• meowmeowbeanz@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Elon’s latest crusade against the Department of Education plays like a Silicon Valley remix of Atlas Shrugged – all disruption theater masking a fundamental disdain for public infrastructure. Dissolving federal oversight would turbocharge the existing educational caste system, where zip codes determine destiny and critical thinking gets outsourced to charter school grifters.

    The student loan rage reeks of survivorship bias from someone who cashed out an emerald mine privilege card. Decrying “bureaucracy” while building rocket empires on government contracts is peak hypercapitalist cognitive dissonance. Local control sounds quaint until you realize which local oligarchs get to rewrite history textbooks.

    This isn’t innovation – it’s demolition derby governance. The rubble left behind would make great feedstock for AI training data, though.

  • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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    3 days ago

    Fuck you, Musk. The Department of Education is approved and funded by Congress who we voted for! You’re an unelected piece of shit Nazi fighting against literal knowledge.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      The dumbass thinks getting a college degree means you are already failing or something.

      He’s suuuuuuch a dipshit, but also a complete asshole.

      • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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        I don’t understand. Does he think that people can somehow learn a lot of shit by reading part-time for a year? That is fucking impossible. I went to university to learn accounting and it was the most grueling thing I have ever done academically. I never got my accounting job, but I did prove I can survive through very hard and demanding work.

        This fucker just can’t do shit.

      • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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        It’s simpler. They know that those with college degrees usually vote with the liberal bias that reality has.

        • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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          3 days ago

          These people are either stupid or evil. Or both. And so we have to oppose them. Does it really matter which it is?

          • grue@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Yes, it matters, because underestimating them because we think they’re stupid instead of evil is a recipe for disaster.

            • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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              3 days ago

              But it kind of implies the prerequisite of understanding or empathizing with them. But those of us who don’t feel a compulsive need to consume and burn everything will never understand them. Not truly…

              • angrystego@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                You don’t have to be a car to understand how it works and to avoid the damage it can potentially cause if you let it run uncontrolled.

                • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  Right, we need to know whether in an emergency on slippery roads to pump the brakes to keep in control or to trust in anti-lock brakes to do it for us

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    3 days ago

    Once all of this damage is done there will be people who wonder why they can never get ahead in life. Why so many roads towards wealth have been cut off from them.

    The days from the 80s to today, especially this recent event, are what lead to it. But sadly they’ll be so uneducated that even this they will not understand.

    Like being in a prison whose walls you cannot see and whose bars you cannot feel. There is no greater wealth than education, no greater poverty than ignorance.

    • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      Once all of this damage is done there will be people who wonder why they can never get ahead in life. Why so many roads towards wealth have been cut off from them.

      That day has been here since the mid 2000s. More than half the country lives paycheck to paycheck with less than 1k saved, and will be stuck there working until they die.

    • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
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      Damn am I high af or is that last line just summing things up so beautifully…

      I am glad to finally see people on social media actually pointing out how our education system has been systematically under attack for decades to make a more malleable gullible voter base and preparing future voters with propaganda early

    • BadmanDan@lemmy.world
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      Ngl, this post kind of saddened me. I don’t want to believe it, but the possibility of what you’re saying being true is bleak to me.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      These same people will vote for qons even harder, assuming we even have free and fair elections. Why? I’m sure it will be for very stupid reasons, like seeing a trans women in sports somewhere, even if it’s not even in this country. Or because they thought Hollywood “talked down to them” or whatever the fuck.

      They might be forced to move out of their trailer and take up “urban camping”. They and their kids may have no food, no clean water, and no health care, but by Zeus, they’ll be ahead of those Blas and those trans and those Mexicans!

    • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
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      It’s going to be worse than that. AI may take your job, automation will dramatically advance, and you will be left with little more than the virtual realities created by some corporation to fill your day with. Ready Player 1 may have the most realistic future.

    • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The man is backing a man who vows to end electric cars and increase our reliance on fossil fuels.

      The man sells electric cars.

      This man obviously doesn’t have his head screwed on straight.

      • LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        Doesn’t matter. He has his fingers in the treasury. He has all the money, what good are silly businesses to him now?

      • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        He creates shareholder value. That’s all that publically trades companies do. It’s their goal.

        Everything else is just ways they attempt to do that, and someone like Elon does it with hype, since the agencies that are supposed to prevent such nonsense abandoned their responsibilities a long time ago.

        Tesla stocks are now a ponzi scheme. At some point, someone’ll be left holding the bag.

