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Comment by fallingfrog | Hacker News Reader

The kinds of censorship that really bothers me is when people like Ron deSantis use the power of the state to force people like university professors to say specific things and muzzle them from saying other things. That's actual government censorship.

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Education standards are normal.

Simple question do we agree we don't need a middle school teacher explaining in graphic detail how to have sex? Or maybe "alternative" theory like flat earth?

If not I don't know how we reach a common ground if we agree though maybe just maybe we can agree that teacher shouldn't be teaching certain things at certain ages and not call that "censorship". You might disagree what ages or things but still.

A teacher isn't there to instill their values or beliefs into a child but to teach the curriculum.

Abstinence only education is known to not work, so unless your want to end up with a bunch of pregnant teenagers who think porn accurately depicts sex, having school teachers explain how sex works seems like the only reasonable conclusion. The only question then is at what age. Middle school starts off at 10-years old seems a bit young to me for graphic descriptions of sex. It is certainly old enough to have already learnt about what inappropriate touching is and what relationships are, though. Age 14, which is at the end of middle school seems like a reasonable age though.

What age do you think is reasonable for schools to be teaching sex? Explicitly, how to use a condom, and the inaccuracies of porn.

> What age do you think is reasonable for schools to be teaching sex? Explicitly, how to use a condom, and the inaccuracies of porn.

I'm not going to play along with your attempt to deflect from your failure to answer. The specific age we choose doesn't really matter that much in the context of our discussion and you know that.

Those professors and teachers are employees of the government. Like it or not, that puts them under the same umbrella as police officers, fire fighters, and others. Government employees are very much restricted in what they can say and do when they are on the clock.

no it doesn't, technically sure but universities are suppose to be free from controlled speech like this. see why tenure and academic freedom exist

Academic freedom is not a legal concept, and unfortunately the law trumps the ideals in this case. However, academic freedom isn't exactly unlimited: a tenured physics professor who doesn't teach a class on physics, publish a paper on physics, or advise a student for 10 years will likely be fired at most institutions (unless they have a nobel prize or something). Professors working at state schools have additional limits on their academic freedom. This is why you don't tend to see theology departments at state schools.

Also, in practice, you could reasonably argue that there generally isn't much academic freedom in most fields, since most research is grant-funded, and that is controlled by (usually) governments.

Amazing how quickly people will pivot to "actually, it's ok to censor campus professors" as soon as the censored ideas are ones they don't like.

It's amazing how quickly people will pivot to "censorship of professors" when they are talking about laws that control the curriculum of elementary schools.

I don't dislike professors or teachers at state schools, but I understand that they work in an institution that effectively does not offer academic freedom. If you are a professor, you can work at any other institution in the country, other than the 50-100 or so that are run by states, and you will have all the academic freedom you want. If this country goes to a major war, a large number of those professors are likely going to be told to work on something war-related, because they are agents of the state.

If you are a teacher, who was actually targeted by the education control bills in FL, you arguably don't have enough training to have really have earned academic freedom. Until about 5 minutes ago, nobody argued that they did have academic freedom. Curricula are there for a reason.

> the 50-100 or so that are run by states

FWIW, I think you're off by an order of magnitude, more or less.

Can you give an example of compelled speech?

"Today, Florida honeymoon registry company Honeyfund.com, along with workplace diversity consultancy Collective Concepts and its co-founder Chevara Orrin filed a federal lawsuit to block enforcement of Florida’s HB 7, the Stop WOKE Act. The law purports to “fight back against woke indoctrination” by, among other things, barring employers from engaging in speech that “advances” certain “concepts” regarding race, sex, religion or national origin. The suit names Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials as defendants and challenges the statute as unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments for barring the expression of viewpoints disfavored by government officials and chilling a wide range of speech in workplaces. "

This is barring them from saying specific things, not compelling them to say other things, do you have an example of any compelled speech?

I should have been clearer: you said Ron DeSantis was using the power of the state to force university professors to say things. I was after a citation for that claim.

https://www.propublica.org/article/desantis-critical-race-th...

where in the 5000 word article does it talk about compelled speech, I skimmed it and searched and I don't see anything.

"In this case, the Court ruled that a state cannot force children to stand, salute the flag, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The justices held that school children who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, for religious reasons, had a First Amendment right not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the U.S. flag."

This and other examples here:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-s...

This was one in Canada recently.

"If someone refused to use a preferred pronoun — and it was determined to constitute discrimination or harassment — could that potentially result in jail time?

It is possible."

https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/canadas-gender-identi...

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