it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.
yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.
right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.
the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.
these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.
it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.
we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.
secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)
whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.
they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")
and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."
i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.
one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.
i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.
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I'm rewatching the episode, and Belos is SO deeply fuckedupedly religious, holy. This is ALL about Institutionalized Christianity. No wonder Disney cancelled this show. Promising myself to not make this too long so here's some quick points:
Humans are born into sin, inherently sinful and must spend their lives repenting for their nature (simply by being 'witches' he probably believes there is no such redemption for the inhabitants of the Isles anyways).
Your soul will be doomed to the ashes of hell if you don't repent now. Belos probably saw the 'devil' in his brother and thought he was doing a service of god to kill him.
Remember we are dealing with The Demon Realm. Belos probably believes he is trapped inside some kind of hell. The Titan is the BI's version of God, and he just repeats the rhetoric he's internalized to make it digestible for the citizens here.
He literally thinks he is a saviour and all of the carnage is worth it because he is ridding the world from the influence of the demon realm; which I am sure is very intentionally a society free of homophobia and racism, things that have been largely installed by Christianity and religion.
I might go so far as to suggest that Hunter's grooming by Belos (which doesn't have to be explicit in that way) is probably in reference to the proliferation of grooming done by priests, often with the excuse of this is 'how god wants it' / 'the titans plans'.
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if you're wondering why bob is here it's bc in the original villareal story there was a very minor background detail that diego lobo and bob pancakes dated in college and broke up tragically and that's where the story peaked. so i included him it's still canon
thank you for these it was so fun!!!!!!!!!!!!
i did these in my this is the fall sim style so i'm thinking. if they exist in this universe what's all their opinions on the 'did jacques do it' situation. let's take a look
don: saw a photo of jacques's wife on the news during the investigation. said "whoa mama that's a hot babe!" like johnny bravo and did not read the headline. does not know anything about it still.
vlad: well he's psychic he could figure out the truth if he actually cared. and he has!
olive: obviously respects it. except for the getting investigated part, would never happen to her.
diego: does not think jacques did it but enjoys the tabloids. knows other rich people personally who he thinks have killed their spouses
morgyn: will post things like "friendly reminder that j*cques v*llareal literally killed his wife and is a billionaire so maybe don't go to one of their hotels" on tumblr and will then do a call out post about like a fanfic writer who wrote an unhealthy relationship with more severity
pascal: knows conspiracy theories and this one is bullshit. or maybe it just doesn't interest him as much as aliens and that's why he thinks that
jeb: has a very "well of course he did. them rich folk can do whatever they want. there ain't no hope for the rest of us" while kicking a can down the road approach
bob: thinks he did it. is very alarmed that it was brushed off. eliza's like bob book the hotel and he's like am i going crazy. does anyone hear me.
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