      • Lasherz12@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        In all liklihood, this is a ploy to sell and rebuy tesla stocks to become the world’s first trillionaire faster than the other robber barons who have achieved the green light from America’s fascist movement.

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        Don’t insult Elmo. Elon Musk would get his ass kicked off Sesame Street

  • fox2263@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The cons in that sub believe the department should be gone as it steals money and indoctrinates kids. They say test scores haven’t gone up so what’s the point.

    They also say America went to the moon in 69 and the doe was invented in the 70s. Therefore it’s not needed.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      They never really say this exactly but I believe they are fine with getting the money but want it no strings attached. This is an old objection, such as from Title IX and the ADA.

      You should pull yourself up by your bootstraps and walk right in even if you’re mobility impaired. Only boys want to play sports: why waste money on girls? Our priority is a new stadium at this top school: why do we have to put money into this failing school? Why can’t we use education money for religious indoctrination and just leave us public school for the poors? /s

      Then you’ll see some sort of contorted logic about divisive inclusiveness and unfair equity

      Or at least this new attempt to destroy Education looks a lot like those older complaints

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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      “They also say America went to the moon in 69 and the doe was invented in the 70s. Therefore it’s not needed.”

      Maybe if they were actually educated, they’d realize an anecdote aint worth shit 🤷‍♀️

      • brendansimms@lemmy.world
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        A federally managed DoE goes all the way back to 1867 - it became a cabinet-level department with a specified ‘Secretary of Education’ in 1979.

  • Ulvain@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Comme on, Democrats, run someone in every fuckin district of every fuckin state and just run excerpts of this fucker on repeat, s maybe victory in the house and Senate in two years - is there still are elections by then - will be the only way these shitstains might be stopped

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      maybe victory in the house and Senate in two years - is there still are elections by then - will be the only way these shitstains might be stopped

      So they can do whatever they want for 2 years and nobody will stop them.

  • scripthook@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Great so now they can privatize student loans. I was going to go back to school at age 40 and get my bachelors degree

    • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.worldOP
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      I hope this is /s

      The interest rate on those private loans are going to be much higher and more difficult to obtain than the government backed ones

      • scripthook@lemmy.world
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        Exactly I wonder how much higher they’ll be and if they will basically make college only affordable for those who are super rich and needs loans and I’m sure there will be a sharp decline in college admissions which is what the super rich want. Keep the poor and middle class uneducated and fighting with each other

        • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.worldOP
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          The whole idea here is to rapidly accelerate the decline of the US so the techbros can take over and create the own self described utopia where poor people live in debtor prisons and the rich are treated like gods

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    Funny, because their website is still up and looks normal.

    Maybe he means “won’t exist for much longer”? But if that’s the case then describing it as “no longer exists” shows either a poor grasp of language or a deeply flawed understanding of the past, present, and future.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      It effectively doesn’t exist if all the people are gone. Legally he can’t remove an agency that Congress created, but legally he can’t get rid of employees without due process nor can he choose not to distribute money Congress allocated. Legally. But enforcement is throught the courts and Congress so we’re screwed

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      His brain is probably fucked from the amount of ketamine he has used. When rich bastards like musk use drugs its never a normal amount of too much its usually a how the fuck are you still alive amount.

      • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        He should use more. Parts of his brain are still encouraging him to move around and do harmful things. He needs to be more comatose.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          I wish he would add pervitin to his cocktail of drugs so that at the very least he would be time period accurate to his Nazi beliefs. I kinda doubt the Nazis would approve of horse tranquilizer, they wanted meth.

          • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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            I don’t know why people think it was a meth and oxy fest, Nazis publicly detested all drugs. However, then was much like now, if you had wealth or power you could get whatever drugs you wanted pseudo legally.

            Some soldiers got meth, but that’s about as far as it went for public consumption. And Hitler basically took every drug that commonly existed at some point in his life.

  • SilentKettle@lemmy.wtf
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    The department of education do have a lot to answer for. If Americans were properly educated and able to parse opinions and bullshit out of Fox News articles Trump and Musk wouldn’t be running the country in the first place.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      Are you aware that Education is mostly a state and local thing? Federal Education money helps in places where money is lacking but they can’t really do much besides put strings on that money

      If Americans were properly educated and able to parse opinions and bullshit out of Fox News

      You’ll find many Americans who do fit this. They’re from locales that take education seriously and they do tend to be Liberal since that has turned into a code word about caring for anyone beside yourself

      Federal money has helped a lot despite its very limited authority. Kids with disabilities are required to be able to get some kind of education, schools must offer some sort of girls sports, schools must support federal school lunch program, schools must be accredited, kids who can’t afford college can get help, etc

      More effective ways to fix education might include

      • make state level departments of education a professional position not beholden to politics
      • ban Texas from customizing textbooks to teach its own “science”
      • expand national standardized testing like SAT to happen at more levels, and focus on grading the schools, not the kids
      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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        expand national standardized testing like SAT to happen at more levels, and focus on grading the schools, not the kids

        No - this is part of the problem. We aren’t allowed to teach anymore. I taught chemistry, but I was told that I needed to focus on the ACT - like, I needed to regularly incorporate entirely unrelated material for test prep.

