This debate made it clear that both sides have very different understandings of the facts and history. While I do feel that the liberals were too unskeptical about some controversial ideas, I felt that the conservatives in this debate demonstrated that they have fully absorbed talking points from right-leaning advocacy organizations and have difficulty with accepting that canons of literature and concepts of our shared history should be updated gradually through time as new information becomes accepted.
What the guy said at the end is true. People lack a framework for discussing these issues, and they seemingly lack the ability to compromise and say what's true about their opponents arguments.
I think some reasonable takeaways are that parents have a right to speak up when they believe the curriculum sways too far in any ideological direction. But that this is, and always will be, a negotiation. American schools are a melting pot of viewpoints... there's not going to be one set of beliefs that everyone agrees on.
It seems reasonable that "no graphic sexual content" in school libraries is a fair boundary, but its also patently obvious that parents do have a tendency to overreact to content in school libraries, which has led to books being banned which are completely benign in nature.Think of the initial reactions to the Harry Potter books, deemed witchcraft and occult by many ignorant parents. Those books are a treasure, and present a beautiful Judeo-Christian story about love, family, and being a little different. Library contents will always be controversial, but sometimes the parents are wrong.
But, honestly do parents really expect their teenagers to exist in a sacred, perfectly holy and christian environment with no conflicting ideas or sentiments when they enter school? How do they expect their kids to contend with difficult things, and think critically? And why wouldn't those kids rebel and seek out left-leaning or forbidden sexual content if they've lived under a repressive conservative worldview their whole lives... its a well known effect.
Similarly, its clear that some ideologically charged school boards or districts might have a tendency to overfit their worldviews into the curriculum. I do find many progressive tenets and philosophies to be as antithetical to learning and truth-seeking as ideas on the right about which authors fit the "canon." And I do tend to think progressives which don't appreciate western culture are worse teachers than those who appreciate both its strengths and weaknesses. I also think this is a blind spot for non-progressive liberals. They often dismiss these concerns out of hand, but it isn't just nut-picking... some school boards are just teaching ideology, and that's not healthy. We can be honest about that while still arguing for an update to the canon so students can relate more to what they're reading.
I also resonated with the lady in the blue blazer. By constantly focusing on the purity of what's being taught in schools, whether from a sexuality perspective or a race perspective, the right is truly hanging out kids out to dry because they are struggling with much more basic academic issues, like reading at grade level! Florida clearly has an issue here that they need to address, but all the time is spent on these witch hunts... some of which are valid, others of which are probably as productive as the anti-harry potter book bans.
How could this conversation have been more productive? By bringing statistics and rates into the equation. When we all work from anecdotes, our personal truth competes with someone else's personal truth. But if we knew how often books were found in schools that were really objectionable, vs. how often books were banned, vs. what the actual florida standard says, and even how many schools sent out anti-racist pledges to parents. Then we could actually recognize "hey, maybe this really graphic book isn't that big of a problem as it was only in these two school districts" or "Hey, maybe that one district shouldn't teach this in kindergarten, but all the rest of the schools in Florida aren't doing that."
Purpose of education is to educate…to teach reading, math, science, history, critical thinking etc. Too often, this doesn’t happen and it is NOT a money issue. If it was, then all highly funded states would be outperforming and they aren’t. We need more civics classes. We need kids to be reading at grade level. Instead, we are wasting time and money on this stupid stuff. Let the parents and psychologists handle it.
Florida is not a swing state. Ben's bias was apparent and he allowed the Woke a-holes way too much leeway compared to the others.
This is not a series anyone needs to watch moving forward. Just more of The FP pretending to be an honest news broker while trying to shill for the DNC. Seriously, calling Florida a swing state is straight-up Leftist propaganda.
You need to introduce a mic shut off tool. This reminded me more of a cable news panel with people just talking over each other and airing their grievances. The moderator needs to facilitate a more productive back and forth. May be try keeping it to 4 participants and see how that works next time.
First - thanks for doing this - I think we all need to talk and listen - it is good to hear other people POV, not saying I agree with all of it, but helps me think about my position when I hear from others.
I live in Florida. Florida is not a swing state. What it does have is a highly vocal and activated left wing that are doing everything they can to flip it. For example, we have two referendums on our ballot this fall. One is allowing abortion through nine months by “healthcare” professionals, and the other is allowing marijuana to be legal for any reason. Both of these referendums were brought up by Democrats who went out and got hundreds of thousands of signatures on their petitions. It has now been reported that there are many problems with the signatures they collected. But they’re still on our ballots.
The three Democratic women were horrible. What a group of "mean girls". One of the fat women called the man who lost his child in a school shooting a "cracker white supremacist". The other fat woman seemed about to physically threaten Tiffany, who barely got a word in edgewise.
