DEI driven community college curriculum, argh!

[icehorse]

There was no indication that of that. To the point I doubt it and think you was serious. Your posting history gives me no reason to assume you were using humor, especially with nothing to indicate that.

Perhaps YOU could lighten up a bit?

 

[icehorse]

Yes

I'm going to pull a section from an earlier post of Valjeans, because I believe this is what your "Yes" is referring to?

Valjean-approx: Higher education is supposed to shake up your world view. It's suppose to expose you to new and unsettling ideas. It's supposed to expose you to different cultures and lifestyles. It's supposed to expose you to the diverse people and ideas you'll be dealing with during your lifetime. Education is supposed to expand your world, and give you the skills to navigate it.

Next I understand you're also saying you think the document I provided is consistent with what Valjean said, correct?

If so, could you name some of the categories of unsettling ideas or just a few of these unsettling ideas?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Ahhh! You're a pseudi-intellectual, that helps me connect some dots, thanks.

But seriously, I think that for most complex topics, understanding the context is crucial. To rephrase from my earlier post, I want to understand what you mean by bias IN THIS CONTEXT.

I'm not the one who can't figure out what a word means that is understood ajd known in America, England, Canada, India, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, Durban, and everywhere else English is an official language. Even those who know it as a second language, lots of Chinese and Japanese and Mexicans know the word.
So why is it you have to ask what it means? Why can't you use a dictionary? You want to call me a pseudo-intellectual and you don't even use a dictionary to find out what a word means.

But seriously, I think that for most complex topics, understanding the context is crucial. To rephrase from my earlier post, I want to understand what you mean by bias IN THIS CONTEXT.

Your nonsense like gender neutral trigonometry. Your reluctance to take in facts and instead blurt out it's going ti teach collectively derrived calculus. Your refusal to accept what this actually does so you can continue to spew out fantasies about Islamic electric engineering.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Perhaps YOU could lighten up a bit?

Or you just accept its silly to try ti debate what a word means when everybody knows and knows to pick up a dictionary when you don't know.

 

[icehorse]

Or you just accept its silly to try ti debate what a word means when everybody knows and knows to pick up a dictionary when you don't know.

this is a sincere question, what do you stand FOR?

 

[Orbit]

I checked out the summary page and reviews on Amazon. This book appears to make some of the same assumptions that the DEI document is making. So for example, it appears that you have to accept the "oppressed / oppressor" worldview for either the book or the DEI document to make much sense. It seems clear that they would probably support each other, but that doesn't prove much.

I find your emphasis on the “oppressor/oppressed” very telling. Those are simply clear-eyed, objective statements of reality that make white men uncomfortable. Didn’t the colonizers oppress the Indigenous people? Didn’t whites as a group oppress blacks? They did, but you find that language uncomfortable because it feels like a personal attack. It’s not personal dude, so you can stop reacting like that.

The reason we don’t know much about how heart disease progresses in women is because in medical research the default patient was a man. We do know that there are significant gender differences in that disease, though and chances are that heart medication you’re on wasn’t tested on women for the same reasons. And that is how gender affects medical research. There are many more examples along the same lines in that book.

 

[Valjean]

Let's consider how industry has become so
woke that triggering technical terms like
"master" & "slave" are being purged.
Examples....
Master cylinder, slave cylinder (still
in use in the automotive world)

The Story Behind “Master-Slave” Being Excluded by (Most) Tech Firms

Racial bias has been a hot topic in 2020, but the story behind “Master-Slave” bias dates back to the early 2000s. In tech, master/slave terminology has been used as an industry standard to describe when one piece of hardware controls another. But the phrase has continuously received criticism...

blog.ongig.com

Companies are replacing "master" & "slave" with....
"primary" & "secondary"
"host" & "client"
But one connotes an elite vs subservient relationship,
which is demeaning & offensive.
The other suggests sexual services, which involve a
power differential & exploitation...perhaps even human
trafficking.
The solution is to never design any system (mechanical,
electrical, computer) such that one element controls
or has primacy over another.

Another soon to be purged term....
"Server"

I'm wondering how soon it will be before male and female couplings will be targeted.

 

[icehorse]

I find your emphasis on the “oppressor/oppressed” very telling

I was using that as an example. the clue was when I said "for example"

Those are simply clear-eyed, objective statements of reality that make white men uncomfortable.

Funny, I was told a few posts ago that objectivity is a myth - would you folks get your narratives straight?

Didn’t the colonizers oppress the Indigenous people? Didn’t whites as a group oppress blacks?

Well if you let me pick the time period EVERY group was an oppressor group at some point. E.g. at some point the Navajos oppressed the Utes (or maybe it was the other way around), and so on...

They did, but you find that language uncomfortable because it feels like a personal attack. It’s not personal dude, so you can stop reacting like that.

Trust me, I'm not taking it personally, maybe that's your projection? But I do think it's a destructive way to look at the world, and we have WAY bigger fish to fry that will take all of us working together.

