Teachers in Fl can lose their license...

Will DeSantis create an education freedom police force? He could round up all the woke teachers, have 'em cuffed, and pose for a photo.

 

I just cringed when I read that because it is so plausible

 

The "Stop Woke Act" is not "one man in Tallahassee dictating educational experiences." It's a law signed by the Governor that went through the Florida Legislature. Which is exactly how the process is supposed to work.

 

And likely written by some right wing think tank from which they are all funded. Get a grip.

 

I'm sorry democracy is happening to you.

 

I'm not one to discount polls but don't read them week to week. At the least, I do think trends tell us something. I also know there is always a segment of voters who are on the fence in any given election, and in close elections, it doesn't take many who change their mind to make the difference. But it's just hard for me to understand significant swings in polling data - at least according to the headlines - over relatively short time periods when we're arguing about the same stuff we have been. Who are these voters who keep changing their minds, lol? I don't know any of these people.

 

Great questions, as usual.

 

The problem with using "abuse of laws" as a rationale against public policy is that the same rationale can be used for basically every public policy proposal.

Are some riskier than others? Sure. But I don't think this is close to as risky as "pervasive government suveillance." This is a direct response to abuses in the public school system via the blunt instrument that is public policy, that will likely need fine-tuning with time.

It's not perfect, but the issue itself presents more serious problems than the policy.

 

I like your point, and I wish I was more on your side with it. However, your claim includes an assumption that regrettably no longer seems true to me: that the legislature is indeed independent of the governor. That the Republican legislature followed DeSantis on punishing Disney, a private corporation, for political speech was a shocking development that suggested consensus from contagion rather than independent formulations.

Exactly this issue is why I’ve been so adamant about both parities allowing more viewpoint diversity within their ranks. Once you kick out of the party everyone that disagrees with the party line, you no longer have a separate head and body. Therefore, you end up with the whims of a single head capable of almost unilateral action, exactly what the separation of powers was designed to prevent. If the legislature takes their cues from the governor, how could they act as a check on his power?

 

One of the most important skills for a teacher of 5 y/os is to get the class back on topic. If you can't control a classroom conversation among 5 y/os, you're probably not a very good teacher. All you have to do is say, "that's a question for your parents, we have to move on now."

But yes, that is a case that should not result in a teacher losing his/her license. But it's also not for a teacher to say what sexual relationships are and aren't "normal," especially to a group of 5 y/os.

This is a direct result of teachers breaching trust from parents. Blame the bad eggs for politicizing their elementary school classrooms.

 

Goodness gracious, bluke. So much fear and loathing. "even as a libbie?" What in the actual hell? You can't even provide a compliment w/o sideslapping the "libbies." Your 50% projection is nonsense. As a person in the teacher preparation profession, I spend a great deal of time in elementary, middle, and high schools. I visit with hundreds of teachers every year on their campuses and mine. Not once have I seen or heard a school teacher preaching politics or trying to turn your children gay. Most all are highly qualified educators who do their jobs well. Your 50% projection is false.

 

They still can... they just happen to follow his lead because they agree with him and DeSantis is now one of the leaders of the party.

It seems like your problem is with groupthink, which is noted... but there aren't any rules to my knowledge against it. Groupthink is bad, but there's a fine line between groupthink and relative consensus within a party. If the latter never happened, no policy would ever get through.

 

It's all speculation but all the polls are showing the same thing. Matt Yglesias has an analysis of it today that sounded persuasive to me. The more conventional analysis is just that Dems got on the airwaves early, Rs kept the powder dry but flooded the airwaves in the last few weeks. No one likes to admit it, but attack ads work very effectively. Everyone claims to be turned off and I think they are, but it does tend to move the needle although maybe not as much as it used to.

In Florida, the gubenatorial and senatorial races were always likely to go Republican. Florida is estimated right now to be anywhere from a +4 to a +6 Republican state, and this is an off year with a Democratic president, which would add to that under neutral political science principles. All the fundamentals would support easy Republican victories. It would be a shocking were it otherwise. That's part of what Yglesias said and I agree with that. That's just fundamentals.

But the real subtext that a lot of people are following is that DeSantis privately told national Republican funders that he would win reelection by at least five points when Trump won the state by three points, to show that he was more electable than Trump. You can fault that logic, given that it's his home state where he is governor, although Trump also claims Florida as his home state. But he laid out that marker in a lot of private meetings.

Then he looked vulnerable, at least by his self-imposed standard. Though Charlie was always unlikely to win, it did look like a two point gap, maybe three points. That would've hurt the DeSantis nationally.

But Ian seems to have given him about a five-point bump and he's now comfortably above his marker. Storm management tends to do that. No way around it.

Make of that what you will. I'm just passing on gossip from those who claim to read the data and know just what happened, which is always a bit suspect

 

You’re really diving in here I see.
I guess it seems that cons like me don’t mind a governor who thinks like we do. We don’t want more liberalism, it’s seemingly everywhere these days….and we like traditional values. There is nothing wrong with traditional, and it’s not hateful to be proud of my culture.
Libbies don’t seem to give two shits about the extreme unbalanced media, academia and Hollywood libbie bias. Maybe it’s the same reason I’m not concerned at all for any teacher who may or may not be punished for espousing libbie points in front of students.

 

it's a bad law championed by someone running for national office. and right now, the fl legislature rubber stamps DeSantis requests regardless of legalityof law. See redisticting for a perfect example. he wouldn't sign what they were hoping would be deemed legal, DeSantis gives legislature the new map, they stamp it, DeSantis signs it, courts say not legal. Legislature knew it wouldn't pass the courts, didn't care. DeSantis still got his poll points even if his attempts failed. Same for the election police force.

 

Youre right that the ends of groupthink would be the same as consensus via authority, but via a more acceptable means. It is hard to tell these apart.

However, the validity of the election issue gives us some hint that authority is involved. Liz Cheney was immediately removed from her committee position when she went against Trump’s claim that the election was fraudulent. Then she lost in her primary. And how many other GOP dissenters got primaried? And election validity isn’t even an ideal logical issue; it’s an empirical one!

While I agree groupthink must play a role, in a world where we only have two parties I think it’s quite dangerous to have each of them be so homogenous in ideology regardless.

 

I disagree. I think the scope of the issue is exaggerated for political benefit, and can be handled on the individual school level. The policy itself is heavy-handed overreach, which is never desirable.

 

It also very obviously violates the First Amendment. But I get that free speech isn't a "conservative" value these days.