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Can Dr. Ibram X. Kendi hit a major league curve ball?

I have a lot of issues with the societal trends that are occurring in our country. And I don't disagree with many of your comments. I'm a white guy with two white little kids that will have to grow up in our future.... and I don't want them feeling like lepers that need to spend their life apologizing for something they have no control over.

They just want to be good kids and then hopefully good adults that treat others with respect.
That’s because of your privilege of course.
 
During the years I commented frequently on policy issues of the Trump admin that I agreed with and didn't. But the discussion on this board was rarely about policy.

His most postive legacy was reducing the corp tax rate which had become antiquated and out of line with the rest of the world's tax structure..... forcing multinationals to keep hoards of overseas earnings parked overseas..... and a flurry of corporate inversions. Inversions are more or less now dead, as we've moved to a territorial tax structure, rather than a global one. I didn't like the structure of the entire package as it was heavily sweetened with individual tax cuts that were entirely debt financed, in an economy that didn't require fiscal stimulus.

I also give him credit for moving the national eyeballs to the China problem, which will be the major geopolitical issue for decades to come. His proposed solutions were amateur hour, but at least I can give him credit for awaking the national consciousness.

His personality and character were a serious cancer that destroyed the Republican party and death axed political discourse in this country. Something that was already failing..... but never to the extreme he pushed it to. For that, he'll forever be known as the worst President since Andrew Johnson. And he may actually be worse than Johnson.
My apologies.... I didn't read a lot on here for a while because every thread was about Trump.
 
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What’re we drinking tonight? I had a Heady Topper and a Focal Banger from the Alchemist in VT.

Were you actually up at the brewpub or just snag a can of it? Heady was a revolutionary beer in the brewing world. There are clones of it everywhere now, but created an entire new category at the time.
 
Were you actually up at the brewpub or just snag a can of it? Heady was a revolutionary beer in the brewing world. There are clones of it everywhere now, but created an entire new category at the time.
My brother in law was passing by and grabbed me two 4-packs. It actually is delicious but really screws me up way more than other beers of the same ABV and gravity. Bad hangovers compared to comparables.
 
I have a lot of issues with the societal trends that are occurring in our country. And I don't disagree with many of your comments. I'm a white guy with two white little kids that will have to grow up in our future.... and I don't want them feeling like lepers that need to spend their life apologizing for something they have no control over.

They just want to be good kids and then hopefully good adults that treat others with respect.
I actually agree with your point about everything being race focused, that conversation is driven by the left. I want for my children what you do as well. Unfortunately we will not have the luxury of sitting by and hoping all this nonsense goes away. They snuck this shit into the reddest county in one of the reddest states in Indiana. If you want those things for your child you are eventually going to have to stand up to all this crap and say "enough".

It sucks. It is not pleasant (no one likes being called a racist) but if you don't want your kids being force fed this and then inheriting a world where stuff like this is considered a-okay because of something that their great-great grandparents may or may not have taken part in, then you will have to pick a side. My side is that all of this CRT, SEL, DEI stuff is divisive as hell, is racist at its core, and is destructive to everyone involved. We need to stop putting people into color coded boxes and treat individuals as just that, individuals.

Sometimes you do not get to pick the battlefield and sometimes the fight is forced on you. We are there man. You have 2 choices at this point, let the whackadoodles teach hateful shit against your kids or fight them.
 
I actually agree with your point about everything being race focused, that conversation is driven by the left. I want for my children what you do as well. Unfortunately we will not have the luxury of sitting by and hoping all this nonsense goes away. They snuck this shit into the reddest county in one of the reddest states in Indiana. If you want those things for your child you are eventually going to have to stand up to all this crap and say "enough".

It sucks. It is not pleasant (no one likes being called a racist) but if you don't want your kids being force fed this and then inheriting a world where stuff like this is considered a-okay because of something that their great-great grandparents may or may not have taken part in, then you will have to pick a side. My side is that all of this CRT, SEL, DEI stuff is divisive as hell, is racist at its core, and is destructive to everyone involved. We need to stop putting people into color coded boxes and treat individuals as just that, individuals.

Sometimes you do not get to pick the battlefield and sometimes the fight is forced on you. We are there man. You have 2 choices at this point, let the whackadoodles teach hateful shit against your kids or fight them.
Just a note: SEL--social and emotional learning--does not have to be racially charged or controversial. At its best, it is simply teaching kids the lessons that Mr. Rogers taught for 30+ years. I'm all for that.
 
Just a note: SEL--social and emotional learning--does not have to be racially charged or controversial. At its best, it is simply teaching kids the lessons that Mr. Rogers taught for 30+ years. I'm all for that.
Theoretically I agree. From my looking into this on my own based on my children's experience, SEL is the camel's nose under the tent so that the DEI and CRT (they don't call it that but it is the same stuff being pushed) follow in behind that.

If SEL was truly like the Golden Rule, I would be good with it. But it isn't and therefore I am not.
 
They snuck this shit into the reddest county in one of the reddest states in Indiana.

If we're talking Hamilton Co, Carmel went for Biden. I mean, it's not "insert Southern Indiana county not containing Bloomington, Terre Haute or Jeffersonville".

Hamilton Co grows (somewhat) bluer every election cycle. Kind of mirrors the demographic shifts we've seen lately with more and more college educated whites (especially women) moving to the Dems.
 
