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Board of education replaces course at 12 public universities with own US history curriculum, in latest ‘anti-woke’ attack
Educators are warning that college enrollment in Florida will plummet after the state removed sociology as a core class from campuses in the latest round of Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke ideology”.
The Republican governor’s hand-picked board of education voted on Wednesday to replace the established course on the principles of sociology at its 12 public universities with its own US history curriculum, incorporating an “historically accurate account of America’s founding [and] the horrors of slavery”.
The board faced a backlash last summer for requiring public schools to teach that forced labor was beneficial to enslaved Black people because it taught them useful skills.
The removal as a required core course of sociology classes, which Florida education commissioner and staunch DeSantis acolyte Manny Díaz insisted without evidence had “been hijacked by leftwing activists”, follows several other recent “anti-woke” moves in education in Florida.
I teach in an electrical apprenticeship and I don’t find that, students are eager to know more. What I do find is that my students are undereducated in logic and critical thinking skills. I get a lot of “can you just make me a checklist I can follow.”
I’m teaching computer networking and this hits the nail on the head. My students are plenty willing to learn answers to multiple choice questions. However, it is like pulling teeth trying to give them anything even slightly open ended. Sorry, at your real job the boss isn’t going to come up to you in a panic and say “the network went down, which of these 4 answers is the reason?”
Troubleshooting, researching, and having curiosity are all important in this field. I’m having difficulty getting them to see that, or care.
Me and my millenial siblings went to good schools, college, etc, but nothing at school seemed to encourage these things. In school it felt like a lot of tricks on how to be successful on multiple choice and short essay tests.
We were all typically ahead of our peers I think because at home we were taught art and handywork, how to research and solve problems on our own, how to think critically and be curious from a young age.
Among my cohort it seemed like the arts and creativity were seen as totally separate from technical work like programming. But some of the most successful people I’ve known in the computer science field have been very artistic as well. There are skills you learn outside of the typical ‘hard science’ curriculum that seem neglected.
What did you get a degree in? I studied philosophy, so I did a shitload of very long papers and open-ended assignments that required a lot of reading, researching, and critical thinking. I feel like a lot of STEM students completely miss out on this element of college.
Nah, they’re all already much better writers than the English majors because they read Dune and Foundation, and they understand history better than the history majors because they pulled up like a million wikipedia pages while Call of Duty was installing, and they’re more attuned to the needs of the government than the poli-sci majors because they listened to three TED talks. ;-)
Now, I’m mostly kidding. I know that most STEM majors write better than most English majors can do calculus; I’m just saying that I’ve known some engineers and doctors who confused that basic competence with mastery.
I have spent a lot of time in construction or logistics to construction sites. For several different disciplines. It’s not that they don’t have the drive to learn. I find they don’t respect my knowledge of logistics or how certain mechanisms work. It’s not isolated to my own experience as well. There are several people that sell college is pointless. Get a job and get your hands dirty. I think it’s a viable option. I also think college is valuable as well. It depends on the person and their goals.