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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

> Why does Professor Sachs make this assertion? On November 12, the governor signed a bill that makes it unlawful to include “instruction relating to critical race theory in any portion of the district's required curriculum ... or any other curriculum offered by the district or school.”

Now do the steel man (emphasis mine)

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Let's make an analogy. I suspect there are some teachers who may teach evolution as "just a theory" and add creationism to what they teach. I don't mind if children learn about creationism, but during their required hours at state sponsored schools, I don't want the time to be wasted teaching creationism. So I would like to restrict creationism from the curriculum.

Or how about this analogy, Zambia is a real county with real history. However, I care about what American kids learn. While they can spend a week learning about Zambia (and Tajikistan, Gabon, Kiribati, and all 200 world countries [taking 4 years]), I would prefer that they spend that time doing something else more important just as US history. So I would like to restrict the amount of world history from the curriculum.

You fall into the trap here of having someone decide for others what is and is not valuable to learn.

Once you take this step you legitimise the idea that there is an authority with the power to censor - ostensibly for good reasons - and sooner or later that power will bend somewhere else.

It's important that children learn about everything, especially about opposing ideas because only then can they form their own opinions and develop critical thinking, and most importantly the ability to reevaluate an idea based on changing data.

To paraphrase your analogy I prefer my children to only learn about the US healthcare system, and not waste time learning about how other countries do it for better outcomes with less money.

And this is the problem with your post - who decides what is OK, and what is a waste of time?

Ps - I am upvoting you not because you are right, but because you add a valuable perspective to the conversation, and I support your willingness to bring it.

He's talking about this at a school. The fundamental premise of a school is that someone is going to decide what is and is not valuable to learn. And that there is an authority (embodied in the teacher) who has the power to decide what will and will not be discussed in class.

Assuming you mean what you wrote, you may be arguing for abolishing the public school system. In principle that seems like an interesting idea, but the rest of your post isn't quite congruent with that so it seems possible you've missed that this part of the thread is about school curriculum.

So yes, clearly there is a carriculim, and someone has to set that, and there will be a flavor to that carriculim based on the social environment.

I don't have a problem with that, and I don't have a problem with teachers bringing their own personality to the classroom. I am not vegan, but if my kid has a vegan teacher that would be valuable in exposing them to that world-view.

I do object to political interference in education. When the govt decided what material is OK, and what is not, then you remove the variety of thought which exists in the world. And ultimately that leads to a lack of personal critical thinking which leads young (and older) adults to belive anything.

You may struggle to reconcile this with the idea of public schooling and keep your position coherent. Particularly compulsory public schooling.

It is hard for the government to control the school system and also for the government not to exercise any control over the school system. I think you might be advocating voluntary, private-only schooling here - although I also think you might disagree with that opinion.

I wouldn't say I'm advocating for private school,or even lack of govt in school matters.

I guess my primary point surrounds censorship, especially when it comes to dictating what teachers can say or teach (in addition to, in the context of, not necessarily in place of the cariculum)

Isn't this still the same distinction? That's still just saying that nobody can force students to learn about critical race theory, not that they can't go read about it on their own if they want.

No, it says that critical race theory cannot be offered. That's specific and distinct from required.

Ah, I see: that affects whether it's allowed to be taught in an elective class or not. Yes, to fully oppose censorship, we should allow critical race theory to be taught in optional elective social studies classes. But then we should also allow optional elective science classes to teach that evolution is wrong, because to do otherwise would be censoring the young-Earth creationists.

If you can find a way to teach that without violating the Establishment Clause, sure. The only way forward I can see here would look like a comparative history of religions course, which would teach various creation stories from a neutral viewpoint. And that doesn't seem to be what those campaigning for anti-evolution education have been looking for. Curious if you've got any fresh ideas, though.

Maybe that was a bad example. What if instead of something religious, there was a class teaching some kooky conspiracy theory as fact, like a physics elective saying that perpetual motion is possible, but that the patents to make it work well enough to overcome friction have all been bought up by Big Oil and suppressed?

It would need the support of textbook companies to print it, school boards to buy into it, teachers to deliver it, and students interested in taking it. There's a whole marketplace of ideas out there, and the course you're proposing simply wouldn't survive it.

Teaching intelligent design needn't violate the Establishment Clause. Nobody says schools can't mention religions and what they believe, just that they cannot require students to adopt one.

Using taxpayer money to promote religion has been held to be equivalent to an "establishment" of religion. This means that any schools funded by the tax man have to be strictly secular, even in their "elective" activities.

The language I used allows that possibility. But, in the specific legal challenges I'm aware of in this area, that's been the constitutional obstacle to teaching creation as fact.

It also depends on what is offered in its place.

We don't debate this enough, because it's invisible to most people.

Free speech in the broadest is exactly about curation, implied approval (proof by authority doesn't work philosophically, but absolutely does work rhetorically and politically), and access to airtime and audiences.

All of those can be bought with money.

To make an obvious point - if you can use money to impose your choices wrt curation etc, speech is no longer free.

This is a completely different meaning to "Talk about this and the government will imprison and/or murder you."

The latter hardly happens to anyone now. The former is absolutely foundational to the media.

There is no "marketplace of ideas" because those with money and political power can always enforce their narratives on those without - and they can do it cleanly, deniably, and effectively without needing to murder or jail dissenters.

They can even do it from behind various front organisations and curated movements, pretending to be scrappy freedom fighters railing against an oppressive mainstream.

Speech isn't free in any genuine sense while that remains true.

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