The Miseducation of Americas Elites • Hacker News Board

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#11

Post by 7_my_mind » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

The reason the school employed a bunch of bleeding heart liberals is so the future politicians and thought leaders amongst those kids can later pretend they had a progressive upbringing.

I would not be surprised if the school hires professional photographers and takes kids on school excursions to protests to take photo shoots. In the future all politicians will have photos of them at the Friday climate school strike and the BLM protests.

The whole situation is analogous to the chivalry code of conducts that knights had.

And btw the teachers are in on the whole thing. They aren't stupid either. They know what role they are playing in this game.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#12

Post by ceilingcorner » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

Meanwhile in the Midwest, we are having BBQs outdoors and feeling quite sorry for these “progressive” coastal communities too educated to figure out how to resist their own puritanical tendencies. The amount of fear they are living under is quite sad.

It is odd how the puritanical behavior still exists, it has simply been targeted in a different direction.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#13

Post by drno123 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #3

This really sounds like late Communist Czechoslovakia to me, where lying at school was an obvious norm, everyone knew what was publicly unspeakable and which one of your colleagues was a snitch. The difference is that by late 1980s there were few true believers. Those who held the power and dictated the indoctrination standards were mostly tired pragmaticists who were in power to be in power and little else. There we…

I grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and it is obvious both to you and me where this is leading to. You get downvotes from people who were sold a lie.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#14

Post by inglor_cz » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

drno123 wrote: post #13

inglor_cz wrote: post #3

This really sounds like late Communist Czechoslovakia to me, where lying at school was an obvious norm, everyone knew what was publicly unspeakable and which one of your colleagues was a snitch. The difference is that by late 1980s there were few true believers. Those who held the power and dictated the indoctrination standards were mostly tired pragmaticists who were in power to be in power and little else. There we…

I grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and it is obvious both to you and me where this is leading to. You get downvotes from people who were sold a lie.

Zdravo, brate.

We the former Eastern Europeans feel like Cassandras these days.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#15

Post by rossdavidh » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 1:55 PM UTC

Hypothesis, which I have thought about for all of about 30 seconds: the more elitist the school (or workplace, or profession), the more it needs to profess (loudly, and without toleration of dissent) that it is anti-racist, anti-capitalist, etc. The fact that this article is describing a very elite school with wealthy parents is not a coincidence, or even ironic, it is the driving factor that makes it that way.

Why is this? Because, as the concentration of wealth in the top (and almost entirely white) ranks of the U.S. causes people in that group to know, perhaps subconsciously, that a violent backlash is coming, and they want to get out of the way of it. Without, you know, actually losing their privileged spot.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#16

Post by mycologos » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

As an outsider to the world of elite private schools, is the idea that they will help your kid get a nice job even if they're actually just mediocre? Like, in my head the logic goes "if you're in the top 10% of your high school class and get 1500+/1600 on the SAT, you can probably go to a cheap honors program at a public state school, and then you can pick from several tracks to make six-figure salaries". But maybe you need to be well-networked since preschool to work in finance or whatever if you're just of average intelligence?

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#17

Post by the_why_of_y » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

drno123 wrote: post #13

inglor_cz wrote: post #3

This really sounds like late Communist Czechoslovakia to me, where lying at school was an obvious norm, everyone knew what was publicly unspeakable and which one of your colleagues was a snitch. The difference is that by late 1980s there were few true believers. Those who held the power and dictated the indoctrination standards were mostly tired pragmaticists who were in power to be in power and little else. There we…

I grew up in communist Yugoslavia, and it is obvious both to you and me where this is leading to. You get downvotes from people who were sold a lie.

Is your argument that the ethnic conflict and genocide in several former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s was caused by an education system indoctrinating people with anti-racist attitudes?

I didn't grow up in Yugoslavia, so please elaborate a bit how that worked, because I don't understand.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#18

Post by tekproxy » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #3

This really sounds like late Communist Czechoslovakia to me, where lying at school was an obvious norm, everyone knew what was publicly unspeakable and which one of your colleagues was a snitch. The difference is that by late 1980s there were few true believers. Those who held the power and dictated the indoctrination standards were mostly tired pragmaticists who were in power to be in power and little else. There we…

Communists hate historical evidence that their theories are ruinous.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#19

Post by analog31 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

7_my_mind wrote: post #11

The reason the school employed a bunch of bleeding heart liberals is so the future politicians and thought leaders amongst those kids can later pretend they had a progressive upbringing. I would not be surprised if the school hires professional photographers and takes kids on school excursions to protests to take photo shoots. In the future all politicians will have photos of them at the Friday climate school strike…

Let's go easy on the teachers. They have to pretend to love these kids, despite having their lower-caste status rubbed in their faces all day long.

Re: The Miseducation of Americas Elites

#20

Post by travisjungroth » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

My belief on the topic of increasingly extreme left social ideology in unexpected places (and hopefully this doesn't get me blacklisted or something, posting under my real name) is that the institutions of power in the US see Progressivism as an actual threat. They are giving ground in some spaces and even getting ahead of the curve in others as an act of self-preservation.

A giant corporation is happy to add one non-man and one BIPOC (ideally as a two-for-one) if that allows the power of the rest of the board to be preserved. They'll put all their employees through sensitivity training, celebrate every holiday and tweet anything you want if it has even a chance of keeping the minimum wage from getting increased. Prep schools for the elite will teach radical ideology if it keeps a target off their backs during education reform.

For people trying to move America towards a more liberal and just society: these institutions are not your allies. Do not be fooled by their language, their tokenism, the sincere people they hire as mascots. They're taking half your message and saying it back to you twice as loud to drown you out.