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A comment on Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021. Parent comment

Re:Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay ... by A4ET8a8uTh0 on Sunday June 20, 2021 @12:00PM (#27571328)
Is it? I kind of understand the argument behind not calling someone 'last', but the language like this exists for a reason. What are you supposed to call segment of a population that is 'not top tier'? The last winner? It gets silly fast. We better get over the emotional component of words fast if we are to get to an actual solution.

For the record, I did not even try to dehumanize. I just applied the language of technology adoption to adoption of knowledge. It seemed applicable.

https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-custo...

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Re:Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay ... by ganzuul on Sunday June 20, 2021 @03:55PM (#27573353)
Oh, okay. Yeah I have made that mistake myself too I guess.

I agree that words have meaning, but IMO we want to focus the narrative on people who may have been unfortunate through no fault of their own. We want to treat them with compassion and take the time to find the right words for them. Words that they might describe themselves with. ...But they might say "I'm dumb" and think nothing of it.

The goal is to remove friction from the path to policy change, because we desire an outcome of improved efficiency. We may have to be creative with language to do it.

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