        Elementary school is even worse. Science and social studies are deprioritized because the big testing is on reading and math.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          Yeah I know standardized tests aren’t popular with a lot of people, especially teachers. Teaching to the test is a failure of your administration but I have no idea how to fix that.

          But the much bigger problem is how uneven the quality of education is across different schools, different states, different regions. There needs to be a way to set the bar: every school needs to at least teach the kids x, or the school needs attention.

          My state does standardized testing and there’s certainly resistance, but I think they’ve generally succeeded in using it to grade the school, not the kid. And yes they’ve succeeded in identifying schools for more attention and I believe this has helped improve our education level. Then again, education is a priority here so everyone might be a little more motivated than in many other places

          How else do you find where a school, a district, an entire state is lacking? If you don’t know, how can you do something about it? I understand this is the type of interference from the federal government that certain areas don’t like but if you’re not teaching your kids then your local priorities are crap and need to be reconsidered. Or your local funding is crap and needs to be reconsidered. Or you need additional help. It’s ok for a school or a district to have a problem but it’s not ok to just leave it like that and that’s where a higher level Department of Education can make a difference. There’s a limit to your local preferences and it’s not ok to harm your kids’ future

          My state’s education system is generally ranked at the top in the US but your kids deserve that too

          • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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            The thing is, standardized tests don’t measure learning. They measure the ability to take standardized tests. It’s not an “education” to teach students “make sure to fill out every question! make sure to use process of elimination to improve your odds!” There’s a reason that the kids who can afford test prep do better - because they learn to take the test, not the material.

            Its a system that creates perverse incentives.

            And yes, it’s not popular with teachers because the test results don’t match the students. The way you ensure quality is standards, and hiring qualified teachers. The problem at this point is that the pay and work conditions are not commensurate with the education and work required - so states are hiring “adjuncts” as baby sitters.

            ACT/SAT are private companies, that determine what those test scores should be and represent. Stakeholders like teachers, students and parents are entirely removed from the equation.

            These tests also do not match the standards. The ACT science section (which at least is supposed to be optional soon) does not align with NGSS.

            The things that are impacting education are the climbing class sizes, the teacher “shortage” (eg, unqualified adjuncts are cheaper and don’t join unions) and the fact that we basically stopped teaching children to read for several years (eg, “whole reading”/guessing what words mean from context replacing phonics instruction.)Testing more does nothing to address these issues, and actually incentivizes these problems.

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              The difference is testing to grade the schools and defining tests to measure a standard that all schools must meet. That doesn’t make all of what you said disappear (and that’s an administrative issue) but changing the focus can make standardized tests useful. Regardless of any shortcomings there’s a bigger problem in quality of education in different schools, districts, regions, states and we can’t fix what we can’t identify.

              pay and work conditions are not commensurate climbing class sizes, the teacher “shortage” stopped teaching children to read

              Those are indeed very likely to be some of the root causes. However if you can’t measure the results you can’t demonstrate you’ve succeeded, addressing all of these doesn’t mean you’ve succeeded, there are most likely other issues to be addressed as well. Standardized testing to measure schools gives a way to identify where things are falling short, gives a way to demonstrate the success in correcting these issues, and gives a way to identify where that is not happening or where that is not enough

              As a teacher, you probably can’t do anything about class sizes. As a teacher, if there were anything you could do to increase teacher pay, you’d already be doing it. There need a to be a way to hold a school, a community, a district accountable for a school that can reach a standard bar. That starts with a way to measure whether they are.

              You may also argue there are better ways, such as professional audits or evaluations but those aren’t scalable and have not been working.

    • HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.worldOP
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      GOP once again

      They’ve been doing everything they can to degrade the department of education for 40 years.

      Something George Carlin kept warning us about for nearly his entire life and now it’s here

    • SilentKettle@lemmy.wtf
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      The trap of observing that Americans are poorly educated and poorly informed generally? Well I am sorry