Lol, Cathy should take a step back from this debate. She was thoroughly taken to school after claiming that slaves weren’t sought for specific skills. In the span of two tweets, she went from calling the claim to ridiculous to saying “yes, slaves were in fact sought for skills.” Only with slavery can we be paternalistic and claim that slaves learned skills that helped them post slavery. It’s adjacent to neo-Confederate apologia that slaves were better off being slaves than being free in Africa as though there weren’t entire societies that existed on the continent before the Europeans arrived. Hell more than half the examples the “experts” from Florida gave after the backlash started were never slaves! Slavery existed for 250 years before emancipation, the idea that a few slaves learned skills that they capitalized on after the Civil War is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to assuage the guilt we feel today about the practice. Not only this, they are making that particular point a BENCHMARK. As in, it has to be taught. How absurd.
The issue imo isn't that slaves learned skills that they were able to use post-slavery. It's that this point is minor and frankly trite relative to the generations of people who were enslaved, the following generations who lived under Jim Crow, and the modern generations whose average opportunity is less than Americans descended from people who were not slaves.
Consequently, while I understand this as a fact, it seems virtually irrelevant and I'm not sure I understand why you think it's important enough to be actively taught rather than simply acknowledged if it comes up.
This is exactly how I feel. Why are we treating this like a benchmark standard that has to be taught? Unless of course, this is a tiny way in which you can throw out some neo-confederate apologia.
Just read a book: The Dressmakers of Auschwitz. Being torn from their everyday life to dress the wives of the monsters who destroyed their lives/ families, didn’t make them appreciate their own skills. They just wanted to SURVIVE the hell they had been dropped into. Giving credit for skills used or earned in these monstrous situations is obscene. It misses the point that humanity has left their world.
One needs to clarify what is intended by "post slavery" here and whether this means only the period after "Emancipation." I did not read it as such in Young's essay, nor in the benchmark clarification under SS.68.AA.2.3. You are right, there were 250 years of interesting stories prior to emancipation, and many more after it. One diminishes resilience and imagination and craft when relegating the formerly enslaved to the place of cattle.
Cathy should stick to her area of expertise - Russia and Ukraine. Like many smart and successful people, she assumes that because she knows a lot about one topic she can confidently espouse opinions about which knows absolutely nothing.
You can take the "Libertarian" out of Reason Magazine, but you cannot take the Reason Magazine out of the Libertarian.
I recall something an Econ professor from college once said about Libertarians, "most Libertarians he had ever met were people who viewed themselves as edgy, but were basically just assholes".
Pretty much describes every Libertarian I have ever met, and I work with a lot of them.
What, non-slaves didn't learn valuable skills? You had to be a slave in order to learn to be a seamstress or a blacksmith? I had no idea. I wonder how white people managed to learn anything without being enslaved.
See, proof of how well slaves had it. Planters' sons were denied opportunities that they just gave to slaves! I guess I know where cancel culture got its start! (Yes, sarcasm)
That Cathy Young article was... Not good. There are times when one side is definitely in the wrong. No matter how loud and hysterical Dems are condemning the new Florida Standards they are still correct and anyone defending them is wrong. There are not two sides to the issue no matter how much you cherry pick facts.
If a position is advocated by "hysterical" people and reasonable people, you can consider the arguments of the reasonable folks, and disregard the hystericals. In fact, if you've tagged someone as hysterical, why would you listen to them at all? Unless you're the kind of person who gets so hysterical when you hear a bad argument, you become pathologically unable to listen to reason. Or, perhaps, you're afraid that the reasonable argument might be right, but wish to undermine it with extraneous opprobrium.
I don't understand the argument. What does people being hysterical have to do with whether they are right or wrong? A sociopath can be very calm but that doesn't mean they are right. Also hysteria to one person is just passion to another.
Because once you claim that someone is hysterical, you can discount their argument or point of view. It's why we stopped talking about police reform in 2020 and instead decided on what form of protest was legitimate.
...claim that “enslaved people benefited from slavery” because some of them learned useful work skills. But while the Florida curriculum doesn’t say that... What? There is nothing unclear about this:
“SS.68.AA.2.3 Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
I suggest you read Ms Young's article. It goes into some detail about the kerfuffle. As is often the case, when one goes past the sound bites, there's a lot more detail and nuance to be found.
One conservative writer I really admire is David French. Here's a paragraph from his newsletter today. This is what I think Cathy glosses over when she says that the curriculum doesn't mean what it says (and yes, I read her article).
