Florida just ranked as the top state for education

What’s been explained to you is the criteria used to rank Florida #1 in education that you are determined to ignore. None of it has anything to do with DeSantis.

Here’s a history lesson for you. Yes things were bad before JEB that had more to do with the lack of funding than anything else. So the voters in Florida agreed to pass the lottery to supplement Florida education, however Republican Governor Bob Martinez determined the money will be used to replace money cut from the education budget giving education funding a net zero.

In comes JEB with his A+ program that turned public schools into test prep centers and costing millions. Everyone could see what a disaster that was with even his own voucher school in Liberty City failing. They even had to change the name from vouchers to “opportunity scholarships” because it had such a sour taste with voters.

The one shining light remaining in Florida education is our university system that is rated #1 but mostly because of graduation rate and cost. But even there DeSantis sees an opportunity to destroy even that by removing tenure, banning certain courses, and replacing university presidents and regents members with hand picked political operatives. So expect our universities to to drop in its rankings soon.

 

And how will that look when 5200 teachers don't return in the fall?

 

Facts on that number? I guess there isn't anywhere for FL to go but down rankings wise for being the best on education, so some on here will cheer that whenever it happens.

 

This is a good lesson for people who think the "culture wars don't matter."

All it takes is a party in power who is willing to enact policy influencing the culture providing cover for the hardcore members of your own party (even if they are a small minority) to substantiate dramatic change.

You change who controls the institutions of influence to your benefit (slow process), and you control the culture.

Where have we seen this before?

 

Franco's Spain? Revolutionary Iran?

Do you really think laws and censorship make "culture?" Unless you consider repression a culture I guess. Do you think people in Iran have fully adopted the culture of the Mullahs? Or is it just state intimidation and violence against certain expression? Did the Spanish all become good Catholics when Franco was in charge?

 

They sure as hell influence it. What you think the First Amendment and free speech tradition in America had nothing to do with the production of edgy and offensive comedies like South Park? The law affects the culture and the culture affects the law.

When something is repressed for a long period of time, it becomes the new "normal." When it's the new "normal" it becomes the culture.

Again, you can compel a culture by intimidation. Just because women may not want to cover up in Sharia law countries, they are compelled to, therefore, that is the culture.

Again, the law affects the culture and the culture affects the law. The path looks something like this. Some big government actor thinks their way is the only way and intimidates people, businesses, and institutions who disagree, to avoid a fight people go along to get along, the big government actor's way becomes the new normal (it becomes the culture), and more people elect people who think like big government actor because over time he has seized all of the means of influencing people: film, media, music, literature, education.

Even tyrants have the potential to become popular in the mainstream if they control the narrative with an iron fist. We all like to pretend that if all of us were living in Nazi Germany, each of us would've stood up to the Nazis or resisted. We're not all that much smarter or more ethical than average citizens in the 1930s and 1940s. The question isn't only one regarding moral fiber, backbone, and character, but susceptibility to government and popular influence.

 

I don't think it has anything to do with the production of that material, and for the most part, most entertainment operates under some kind of imposed censorship, whether self-imposed or otherwise. Lenny Bruce was arrested multiple times for obscenity, if laws shaped culture, he probably would have cleaned up his act. Instead, young people began to think those laws were stupid and backward when they were enforced, because tastes had changed. Many of those laws are still on the books too, just rarely enforced. How did the counterculture come to be since the laws basically forbade it? The counterculture didnt become culture by passing a bunch of laws legalizing love beads, ponchos and free love did they? Maybe your argument is if the government had simply been more repressive to hippies, it would still be the 50s?

The Shah has been gone a long time, the Islamic Revolution has been around in Iran for almost half a century, yet young people who never knew anything else were in the streets protesting state repression. Do you think state repression has succeeded in Iran to shaping the culture to fundamentalist Islam? Whenever there is unrest there, we hear about how the people there don't like the regime and its rigid morality. Do they just need another 50 years or what?

 

Turns out sometimes the system works. There's not this monopoly of thought in institutions of influence... people have the capacity make an informed decision... and popular opinion wins.

That's how the system is supposed to work. But it doesn't always work that way.

It has absolutely succeeded in shifting it in that direction.

There will always be dissenters. The question is how irritated they are as to whether they think it's worth it to voice their dissent, and whether they are compelled to be silent.

Tyranny and extreme authoritarianism are effective means of achieving the cultural and policy outcomes you want. The issue isn't in their efficacy, but in the fact that they are evil and deprive the people of liberty and rights.

 

How do you know? You cant measure religious devotion, particularly since everyone has to publicly conform to religious standards or find themselves in prison or worse.

 

If you're doing it and you're forced to, what does it matter whether you want to or not as it pertains to the culture? You're doing it.

And you doing it and being forced to say only positive things about it will make more people want to do it.

 

Being forced to isn't a cultural change. Its not changing "hearts and minds" is it? But you seem to be making the argument that controlling culture is just being able to punish expressions of an idea that are considered deviant by some authority with a monopoly on violence. IF you actually 'controlled' culture you wouldn't have to do that would you? If your culture was actually hegemonic, dissent wouldn't be particularly threatening, people would just laugh at the weirdos, not put them in jail.

 

Even if you define culture that way, it still is. You're forced to do something and say nice things about it. Other easily influenced people will believe you and their "heart and mind" is changed.

 

Sometimes it's a struggle for "control." By punishing dissenters, you are fighting for control or more control. And even when you have control you may punish more dissenters if the mainstream allows/wants you to.

Some authoritarian regimes are just incompetent enough that the struggle for control never ends.

You can make a majority in any bubble believe that they are normally situated if their situation is all they ever knew (they don't have access to competing ideas, cultures, government systems, lifestyles, etc. and they don't know about them), especially if you're a good liar.

 

You could not possibly be more wrong if you tried. I have no idea where you claim to have attended college, but I am exceptionally proud of my UF degrees and UF's rankings. I will lament the day I see those ratings start to slip. Just as we didn't get to where we are in a period of months, our decline will not be overnight, either. Professors will leave, either due to retirement or weariness of state policies. They will be harder to replace with the same quality educators. The brighter and more educated parents are already offended by DeSaster's policies and will look to send their children elsewhere. Outside sources of income will be impacted. It will just be a downward spiral. Hopefully, UF and the State's University System is resilient enough to withstand a couple more years of our walking, talking cluster(redacted) and we won't dip too far.

 

Ok. I graduated from UF in 95. Lol. So let’s try to stay on topic, which is FL is number 1 in education under DeSantis. Tough L for you sport