I'm embarrassed to have been a lifelong Democrat, because I see how awful I must have sounded a few years ago. This was more like a reality show than a debate.
I hope that this series will eventually feature people who aren't so insufferably rude. Five random people plucked from a grocery store or gas station would be more civil with one another.
I just watched this. First of all the moderator was clearly biased. That should change if these debates are to be taken seriously. It would have been interesting to ask the Black lady what she knows about Irish history or Italian history in this country. Many ethnic groups were discriminated against when they first arrived and some still are today. Perhaps the incessant focus on black history is doing a disservice to other ethnic groups and the goal of inclusivity and understanding. A serious analysis and discussion about why young boys are lagging in our Public Schools would have been good. And, I would have liked to have had a more in depth discussion about how schools are funded and where the money is spent because the product of our educational system (our children) is clearly not performing up to standards.
Great topic and guests. Balance is THEE most important thing in any environment, but especially here.
Most of my friends are K-12 teachers here in MN and they report the unfunded mandates - coming from state and federal governments - are the worst. It is ironic the teachers are getting paid by the same entities.
That wonderful Iman represents most teachers I come across - balanced as they should be.
Colleen needs to better understand that our schools ARE government schools that have little oversight overall at the state levels.
MN teachers teach to Minnesota Standards of Learning. It's been awhile since I was directly involved...but the State of Minnesota [MDE] sets the standards for what is to be taught....not the Feds. The Feds have a lot of unfunded mandates...yes....but the State locked kids out of the classroom during Covid.
The intro of them all yelling wasn't super appealing. I watched a little bit of the first part, but an hour of confrontation admittedly sounds a bit exhausting. I'll try to watch it, but the left is so good at sugarcoating their positions to make conservatives seem like monsters and/or idiots.
I agree Ben was not an honest broker. His biased was very apparent. Why can't you just moderate and keep your biased out of conversation. It would have been nice to have a more diverse group. Latino, Asian, if we are a diverse nation lets get some other cultures that are conservative and liberal in the conversation. Tiffany moms for liberty and the gentleman who lost child at parkland are on point. With all money pumped into schools and our kids cannot read and are being influenced by an ideology this is a travesty!
This debate made it clear that both sides have very different understandings of the facts and history. While I do feel that the liberals were too unskeptical about some controversial ideas, I felt that the conservatives in this debate demonstrated that they have fully absorbed talking points from right-leaning advocacy organizations and have difficulty with accepting that canons of literature and concepts of our shared history should be updated gradually through time as new information becomes accepted.
What the guy said at the end is true. People lack a framework for discussing these issues, and they seemingly lack the ability to compromise and say what's true about their opponents arguments.
I think some reasonable takeaways are that parents have a right to speak up when they believe the curriculum sways too far in any ideological direction. But that this is, and always will be, a negotiation. American schools are a melting pot of viewpoints... there's not going to be one set of beliefs that everyone agrees on.
It seems reasonable that "no graphic sexual content" in school libraries is a fair boundary, but its also patently obvious that parents do have a tendency to overreact to content in school libraries, which has led to books being banned which are completely benign in nature.Think of the initial reactions to the Harry Potter books, deemed witchcraft and occult by many ignorant parents. Those books are a treasure, and present a beautiful Judeo-Christian story about love, family, and being a little different. Library contents will always be controversial, but sometimes the parents are wrong.
But, honestly do parents really expect their teenagers to exist in a sacred, perfectly holy and christian environment with no conflicting ideas or sentiments when they enter school? How do they expect their kids to contend with difficult things, and think critically? And why wouldn't those kids rebel and seek out left-leaning or forbidden sexual content if they've lived under a repressive conservative worldview their whole lives... its a well known effect.
Similarly, its clear that some ideologically charged school boards or districts might have a tendency to overfit their worldviews into the curriculum. I do find many progressive tenets and philosophies to be as antithetical to learning and truth-seeking as ideas on the right about which authors fit the "canon." And I do tend to think progressives which don't appreciate western culture are worse teachers than those who appreciate both its strengths and weaknesses. I also think this is a blind spot for non-progressive liberals. They often dismiss these concerns out of hand, but it isn't just nut-picking... some school boards are just teaching ideology, and that's not healthy. We can be honest about that while still arguing for an update to the canon so students can relate more to what they're reading.
I also resonated with the lady in the blue blazer. By constantly focusing on the purity of what's being taught in schools, whether from a sexuality perspective or a race perspective, the right is truly hanging out kids out to dry because they are struggling with much more basic academic issues, like reading at grade level! Florida clearly has an issue here that they need to address, but all the time is spent on these witch hunts... some of which are valid, others of which are probably as productive as the anti-harry potter book bans.