"Over the course of our 12 years in Columbia (my note--Columbia, TN, where the Jason Aldean video was filmed), my family slowly but surely progressed from insiders to outsiders, beginning with the adoption of our youngest daughter, a beautiful girl from Ethiopia. My other two children, who are blond with blue eyes, were never followed by store employees; my youngest daughter was. My older kids were never told by their schoolmates that parents didn’t allow them to play with “kids like you,” or that it wasn’t “safe” to come to their house. Or that their “muddy” faces weren’t welcome on a hayride at a local farm. My youngest daughter has had all those experiences. She has also been told that slavery was necessary to “help” Black people to be ready for life in America."
I really like French's writing, as well. His "lived experiences" about his family are pretty much gold.
That said, I'm not sure how you're connecting the dots here. How does French's daughter's awful (and, far too common) experiences suggest Ms Young is glossing over the curriculum? Or, more specifically, wrong about the interpretation of the section in question?
For that she goes to the authors on the working group. See here, for example:
Further, she makes (IMHO) an important observation: "Incorporating such a framework into lessons for kids can be dicey: one has to walk a fine line between presenting slaves as just victims and implying that slavery wasn’t so bad."
And, also points out: "Arguably, the passage in the Florida curriculum was clumsily worded." Personally, I think she soft-pedalled that a bit much. I'd say it *is* poorly worded.
There were undoubtedly sentences in mein kampf full of detail and nuance. So what? The purpose of these standards is very clear and it's not the pursuit of truth and wisdom.
I think you've identified a key point. Unfortunately, it's seems standard practice in political writing to dig up some hysterical nobody as representative of a position and then set about mocking the hysteria.
The article reminds me of a bit of doggerel I had to memorize when I was a kid to practice elocution:
"If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you
two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
you or your mother?"
The kid is good at arithmetic, but his mom is good at knowing what counts and what doesn't. If the people angry take it one way, and the people making the statement agree with their premise, then maybe the "plain reading" of the statement doesn't actually tell you what you need to know about it.
Yep. It’s a nonsense question. Arithmetic doesn’t enter into the scenario at all. Love does. Parenthood, values. Mom obviously knows what’s good for you.
Now that the DeSantis administration has approved the PragerU curriculum for history in the state, I think we can permanently set aside Cathy's argument that maybe the "benefits of slavery" argument wasn't what it seemed.
Even before that information came out, the argument is presented stripped from the political and geographic context. Changes to teaching about slavery in Florida are part of a clear and deliberate pattern in the state. This is reflexive and dangerous conservatism on Cathy’s part.
Begging the question in all these discussions is the fact that the Black History segment of the standards lacks context. The subject of "skills" brings this to light. Why did the 54th Massachusetts fight? Why was there an Underground Railroad? What State Right brought on the Civil War?
I read the the standards. These are each, with many others, walked around in them. Coupled with other Florida laws, there is a gag order on teachers from speaking the truth.
Many of them already have :( It’s a shame - just like many ob/gyns deciding not to do residencies in states with strict abortion laws. I suspect many more good teachers and doctors might end up leaving if things get worse if they have the ability to leave (which many sadly don’t). But the people who will likely be most hurt are the kids left with subpar teachers and the women left with subpar doctors who have their hands tied wrt the education or healthcare they are legally allowed to provide.
100% Correct TCinLA. But besides the racial aspects, it was always “states rights” in regards to slavery. No other issue was so dominating. The only way to make slavery pay was to constantly acquire more land, which meant acquiring more slaves, which meant more land, which meant more slaves, and so on. It was a never ending cycle. If a great planter (who had 50+ slaves) was not acquiring more western land (which also meant more slaves) that planter would eventually go bankrupt due to rising costs of upkeep for slaves. Slaves still had to be housed, clothed, and feed to the point that they could still produce labor. And the only way to do it was to acquire more land…and that land was to the west. Thus, when Lincoln won the election of 1860 the planter class went bat shit crazy. Why would they care about Lincoln being elected? Lincoln was a committed Free Soiler. The free soil movement was against the extension of slavery into western lands. No slavery in western lands meant the planter class would eventually go bankrupt. The planter class pressures state governments, some slave states start to leave the union (South Carolina being the first in Dec. 1860), and poof…civil war a few months later. It was always about slavery…no other issue was as hot button.
The other issue is the degradation of the land from the favored Southern crops. Tobacco, sugar, cotton, those crops deplete the land, so the planters require fresh land.
