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On August 31 2014 15:59 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On August 31 2014 12:51 bookwyrm wrote:On August 31 2014 10:51 Wolfstan wrote:
Not to mention a New York court just had a ruling that a sovereign nation can't semm lyrilectively pay bondholders. Gotta default on all or pay all. Of course, there is exactly one sovereign nation that falls under the jurisdiction of new York courts  ...uh...you...realize...that...any...security...issued...in...the...west...has...a...high...probability...of...having...US courts or UK courts as the venue for dispute resolution...so actually...a lot sovereigns who issue bonds in the west fall under ny court jurisdictions by the virtue of choice of law provisions or some other catch....which is why Argentina was sued in New York and recently lost...
Yes.
The point is just that there's a difference between having jurisdiction over somebody, and having the ability to bully them due to their dependence on access to capital markets which you control. Sovereigns are subject to US court decisions only in virtue of the continued hegemony of the USD, a state of affairs which has not been so tenuous in living memory. We may very well be approaching the end.
the politics of foreign debt and its repudiation are more complicated than just doing whatever US courts tell you. I just get annoyed when people talk about 'laws' when strictly speaking there is only power. Laws are something that happens under sovereigns, not between them.
As far as argentina, they've been defaulting on debts regularly since the end of the 19th century. I have no idea why anybody would ever buy an argentine bond. It's like lending money to the Spanish hapsburgs.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On August 31 2014 15:51 Introvert wrote:In this day in age, it's right to be suspicious. How is all this better for the teacher?Here is a longer examination of the new framework, though obviously from a biased source. But he doesn't advocate downplaying America's many failures, now does he advocate ignoring certain crucial aspects. But the overarching concern should be how does this allow teachers to teach better? This is more of the "teach to the test" stuff that's recently come under fire from various places. This won't help anyone. Moreover, what was wrong with the system before? I don't feel like debating every historical squabble, that's outside the scope of this thread. So the better question is why is this needed?
i don't know where to begin.
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So their complaint is that it does an inadequate job of protecting the national mythos against revisionist historiography? 'More myths, less history plz'
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On August 31 2014 15:51 Introvert wrote:
Moreover, what was wrong with the system before?
I don't feel like debating every historical squabble, that's outside the scope of this thread. So the better question is why is this needed?
I guess it's needed because history is not something every school can just make up on the go and history lessons probably should not consist of the content of /r/murica?
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The problem is that history is a battleground. There's no such thing as a presentation of history without an agenda behind it. Whose agenda is it? That's the only queation. But you can't teach critical thinking in schools - someone will get offended. Multiculturalism is as much a State ideology as the chauvinism it replaces. The needs of the State change and its official ideology must change to suit. I'm starting to think we should just abolish public schools. The working class radicals in Britain in the late 19th century resisted the imposition of public school system - they wanted to educate their children themselves, not hand them over for pacification and indoctrination. Maybe they had it right.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
agenda isn't anathema automatically. look at the content
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That's just relativism. Sure history isn't physics and it's all biased to a degree, but claiming that it's impossible to teach remotely accurate history is like claiming "all media are just equally biased, .. left and right it makes no difference!" and that's simply not true. America's (Christian) right has lost their mind. 'Liberals' may have their ideological preconceptions, too, but at least they're not defying simple reason and scientific consensus.
Just look at all these threads on teamliquid. In 90% of the cases people that are not from the US can't even really talk to the American conservatives without tearing their hair out.
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It's not relativist. I'm very anti-relativist. It's an admission that we are always in ideology. I believe very strongly in the things I believe - but to believe them is to make a stand on contested ground. My PhD program is full of 'Liberals' who defy common sense and scientific consensus - you should hear the stuff that comes out of their mouths. The stuff they believe is just as mind boggling as anything the right thinks.
The task of the historian is to brush history against the grain - and you can't do that while pretending to some enlightened neutrality.