We do know that there are significant gender differences in that disease

I thought gender was a social construct?

And that is how gender affects medical research.

If you want to create a college course on how - say sexism - has negatively influenced research, that sounds like a valid and probably useful topic.

But that would NOT be a STEM topic. I'm talking about STEM topics.

 

[Valjean]

What do you have to say to those of us in the middle? Liberals who do not think humans should be crammed into identity politics categories, but actually seen as individuals. The "diversity" in DEI does NOT mean diversity of thought, it means diversity of skin color. I applaud diversity of skin colors. But DEI initiatives all support the same dogma, and no opposing ideas are allowed.

The middle moves about quite a bit. Many of Reagan and Nixon's policies would be considered radical leftist by today's standards, and Eisenhower (Republican president), would be judged an outright Communist.

The Republicans have moved far to the Right of what was center forty or fifty years ago. The Democrats haven't moved quite so far, but are still to the political Right of where the Republicans were at that time.

 

[icehorse]

The middle moves about quite a bit. Many of Reagan and Nixon's policies would be considered radical leftist by today's standards, and Eisenhower (Republican president), would be judged an outright Communist.

The Republicans have moved far to the Right of what was center forty or fifty years ago. The Democrats haven't moved quite so far, but are still to the political Right of where the Republicans were at that time.

I like to think of myself as a Democrat that hasn't moved too far. Not only am I worried about the GOP, but I'm also worried about the far left, or however you'd like me to refer to them. The folks who - for example - are SO invested in identity politics.

 

[Augustus]

I find your emphasis on the “oppressor/oppressed” very telling. Those are simply clear-eyed, objective statements of reality that make white men uncomfortable. Didn’t the colonizers oppress the Indigenous people? Didn’t whites as a group oppress blacks? They did, but you find that language uncomfortable because it feels like a personal attack. It’s not personal dude, so you can stop reacting like that.

Some people have no problem with acknowledging the violence, racism, arrogance and hypocrisy that colonialism often involved, but just find that binary framing reductive and distorting if not outright patronising and counterproductive, especially in populist discourse where nuance is usually lacking.

“It was the late doyen of African historians, J. F. Ade Ajayi, who, in 1969, inaugurated a debate on this matter by arguing that colonialism was a mere ‘episode’ in African history and experience, and that the continuing talk of it having enacted an epochal break is not justified by the evidence. He argued that African history is to be noted more for its continuities than any discontinuities attributable to colonialism…

Given how zealous our decolonisers are when it comes to freeing the colonised from the continuing stranglehold of colonial hangovers, there is some irony in the fact that they may be guilty of condescension towards the colonised, refusing to take seriously the choices that some colonised make when exercising their subjectivity and the autonomy that comes with it. Beyond the woolly but ultimately empty rhetoric, I do not see a clear way charted by the decolonising discourse out of this predicament… our decolonisers are convinced that there is no distinction between colonialism and modernity, it is no surprise that their project is defined by negativity…

The same people who hector us to decolonise are the ones who absolutise modern European colonialism and turn it into the single pole for plotting African phenomena, no matter how removed in time those phenomena are from the colonial period.”

Against Decolonisation: Taking African agency seriously -
Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

Pre (Western) colonial societies were still overwhelmingly oppressive, imperialistic, expansionist or at least violently exploitative as has been the case since the emergence of the ancient agricultural civilisations.

Colonisation was only possible due to the continued support of large numbers of indigenous or colonised people acting under their own agency for their own perceived gain. Many of these people were those oppressed under previous systems be they subjugated tribes, lower castes, freed slaves, etc. Many people were both oppressors and oppressed at the same time. For many people it made little to no difference who ruled them.

This phase of European Colonialism was a 500+ year period involving all kinds of groups, individuals and forces in massively different situations where colonials oppressed indigenous groups, indigenous oppressed colonials, indigenous oppressed indigenous, colonials oppressed colonials, folk traded and cooperated, cultures were destroyed, changed syncretised or were adopted and all in the context of massive changes in technology and knowledge that would have fundamentally changed traditional ways of life regardless.

Overall the process was exploitative, frequently oppressive, and occasionally genocidal but, then again, so was history before that (and often after that too).

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I think it's a bit late on the "Take care not to weaponize academic freedom", front.
The weirdest part of all is that some folks actually want this garbage taught to people.
We need to do better.

WOKE is a 4-letter word that repels and terrifies many, and, yes, we need to do better.

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

WOKE is a 4-letter word that repels and terrifies many, and, yes, we need to do better.