Well, from your comments I’d say your priors are based in the failed experiment of US conservatism. This brand doesn’t exist in any other country in western europe. I live in two of them. But Americans,conservatives in particular, are pretty parochial folks!
Always interesting when any perceived pushback against some dogma elicits that response.
In the US, I'm considered center-left. (Yeah, I know, that generally counts as center-right in most of Europe, yada yada.) If you look at more of my comments (not just the ones here critical of the knee-jerk reaction from the left), you'll likely agree.
BTW, if you're suggesting that the Trumpist right is conservative, they ain't. Basically national-populists.
Well, I'm not keeping a tally, but certainly this particular article is a great example. There are many comments here that indicate the commenter either didn't read or didn't understand the article. (Or, perhaps more accurately, didn't *want* to understand the article.)
But even if we stipulate that Ms Young isn't the pinnacle of conservative writing, her pieces are often "good enough" to stimulate some useful thoughts, raise pertinent questions, etc. When I read KDW's stuff, for example, I usually find lots of problems (his priors being a big one), but I still find it very useful. Same with Ms Young.
LOL, thanks for the assumptions, Pete. Not only did I read her article and her bothsidesisms, but I also follow her on Twitter as she attempted to chastise critics of the curricula changes.
Lol, Cathy should take a step back from this debate. She was thoroughly taken to school after claiming that slaves weren’t sought for specific skills. In the span of two tweets, she went from calling the claim to ridiculous to saying “yes, slaves were in fact sought for skills.” Only with slavery can we be paternalistic and claim that slaves learned skills that helped them post slavery. It’s adjacent to neo-Confederate apologia that slaves were better off being slaves than being free in Africa as though there weren’t entire societies that existed on the continent before the Europeans arrived. Hell more than half the examples the “experts” from Florida gave after the backlash started were never slaves! Slavery existed for 250 years before emancipation, the idea that a few slaves learned skills that they capitalized on after the Civil War is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to assuage the guilt we feel today about the practice. Not only this, they are making that particular point a BENCHMARK. As in, it has to be taught. How absurd.
The issue imo isn't that slaves learned skills that they were able to use post-slavery. It's that this point is minor and frankly trite relative to the generations of people who were enslaved, the following generations who lived under Jim Crow, and the modern generations whose average opportunity is less than Americans descended from people who were not slaves.
Consequently, while I understand this as a fact, it seems virtually irrelevant and I'm not sure I understand why you think it's important enough to be actively taught rather than simply acknowledged if it comes up.
This is exactly how I feel. Why are we treating this like a benchmark standard that has to be taught? Unless of course, this is a tiny way in which you can throw out some neo-confederate apologia.
Just read a book: The Dressmakers of Auschwitz. Being torn from their everyday life to dress the wives of the monsters who destroyed their lives/ families, didn’t make them appreciate their own skills. They just wanted to SURVIVE the hell they had been dropped into. Giving credit for skills used or earned in these monstrous situations is obscene. It misses the point that humanity has left their world.
Imagine someone saying something like this about the Holocaust? Because you are so completely right.
But she's been very "useful", has she not?
One needs to clarify what is intended by "post slavery" here and whether this means only the period after "Emancipation." I did not read it as such in Young's essay, nor in the benchmark clarification under SS.68.AA.2.3. You are right, there were 250 years of interesting stories prior to emancipation, and many more after it. One diminishes resilience and imagination and craft when relegating the formerly enslaved to the place of cattle.
Cathy should stick to her area of expertise - Russia and Ukraine. Like many smart and successful people, she assumes that because she knows a lot about one topic she can confidently espouse opinions about which knows absolutely nothing.
Also - Neocons gonna Neocon.
She is hit or miss on Ukraine.
Nailed it.
You can take the "Libertarian" out of Reason Magazine, but you cannot take the Reason Magazine out of the Libertarian.
I recall something an Econ professor from college once said about Libertarians, "most Libertarians he had ever met were people who viewed themselves as edgy, but were basically just assholes".
Pretty much describes every Libertarian I have ever met, and I work with a lot of them.
That's a good one. I also remember someone saying that "Libertarians, because there are some Americans who aren't selfish enough already"
That's about right
What, non-slaves didn't learn valuable skills? You had to be a slave in order to learn to be a seamstress or a blacksmith? I had no idea. I wonder how white people managed to learn anything without being enslaved.