I have a hard time talking to anyone at all without tearing my hair out. It's just a constitutive problem of any attempt to grapple with the mess we call history. Blaming the ignorance of American conservatives is just self-satisfied scapegoating. The problem is much more fundamental than that.
the issue is not about whether history can be 'accurate'. What's interesting about history is the meanings and interpretations we assign to it - and to speak here of 'accuracy' is a category error. The progressive multicultural narrative is as selectiveaand partial as the chauvinistic mythology - for example, the fetishization and resurgance of a new version of noble savage ideology in the treatment of ameridian peoples - who are apparently all nice happy hippies in harmony with nature until the big bad europeans with their 'modern constitution' and 'phallogocentrism' showed up and ruined everything. The Indians were a bunch of savage assholes just like everyone else in the history of our stupid species - but that doesn't fit the new mythology so it's verboten.
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On September 01 2014 02:02 bookwyrm wrote:
It's not relativist. I'm very anti-relativist. It's an admission that we are always in ideology. I believe very strongly in the things I believe - but to believe them is to make a stand on contested ground. My PhD program is full of 'Liberals' who defy common sense and scientific consensus - you should hear the stuff that comes out of their mouths. The stuff they believe is just as mind boggling as anything the right thinks.
Lots of people believe lots of stupid things, but those on the left with those views don't usually hold a lot of weight and power. For example, there's no influential politician on the left demanding we not vaccinate our kids.
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But there is a qualitative difference between some left-wing intellectual who believes that gluten free food is super healthy and that the Indians were nice people and a staunch conservative who doesn't believe that climate change is real even if 100 climate scientists are telling him that it is. You need two very different levels of ideology to make these things work.
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But don't you see how this immediately degenerates into an endless round of tu quoque? Of course, I don't think there's a single person with any power at all in America. ho could be describe. as 'left' - in fact, the idea that democrats are a left party is itself a stupid, dangerous idea equal (in my mind) to the silliest beliefs of mr. Cruz or whoever.
how about the oblivious Keynesianism which dominates the economic thinking of democrats? I'm just as terrified at that as at the Republicans and their voodoo austerity. The only point is, your claim that 'their silliness is sillier than my silliness' is just a product of the position on the battlefield - you cant be a combatant and a referee at the same time.
@above - the 'liberals' I've been forced to associate with recently don't even believe in the authority of scientists to pronounce upon the validity of boyle's law - let alone climate change.
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Language, young man!
You usually see a countermovement going too far when the initial movement went too far to the opposite side. Earlier in history it was common to teach how the white man saved the indians from their own savagery (look to earlier westerns for an example). At some point that swung back into the white man being morally corrupt executioners suppressing the defenceless hippie indians. if you dig into it you will find that reality was a lot more nuanced from both sides. Different tribes were very different which is what is usually forgotten in the historical simplifications.
When that is said, biases are inevitable, but if you have a good standard measure you may be able to reduce the biased wording or more biased sources. You obviously assume that the standard will be bad, which is a possibility, but not an inevitability.
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But you are assuming that it is the task of the history curriculum to remove bias from what is taught. On the contrary, I claim that the history curriculum should insist in no uncertain terms that all sources are always biased - what must be taught is how to deal with that fact. The issue is not to teach correct history, but to teach students to deal with the fact that the history is never 'corect' and to distrust anyone who tells them it is.
this position is, itself, an agenda.
I think you would learn a lot more about history by reading two highly biased and opposed narratives, than by reading one which claims to be unbiased. Teach history as the history of writing about history - it's the only honest thing.
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But the curriculum aims at taking a more critical approach at American history by looking at it from more than just the American perspective, doesn't it? At least it's better than the Bioshock Infinite like approach that the national review is advocating.
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I am assuming that it is the task of the history curriculum to remove biased historical analysis to as great an extend as possible. Primary sources are holy in this context if presented with enough angles for understanding other interpretations. I think it is difficult to teach young teenagers that everybody lies without causing other problems.