How could this conversation have been more productive? By bringing statistics and rates into the equation. When we all work from anecdotes, our personal truth competes with someone else's personal truth. But if we knew how often books were found in schools that were really objectionable, vs. how often books were banned, vs. what the actual florida standard says, and even how many schools sent out anti-racist pledges to parents. Then we could actually recognize "hey, maybe this really graphic book isn't that big of a problem as it was only in these two school districts" or "Hey, maybe that one district shouldn't teach this in kindergarten, but all the rest of the schools in Florida aren't doing that."
Excellent response.
Purpose of education is to educate…to teach reading, math, science, history, critical thinking etc. Too often, this doesn’t happen and it is NOT a money issue. If it was, then all highly funded states would be outperforming and they aren’t. We need more civics classes. We need kids to be reading at grade level. Instead, we are wasting time and money on this stupid stuff. Let the parents and psychologists handle it.
I was unable to view the video as it states it is restricted.
Since when did Florida become a swing state?
Florida is not a swing state. Ben's bias was apparent and he allowed the Woke a-holes way too much leeway compared to the others.
This is not a series anyone needs to watch moving forward. Just more of The FP pretending to be an honest news broker while trying to shill for the DNC. Seriously, calling Florida a swing state is straight-up Leftist propaganda.
You need to introduce a mic shut off tool. This reminded me more of a cable news panel with people just talking over each other and airing their grievances. The moderator needs to facilitate a more productive back and forth. May be try keeping it to 4 participants and see how that works next time.
First - thanks for doing this - I think we all need to talk and listen - it is good to hear other people POV, not saying I agree with all of it, but helps me think about my position when I hear from others.
I live in Florida. Florida is not a swing state. What it does have is a highly vocal and activated left wing that are doing everything they can to flip it. For example, we have two referendums on our ballot this fall. One is allowing abortion through nine months by “healthcare” professionals, and the other is allowing marijuana to be legal for any reason. Both of these referendums were brought up by Democrats who went out and got hundreds of thousands of signatures on their petitions. It has now been reported that there are many problems with the signatures they collected. But they’re still on our ballots.
The three Democratic women were horrible. What a group of "mean girls". One of the fat women called the man who lost his child in a school shooting a "cracker white supremacist". The other fat woman seemed about to physically threaten Tiffany, who barely got a word in edgewise.
I'm embarrassed to have been a lifelong Democrat, because I see how awful I must have sounded a few years ago. This was more like a reality show than a debate.
I hope that this series will eventually feature people who aren't so insufferably rude. Five random people plucked from a grocery store or gas station would be more civil with one another.
I just watched this. First of all the moderator was clearly biased. That should change if these debates are to be taken seriously. It would have been interesting to ask the Black lady what she knows about Irish history or Italian history in this country. Many ethnic groups were discriminated against when they first arrived and some still are today. Perhaps the incessant focus on black history is doing a disservice to other ethnic groups and the goal of inclusivity and understanding. A serious analysis and discussion about why young boys are lagging in our Public Schools would have been good. And, I would have liked to have had a more in depth discussion about how schools are funded and where the money is spent because the product of our educational system (our children) is clearly not performing up to standards.
Great topic and guests. Balance is THEE most important thing in any environment, but especially here.
Most of my friends are K-12 teachers here in MN and they report the unfunded mandates - coming from state and federal governments - are the worst. It is ironic the teachers are getting paid by the same entities.
That wonderful Iman represents most teachers I come across - balanced as they should be.
Colleen needs to better understand that our schools ARE government schools that have little oversight overall at the state levels.
MN teachers teach to Minnesota Standards of Learning. It's been awhile since I was directly involved...but the State of Minnesota [MDE] sets the standards for what is to be taught....not the Feds. The Feds have a lot of unfunded mandates...yes....but the State locked kids out of the classroom during Covid.
The intro of them all yelling wasn't super appealing. I watched a little bit of the first part, but an hour of confrontation admittedly sounds a bit exhausting. I'll try to watch it, but the left is so good at sugarcoating their positions to make conservatives seem like monsters and/or idiots.
I agree Ben was not an honest broker. His biased was very apparent. Why can't you just moderate and keep your biased out of conversation. It would have been nice to have a more diverse group. Latino, Asian, if we are a diverse nation lets get some other cultures that are conservative and liberal in the conversation. Tiffany moms for liberty and the gentleman who lost child at parkland are on point. With all money pumped into schools and our kids cannot read and are being influenced by an ideology this is a travesty!
This was not a debate. Ben is not an impartial moderator . This was an out of control school board meeting.
If this is indicative of how the rest of this series will be conducted, I need not see more.
This was awful.