[ExI] India and the periodic table

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 09/06/2023 16:43, spike wrote:
> Teachers, don't get
> tangled up in culture wars.  Teach students what students come there to
> learn.  Don't try to make little political activists out of them.  You get
> fired doing that.  Simple.

It's not so simple, though. It's not trying to turn students into 
political activists that causes the trouble, it's the reactions to 
teachers doing their job, which includes exposing the students to a 
variety of viewpoints and trying to teach them to think, that causes the 
problem.

Now teachers are having to avoid teaching, in some areas, because if 
there's just one 'woke' black student, and your literature class 
involves something like Catcher in the Rye, you're in trouble. You can't 
avoid the culture wars, except by resigning. Even the sciences aren't 
exempt from this. Teach biology and you have to either mention evolution 
or avoid it, you have to either explain that a fertilised egg is not a 
person or not, you have to talk about X and Y chromosomes or avoid the 
whole subject of biological sex. Either choice is picking a side in the 
culture wars. You can't be impartial. You either teach, and fall foul of 
'woke' ideology with all the consequences, or you fail to teach and 
leave the kids in ignorance.

I don't really see how business is going to be any better, either. You 
either avoid showing minorities in your advertising and branding or you 
don't. You're damned either way.

Ben