If we're talking Hamilton Co, Carmel went for Biden. I mean, it's not "insert Southern Indiana county not containing Bloomington, Terre Haute or Jeffersonville".

Hamilton Co grows (somewhat) bluer every election cycle. Kind of mirrors the demographic shifts we've seen lately with more and more college educated whites (especially women) moving to the Dems.
Yeah, Hamilton but not Carmel. Carmel is fighting it, my school district (HSE) introduced this crap about 4 to 5 years ago under SEL and it has been a shit show since then.
 
Just a note: SEL--social and emotional learning--does not have to be racially charged or controversial. At its best, it is simply teaching kids the lessons that Mr. Rogers taught for 30+ years. I'm all for that.
if a kid doesn’t observe, experience, give and receive love and respect from a family, do you really think the kid can learn that from watching Mr Rogers? I think strong families are vital. A SEL curriculum can never take its place. Gangs have a better chance of filling that void for many youngsters.

A related note. The Biden administration is set to re-establish race based leniency for bad behavior in school. Do you think that would be good SEL?
 
if a kid doesn’t observe, experience, give and receive love and respect from a family, do you really think the kid can learn that from watching Mr Rogers? I think strong families are vital. A SEL curriculum can never take its place. Gangs have a better chance of filling that void for many youngsters.

A related note. The Biden administration is set to re-establish race based leniency for bad behavior in school. Do you think that would be good SEL?
Strong families are vital. School will never take the place of that in any area.

But that doesn't mean you can't teach skills in school that either reinforce skills learned at home or that introduce those skills to children not fortunate enough to learn them at home. SEL (and Mr. Rogers) teaches things like: noticing your emotions; not judging those emotions; figuring out ways to regulate them. I know a lot of adults who can't do these things. When taught correctly, SEL can introduce skills useful for resiliency in all areas of life, which can then help people overcome some of life's obstacles.

How effective the teaching of them is in actually instilling these skills, though, is an open question. Some results from the Growth Mindset camp is not very promising. I'd like to see us focus more on honing the teaching methods to improve effectiveness.

Instead, it seems we just want to pretend that we are going to eliminate all of life's obstacles--from disappointment at a bad grade, to not passing a grade, to not being disciplined for bad behavior, etc.--and eliminate the very difficulties that we need to grow.

Can watching Mr. Rogers teach you self love and respect? Not like a family can. But if you go to Youtube and search for clips of Mr. Rogers and read the comments after, you can find a lot of personal and heartfelt posts from people thanking the man for giving them a sense of being loved during their childhoods that were full of abuse or misery. If you do this, make sure you have a box of Kleenex nearby.
 
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Strong families are vital. School will never take the place of that in any area.

But that doesn't mean you can't teach skills in school that either reinforce skills learned at home or that introduce those skills to children not fortunate enough to learn them at home. SEL (and Mr. Rogers) teaches things like: noticing your emotions; not judging those emotions; figuring out ways to regulate them. I know a lot of adults who can't do these things. When taught correctly, SEL can introduce skills useful for resiliency in all areas of life, which can then help people overcome some of life's obstacles.

How effective the teaching of them is in actually instilling these skills, though, is an open question. Some results from the Growth Mindset camp is not very promising. I'd like to see us focus more on honing the teaching methods to improve effectiveness.

Instead, it seems we just want to pretend that we are going to eliminate all of life's obstacles--from disappointment at a bad grade, to not passing a grade, to not being disciplined for bad behavior, etc.--and eliminate the very difficulties that we need to grow.

Can watching Mr. Rogers teach you self love and respect? Not like a family can. But if you go to Youtube and search for clips of Mr. Rogers and read the comments after, you can find a lot of personal and heartfelt posts from people thanking the man for giving them a sense of being loved during their childhoods that were full of abuse or misery. If you do this, make sure you have a box of Kleenex nearby.
A lot to digest here. And my thoughts are pretty incomplete.

At a fundamental level, I don’t think one can ever “learn” skills for confidence, resiliency or respect through lesson plans or other kinds of classroom exercises. These skills are a byproduct of all other life experiences. In the thread about war movies, marv questioned the “bias“ of combat. Yet it’s the lived experiences of combat that makes those movies so interesting at least to me. The list is long. and the stories of ordinary people doing extra ordinary things is my point. It doesn’t take combat for people to learn about themselves from different experiences.

When I coached mock trial, just teaching the youngsters courtroom behavior, how to make objections, or how to examine different kinds of witnesses brought along more respect and self confidence as byproducts.
 
Can watching Mr. Rogers teach you self love and respect? Not like a family can. But if you go to Youtube and search for clips of Mr. Rogers and read the comments after, you can find a lot of personal and heartfelt posts from people thanking the man for giving them a sense of being loved during their childhoods that were full of abuse or misery. If you do this, make sure you have a box of Kleenex nearby.

A TV show is obviously not a parental substitute, but one of the lasting legacies of Mr. Rogers (and of Daniel Tiger, the cartoon spinoff that is still on today) is in providing really good role models for adult behavior. My wife is a special needs teacher, and works with parents who desperately want to do the right thing for their children and be the role model they didn't have. As silly as it may sound, an episode of one of those shows that models a better way to help your child deal with emotions can make a real impact on how a parent thinks about interacting with and supporting their child. Too often we fall into the false dichotomy of "good" and "bad" parents, there's an enormous group that want to be good parents and grew up without seeing what that looks like.
 
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