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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I'm concerned about the fast cultural changes of society. From everything I read, there's been a lot of changes around how and what we teach our children in public schools in the US. I'm worried about the long term impacts on the next generation, primarily because the change was so sudden and abrupt [0]. None of these ideas and methods have stood the test of time and proven themselves effective in producing well adjusted functioning members of society.

I think we should have more reverence towards culture and tradition, especially relating to raising our children. I'm surprised how many people are so convicted of their newly found belief system that they're willing to experiment with their own children

[0] https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-...

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I’m a believer in technological determinism (from wiki), a “...theory that assumes that a society's technology determines the development of its social structure and cultural values.”

I also believe that the rate of technological change is accelerating (technology begets more technology).

When you take those two things together you’re left with a rapidly changing world that is just going to keep getting disrupted by new paradigm shifts at a faster and faster pace.

This is both why we need conservatism, traditionalism, and cultural limits on uncontrolled growth and change... and simultaneously why we need flexibility, agility, and openness to change.

This isn’t an either or situation, either stick our heads in the stand and try to stop time, or throw caution to the wind and run headfirst into the unknown.

Balance, we need balance.

It also depends on the domain.

Try out a brand new stack on a weekend project? Yes please.

Give my child a brand new drug that supposedly helps them concentrate on school their work? Hard pass.

This "newly found belief system" you mention is over 60 years old...

60 years is a minuscule amount of time when it comes to the history of education

Not really, the history of education is surprisingly short. So 60 years is ~1.5% of the total for formal education, and a much larger larger chunk of anything we have meaningful records for.

It may help clarify the conversation if you both specified precisely which belief system you have in mind. I suspect there are perhaps small, but crucial differences between them.

From the article I cited:

> Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”

I guess it's this oppressor/oppressed ideology that neatly buckets people into bins based on immutable characteristics. It ignores individualism and personal responsibility. I don't know what the outcome will be of telling kids that they are more or less living in a system corrupt to the core and they are more or less a victim of circumstances of birth. But I'd prefer not to run this experiment with my children.

Also, reintroduction of segregation:

> Recently, I raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. (Such racially segregated sessions are now commonplace at my school.)

Your definition of the belief system is not accurate and designed to hit on a number of wedge issues about collectivism vs individualism.

>I don't know what the outcome will be of telling kids that they are more or less living in a system corrupt to the core and they are more or less a victim of circumstances of birth.

There is an irony here as existing education lies to children and teaches them that the world is a fair and just place any anybody can succeed given enough effort.

It's only through being able to collate data on a global scale and efficiently share the experiences of people that we've been able to witness how untrue the existing individualist meritocracy myth is.

Indeed, I suspect that experimenting with new ways of teaching children, and believing that doing so is ruining children's minds, are both as old as humanity itself.

> fast cultural changes of society

Don't panic. Cultural upheaval will eventually subside once technological progress stagnates.

More seriously, society goes insane every time technological progress upsets the status quo. I doubt things will settle down anytime soon.

re Bari Weiss

Every generation thinks they invented sex. Youth rebel, elders scold. It's the (pundit) cycle of life.

My mom was a teacher, mostly learning disabled kids. Her passion. Champion of her kids. Think Tiger Mom as teacher.

Toured our state helping other LD teachers. She fought the district, the state, the union, the building administration, the curriculum, etc. Really pissed off a lot of people. Her students and their parents loved her.

Teachers pay a high price. Blood, sweat, and tears.

It's now Weiss' turn at the wood shed.

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