Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

Re:Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health by rayiner on Sunday February 06, 2022 @11:10PM (#30240310)

Public education is a service provided by the government. What material the government chooses to teach or not teach using parents’ is entirely up to the government and the parents. Free speech is irrelevant to curricular choices because teachers aren’t there to engage students in a marketplace of ideas. They’re being paid to provide a service. Organizations that provide content make such curation choices about what sorts of content to offer all the time.

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Re:Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health by bp0017 on Monday February 07, 2022 @01:11AM (#30241027)

This is stated like it is an absolute fact, not a reflection of our hyper-capitalist society. I would argue that reducing education to a content curator is harmful to what it aims to be, although the analogy is not entirely inaccurate, unfortunately. Is education an infotainment service or a search for the truth? The latter requires a free exchange of ideas and informed debate, although this is rarely encouraged in our current school system.

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Re:Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health by adrianN on Monday February 07, 2022 @01:30AM (#30241112)

I don't think students are the right audience for "informed debate", since they go to school to become informed. Sure, you can (and should!) simulate informed debate in class, to train students in the method, but the value that teachers add is that they curate the topics and can provide arguments and answers.

Eventually education turns into an actual search for truth, but that only happens in university where actual research happens. Until then it's all a more or less guided preparation for independent research.

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Re:Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health by rayiner on Monday February 07, 2022 @06:57AM (#30243583)

K-12 education is not a “search for truth” or about “free exchange of ideas and informed debate.” These aren’t college kids. These schools are to socialize kids into the morals and values of their society and to teach them the basic foundational knowledge their society believes to be true. That has nothing to do with “capitalism” and indeed is what pre-capitalist societies long understood education of children to entail.

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Re:Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health by ericmay on Monday February 07, 2022 @09:00AM (#30244933)

I’m not following your “reflection of our hyper-capitalist society” comment here. Can you explain what you mean?

From my current point of view, curriculums are largely set by the state which has an interest in promoting itself with very little capitalist or free-market elements involved.

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