Good luck being the son of a plantation owner and learning the blacksmith's trade! ;)
See, proof of how well slaves had it. Planters' sons were denied opportunities that they just gave to slaves! I guess I know where cancel culture got its start! (Yes, sarcasm)
That Cathy Young article was... Not good. There are times when one side is definitely in the wrong. No matter how loud and hysterical Dems are condemning the new Florida Standards they are still correct and anyone defending them is wrong. There are not two sides to the issue no matter how much you cherry pick facts.
I haven't read it. CAn you say WHY is was not good? Was the logic fallacious? Were there no facts cited?
In other words, there are very fine people on BOTH sides.
If a position is advocated by "hysterical" people and reasonable people, you can consider the arguments of the reasonable folks, and disregard the hystericals. In fact, if you've tagged someone as hysterical, why would you listen to them at all? Unless you're the kind of person who gets so hysterical when you hear a bad argument, you become pathologically unable to listen to reason. Or, perhaps, you're afraid that the reasonable argument might be right, but wish to undermine it with extraneous opprobrium.
I don't understand the argument. What does people being hysterical have to do with whether they are right or wrong? A sociopath can be very calm but that doesn't mean they are right. Also hysteria to one person is just passion to another.
Because once you claim that someone is hysterical, you can discount their argument or point of view. It's why we stopped talking about police reform in 2020 and instead decided on what form of protest was legitimate.
In other words, there are very fine hysterics on BOTH sides.
...claim that “enslaved people benefited from slavery” because some of them learned useful work skills. But while the Florida curriculum doesn’t say that... What? There is nothing unclear about this:
“SS.68.AA.2.3 Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
I suggest you read Ms Young's article. It goes into some detail about the kerfuffle. As is often the case, when one goes past the sound bites, there's a lot more detail and nuance to be found.
One conservative writer I really admire is David French. Here's a paragraph from his newsletter today. This is what I think Cathy glosses over when she says that the curriculum doesn't mean what it says (and yes, I read her article).
"Over the course of our 12 years in Columbia (my note--Columbia, TN, where the Jason Aldean video was filmed), my family slowly but surely progressed from insiders to outsiders, beginning with the adoption of our youngest daughter, a beautiful girl from Ethiopia. My other two children, who are blond with blue eyes, were never followed by store employees; my youngest daughter was. My older kids were never told by their schoolmates that parents didn’t allow them to play with “kids like you,” or that it wasn’t “safe” to come to their house. Or that their “muddy” faces weren’t welcome on a hayride at a local farm. My youngest daughter has had all those experiences. She has also been told that slavery was necessary to “help” Black people to be ready for life in America."
I really like French's writing, as well. His "lived experiences" about his family are pretty much gold.
That said, I'm not sure how you're connecting the dots here. How does French's daughter's awful (and, far too common) experiences suggest Ms Young is glossing over the curriculum? Or, more specifically, wrong about the interpretation of the section in question?
For that she goes to the authors on the working group. See here, for example:
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190427952/william-allen-who-helped-write-floridas-new-history-standards-stands-by-cirricul
Should we assume they are lying? (Why?)
Further, she makes (IMHO) an important observation: "Incorporating such a framework into lessons for kids can be dicey: one has to walk a fine line between presenting slaves as just victims and implying that slavery wasn’t so bad."
And, also points out: "Arguably, the passage in the Florida curriculum was clumsily worded." Personally, I think she soft-pedalled that a bit much. I'd say it *is* poorly worded.
There were undoubtedly sentences in mein kampf full of detail and nuance. So what? The purpose of these standards is very clear and it's not the pursuit of truth and wisdom.
Heh, needs more Hitler! :-)
Actually, the purpose of the lines in question is very much up for debate. Take a look at Cathy Young's article.
Lol, you know we can all read the words that are written there, yes?
Did you mean in the article? Yes, I imagine folks *could* read it, if they so desired.
Or, did you mean the context-free line everyone's excited about?
I think you've identified a key point. Unfortunately, it's seems standard practice in political writing to dig up some hysterical nobody as representative of a position and then set about mocking the hysteria.
It was disgusting.
The article reminds me of a bit of doggerel I had to memorize when I was a kid to practice elocution:
"If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you
two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
you or your mother?"
The kid is good at arithmetic, but his mom is good at knowing what counts and what doesn't. If the people angry take it one way, and the people making the statement agree with their premise, then maybe the "plain reading" of the statement doesn't actually tell you what you need to know about it.
Yep. It’s a nonsense question. Arithmetic doesn’t enter into the scenario at all. Love does. Parenthood, values. Mom obviously knows what’s good for you.
