflake out.
Raven
I re-read “Travels” and the last chapter is stunning. The white people opposing Ruby were exactly like these MAGA motherfuckers.
Math Guy
I was in high school when I read about Vonnegut’s novel “Slaughterhouse Five” being burned in North Dakota. I promptly went out and bought the book and read it and from there went on to read nearly everything he published.
Education often makes you uncomfortable: I should know, I teach mathematics at a university.
Raven
@burnspbesq: “In Dubious Battle “ would really rock em!
Chetan Murthy
@Raven: It’s been decades since I read Steinbeck and, yeah, both those books are pretty “communist”, ain’t they? But then, some of his other books (East of Eden ?) are pretty capitalist, from what I remember. At the time, I was surprised that he turned so fiercely away from his early beliefs. Ah, well.
WereBear
They don’t learn and they don’t want to.
Anne Laurie
That was not a typo. Perhaps I should’ve used ‘bleat’ instead, because ‘a bleating sound‘ is exactly what I meant!
Chetan Murthy
@Anne Laurie: Ah, I read “blat” and saw a big of clay dropped from a great height onto the pavement. But no particular sound. Now I hear the sound!
Elizabelle
@Anne Laurie:
Change it to bleat then? It makes no sense as written.
Anne Laurie
Did you read the dictionary definition of blat?
evodevo
@Chetan Murthy: from my misspent youth reading comic books, I seem to remember “Blat” was used to convey a raucous horn blowing sound….
Elizabelle
@Anne Laurie: I just did. It is to make a bleating sound. Enough.
There is so many internet slang. Figured this was just some word that would make sense in context. What is wrong with using a word that instantly gets the point across?
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle:
To be fair to AL, once one is …. (uh) adequately well-read, it makes perfect sense. Also, TIL the meaning of blat!
Redshift
The law doesn’t say anything about it making parents feel that way, so it almost certainly doesn’t apply in this case. (I suppose I shouldn’t give them ideas; I’m sure the TN legislature would be more than happy to make it illegal to teach students anything that makes their parents uncomfortable.)
billcinsd
What would happen if a young student of color used 51-6 in Tennessee to come down on white history
Scout211
Open thread-ish? For those of us from the House of Moderna: The FDA is “leaning” toward approving a booster of the Moderna vaccine at half dose. Source
CarolPW
@Chetan Murthy: It must be an age thing – I’m a bit older than Anne and blat is a very familiar word, but I have not seen it used in a long time. A complaint about it is a bit like like complaining about someone using furbelow.
Chetan Murthy
@CarolPW:
Ooh, another word! Thank you!
burnspbesq
Given the history of White people in America (and not just the former Confederacy), I would respectfully submit that any school system that doesn’t make White children “feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish” isn’t doing its job.
justawriter
My poor home state. It did used to have some civilized sections. But most of the civilized folks left for warmer weather, better food, higher pay, or to get away from their increasingly redneck neighbors. After Republican Al Olson and his successor, Democrat George “Bud” Sinner took board of directors positions with Minneapolis based companies, the joke was “Even North Dakota Governors have to go to Minnesota to find a decent job.”
Spanky
Not to be confused with Blatz, although there may be more similarities than one might first think.
Roger Moore
@billcinsd:
Whoever it is who decides this stuff would rule they were just faking it to cause trouble. Everyone knows the whole point of the legislation is to let white people shut down history that talks about non-whites.
sab
@CarolPW: It’s a Scrabble word, so in my book it is a word.
Spanky
Perhaps Tennessee will tackle math next, and round that pesky pi down to 3.0.
MagdaInBlack
When I first encountered this sort of information ( in college because it certainly wasn’t taught in my HS) I did feel pretty uncomfortable and yes, guilty. But I’ve come around to realize I am not responsible for what was done in the past. My responsibility is to educate myself so I can do my part to make sure it does not continue.
How can we fix something if we don’t understand what happened to get us here?
( I do realize that these folks who are throwing childish fits over this don’t think there’s anything that needs to be fixed)
Eta: I knew exactly what you meant by “Blat.”
HinTN
@Redshift: Coming next year.
CarolPW
@MagdaInBlack: I watched that stuff on TV in real time: police dogs, fire hoses, lunch counter condiments poured over people. I will never forget it. And reading about bombed dead little girls my age. I think because so many people alive now have not seen that stuff it’s like something mythical or exaggerated. Like it is harder for those who did not live in that time to believe, in a very visceral way, in the holocaust.
Any time this racist shit shows up, a media defending diversity and democracy would re-air all Jim Crow and holocaust footage, over and over again.
MagdaInBlack
@CarolPW: I was born in 1958, so I saw it too, and my parents explained what was going on and why. But it wasn’t until college that I took the history and sociology classes that laid out just how ugly some of our history is.
I was a “non-traditional” student, meaning I was taking these classes at the age of 36. Having lived through the Civil Rights era, it meant a whole lot more to me than it did to the more traditional students.
Starboard Tack
@Spanky: “When you’ve got Blatz, you’ve got beer.”
JaneE
“Section 51, part 6 of the Tennessee law makes lesson plans illegal if students “feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish.”
Are there any Black or other minority children in Tennessee schools? I suggest that they could find more than a few things in their textbooks to cause them discomfort. I find it despicable that so many traditional American feel-good falsehoods are still taught without disclaimers.
There are lots of problems with teaching history. You have to pick and choose what you consider important, and after just a couple of hundred years a good many important things are skimmed over or skipped entirely, because. We don’t depict the Europeans who colonized this country as invading hordes of immigrants, but they were not really all that different to the refugees and immigrants coming to our borders today. Bias counts.
Kent
Hell, Calculus made my daughter feel discomfort and anguish. Can she get the AP Calculus text banned?
Kent
Teacher here. What the smart ones feel generally isn’t discomfort. It is rage and disappointment about their elders. There is a difference.
Starboard Tack
Real education requires discomfort, self-doubt and sense of unease. Otherwise, it’s just training.
MoCaAce
@Starboard Tack:
As they say, it’s a feature, not a bug.
fancycwabs
Wait until they read my new children’s book, Moms For Liberty Have to Wash Their Robes and Hoods.
TheTruffle
@Starboard Tack: Maybe this is why the righties are talking about people learning trades instead that librul arts edumacayshun.