I think the source criticism is extremely important in any context, but you have to understand the basics to understand how to use critical thinking in the field. Most likely biased people cannot be attacked on lies, they are just more selective in what material to use and discards disagreeable positions, but that is not usually relevant for scientific teaching litterature where the 95 % rule is often used. Discarding the worst literature in that context is a different position from an agenda and unless you truely are operating on the consensus fringes it is not a problem. Giving the politician denying agw as much time as the scientist defending the scientific consensus is on its own very biased.
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Yes exactly! The 'equal time' approach is also a particular agenda (because it defines what are the two sides which must be given equal time)! There is no neutrality. This is what you must teach them.
I agree that the lies of the right must be fought - but don't pretend that what you are fighting is not a Holy War. The right KNOW that they are fighting a Holy War - and that is why they are winning.
If students learned only one thing in school, and that one thing was 'everyone will lie to you', I would consider that a resounding success.
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On September 01 2014 02:43 bookwyrm wrote:
But you are assuming that it is the task of the history curriculum to remove bias from what is taught. On the contrary, I claim that the history curriculum should insist in no uncertain terms that all sources are always biased - what must be taught is how to deal with that fact. The issue is not to teach correct history, but to teach students to deal with the fact that the history is never 'corect' and to distrust anyone who tells them it is.
this position is, itself, an agenda.
I think you would learn a lot more about history by reading two highly biased and opposed narratives, than by reading one which claims to be unbiased. Teach history as the history of writing about history - it's the only honest thing.
That's what the new curriculum is trying to do... The National Review (and similarly right leaning news sources) are complaining that we're not putting emphasis on the US point of view any more.
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Does it? I have no idea. I assume that it sucks because I don't trust anything created by bureaucrats. If you have a law which you what the official curriculum is, you've already lost the battle, on my way of seeing it.
all of what I'm saying is independent of the fact that I'm probably sympathetic to many of the goals of the new curriculum.
Does it have a thing where on the first day the teacher stands up and says 'you should distrust everything I say'? That's what my curriculum would have on it.
edit: oh yes. It's my opinion that this is just the replacement of one official state ideology by another. It's not that the us view is not represented, it's just that there is a new official us view (multiculturalism). The people who object were the beneficiaries of the old ideology who are being shut out, but this is all internal to us society. Whats being taught is not not the us view - its just not the old version of the us view.
it's not a battle about whether the us view is taught, it's a battle about what that us view IS, which is being taught.
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I love how everyone is so quick to decry "conservative mythos" as if there isn't a particular liberal view with it's own accompanying warped viewpoint. No, they would never try to stick it into history!
It's not like APUSH was conservative before this. It didn't really have a bias before. And it worked pretty well.
No one was saying to teach from a particular bias. The point is that before these guidelines, the teachers (many, many of whom are liberal) could make appropriate decisions in the classroom. Now they are bound to teach following a stricter set of guidelines so they can pass one test and go to college. If it's true that the new AP history test ignores certain battles in history and only mentions George Washington is passing, then it's a bad curriculum, no if, ands, or buts.
So this isn't an argument to set some sort of "America is always right!" viewpoint, it's an argument to avoid the "America is always wrong!" viewpoint.
And still no one can tell me why this was a necessary thing to do.
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This fear of institutions can also go to far. Notorious distrust in any form of authority in it's most extreme form will not enlighten you but turn you into a conspiracy nut. I think an example of this is is how people nowadays seem to distrust everything accomplished journalists produce and instead start to throw each other dozens of twitter posts in the face. I doubt that these people have come any closer to the truth.
On September 01 2014 03:15 Introvert wrote:
So this isn't an argument to set some sort of "America is always right!" viewpoint, it's an argument to avoid the "America is always wrong!" viewpoint.
The national review article used the phrase "American exceptionalism" about 50 times, which honestly translates to nothing else but "America is always right!!"
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