Ha ha, good one.
Actually, for young kids, the egg yolk is good for brain development. Otherwise I agree.
Now that the DeSantis administration has approved the PragerU curriculum for history in the state, I think we can permanently set aside Cathy's argument that maybe the "benefits of slavery" argument wasn't what it seemed.
Even before that information came out, the argument is presented stripped from the political and geographic context. Changes to teaching about slavery in Florida are part of a clear and deliberate pattern in the state. This is reflexive and dangerous conservatism on Cathy’s part.
Begging the question in all these discussions is the fact that the Black History segment of the standards lacks context. The subject of "skills" brings this to light. Why did the 54th Massachusetts fight? Why was there an Underground Railroad? What State Right brought on the Civil War?
I read the the standards. These are each, with many others, walked around in them. Coupled with other Florida laws, there is a gag order on teachers from speaking the truth.
Can you post a link to the standards? I would love to read the actual document.
Opens a pdf ("6-4") containing all the SS standards: https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf
You can find them by grade here: https://www.cpalms.org/Public/search/Standard
If you want more, see: https://www.fldoe.org/academics/standards/
THANK YOU!
Yeah. This all sounded like a talking point when I first heard it. I’d like to actually read what everyone is talking about.
I continue to believe that the ultimate upshot will be good teachers leaving a very bad state.
Many of them already have :( It’s a shame - just like many ob/gyns deciding not to do residencies in states with strict abortion laws. I suspect many more good teachers and doctors might end up leaving if things get worse if they have the ability to leave (which many sadly don’t). But the people who will likely be most hurt are the kids left with subpar teachers and the women left with subpar doctors who have their hands tied wrt the education or healthcare they are legally allowed to provide.
One of my cousins teaches in FL …. Years into a career. Married, wife a librarian. 2 kids and taking care of ill father. Teachers are in a bind.
100% Correct TCinLA. But besides the racial aspects, it was always “states rights” in regards to slavery. No other issue was so dominating. The only way to make slavery pay was to constantly acquire more land, which meant acquiring more slaves, which meant more land, which meant more slaves, and so on. It was a never ending cycle. If a great planter (who had 50+ slaves) was not acquiring more western land (which also meant more slaves) that planter would eventually go bankrupt due to rising costs of upkeep for slaves. Slaves still had to be housed, clothed, and feed to the point that they could still produce labor. And the only way to do it was to acquire more land…and that land was to the west. Thus, when Lincoln won the election of 1860 the planter class went bat shit crazy. Why would they care about Lincoln being elected? Lincoln was a committed Free Soiler. The free soil movement was against the extension of slavery into western lands. No slavery in western lands meant the planter class would eventually go bankrupt. The planter class pressures state governments, some slave states start to leave the union (South Carolina being the first in Dec. 1860), and poof…civil war a few months later. It was always about slavery…no other issue was as hot button.
The other issue is the degradation of the land from the favored Southern crops. Tobacco, sugar, cotton, those crops deplete the land, so the planters require fresh land.
You beat me to it.
Who would bother?
Heaven forbid you might get your priors challenged.
Well, from your comments I’d say your priors are based in the failed experiment of US conservatism. This brand doesn’t exist in any other country in western europe. I live in two of them. But Americans,conservatives in particular, are pretty parochial folks!
Always interesting when any perceived pushback against some dogma elicits that response.
In the US, I'm considered center-left. (Yeah, I know, that generally counts as center-right in most of Europe, yada yada.) If you look at more of my comments (not just the ones here critical of the knee-jerk reaction from the left), you'll likely agree.
BTW, if you're suggesting that the Trumpist right is conservative, they ain't. Basically national-populists.
They came out of the conservative movement,and that’s not an accident! I’m 77 and have watched the evolution in real time. Have a nice evening.😊
Well, I'm not keeping a tally, but certainly this particular article is a great example. There are many comments here that indicate the commenter either didn't read or didn't understand the article. (Or, perhaps more accurately, didn't *want* to understand the article.)
But even if we stipulate that Ms Young isn't the pinnacle of conservative writing, her pieces are often "good enough" to stimulate some useful thoughts, raise pertinent questions, etc. When I read KDW's stuff, for example, I usually find lots of problems (his priors being a big one), but I still find it very useful. Same with Ms Young.
LOL, thanks for the assumptions, Pete. Not only did I read her article and her bothsidesisms, but I also follow her on Twitter as she attempted to chastise critics of the curricula changes.