The problem with the woke mindset and DEI is that despite its flowery language, it is extremely divisive in practice, as it sets racial, gender, and class differences as the basis of all interactions, and the basis of all decision-making. The result is a society that is hyper-aware of collective differences, numb to individual uniqueness, and is constantly in the mode of assessing peers on the prescribed attributes. Not only that, but it disincentivizes higher achievement, which I predict is just a lingering catastrophe. I really have nothing good to say about it. The woke mind ransacks the West's cultural treasures, immolates them like effigies as a sacrifice for their pseudo-gods, and spreads the ashes to the wind.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The woke mind ransacks the West's cultural treasures, immolates them like effigies as a sacrifice for their pseudo-gods, and spreads the ashes to the wind.

... all while denigrating apple pie and motherhood. Thank God for the unity afforded by white male grievance.

 

[TurkeyOnRye]

... all while denigrating apple pie and motherhood. Thank God for the unity afforded by white male grievance.

Thanks for proving my point in practice.

 

[Orbit]

I was using that as an example. the clue was when I said "for example"


Funny, I was told a few posts ago that objectivity is a myth - would you folks get your narratives straight?



Well if you let me pick the time period EVERY group was an oppressor group at some point. E.g. at some point the Navajos oppressed the Utes (or maybe it was the other way around), and so on...



Trust me, I'm not taking it personally, maybe that's your projection? But I do think it's a destructive way to look at the world, and we have WAY bigger fish to fry that will take all of us working together.



I thought gender was a social construct?



If you want to create a college course on how - say sexism - has negatively influenced research, that sounds like a valid and probably useful topic.

But that would NOT be a STEM topic. I'm talking about STEM topics.

Medical research isn't a STEM topic? The entire book is about STEM topics.

 

[Quintessence]

I assure you, I wasn't "playing a game" or trying to trick you. I'm working from the premise that part of our reason for being on RF is to learn about each other? There are many definitions for the word "science", correct? I genuinely want to understand you better. If me asking you to define a key term, is ethnocentric or flawed in some other way, then what do you recommend instead? How do you recommend we have a meaningful conversation if we cannot ask each other questions?

My apologies - I've been unfair. Had one too many dictionary thumpers in the course of things, perhaps, and know from experience that when discussions become about controlling how a term is defined, it's something of a lost cause.

My understanding of the sciences isn't really that distinct from the Western understanding thereof, honestly. This isn't surprising since I was trained as a scientist in the Western tradition of such, so I hold the very biases about what science is and isn't that the seminar speaker was talking to us about. One of the things that came up in our discussion is that Western science very much hinges itself on numbers and data that are externally written down somewhere. This is undeniably important, but it means Western science is going to tend to overlook "hidden" numbers and data from indigenous traditions whose data is passed down through oral traditions or culture. As a Druid, I knew exactly what the speaker was talking about - for the vast majority of human history, we were pre-alphabetic and pre-lingual. Knowledge - still taken from real world experiences and observations of our environment (aka, a core of Western science) - was transmitted orally, encoded in folk tales, and so on. That's indigenous science, but it is often overlooked and ignored because the way it is passed on looks different. But their knowledge came from generations of living on the land, observing the land, and knowing the land... just not writing it down with numbers and figures.

I don't recall the exact specifics of some of the examples the speaker gave - this seminar was near a year ago now and even though I'd planned to follow up on investigating the notion of indigenous science it took a back seat to learning about other things this past year - but they did talk about ecological knowledge specifically. About how colonialist exploitation of the land - the creation of banana plantations - was an exercise in ignoring indigenous science or agricultural practices that would be more sustainable in favor of western science that rape the land and don't work in the long term. Indigenous peoples are too often a missing voice - and an important one - in conservation science. The speaker's book was this one - www.goodreads.com/book/show/58460667-fresh-banana-leaves - and this is as much a reminder to myself to actually buy it so it's sitting around my house guilt tripping me into reading it... haha.

 

[exchemist]

In California, community colleges are now meant to make their cirruculums DEI friendly. Below is a link to the 7 page paper outlining how administrators and teachers are encouraged to comply. (At least this isn't legally compelled.. yet.)

As far as I can tell, these guidelines are meant to apply to all community college classes. So, pulling phrases from the document, it seems teachers ought to be teaching ideas like:

- culturally sensitive Ohm's law
- gender fluid trigonometry
- collectively derived calculus
- Islamic electrical engineering

And apparently avoiding textbooks that perpetuate the colonizer mindset, which of course chemistry textbooks are just chock full of...

Call me skeptical, but I'm not interested in driving on bridges designed by engineers who spent much of their precious classroom time learning DEI concepts instead of materials science.

I guess the good news is that RF won't be affected because apparently the internet and digital computers run on magic, not math.

There is nothing in this guidance to suggest any of the ridiculous nonsense in your post.

 

[exchemist]

Fear of diversity.

Closet racism. The Trumpy sort of thing.

 

[icehorse]

Medical research isn't a STEM topic? The entire book is about STEM topics.

Sure. But a book about STEM topics is not a STEM topic. E.g., that book will do nothing (or very little), to prepare a student to do actual chemistry or math or physics or engineering...