# Would you want to send your kid to a "Public School Social Justice Factory"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 1, 2018, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982 "2018-02-01T20:54:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 16
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/301 "2018-02-09T04:41:04Z")
Actually, I haven’t seen anyone answer the question **Urbanredneck** posed at the start: Would I want to send my kids to “Public School Social Justice Factory” Edina Public Schools? Given what I know of their alumni, teachers, and families, given the years I’ve worked in Edina - fuck yes, if I had kids. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the pussy-hat-wearing feminist Marxist to become Mrs. Squirrel, so the kids aren’t quite a reality yet. But a PUBLIC school that sends almost 19 out of every 20 graduates on to college has definitely earned my regard. It may be located in “Every Day I Need Attention”, surrounded by bloviating narcissists regularly referred to as “cake eaters”, to quote Mighty Ducks, but they’re doing a phenomenal job at providing a first-rate education to children and preparing them for life beyond a diploma. Somehow, several of our local conservatives have a problem with that. I’d be shocked, but #MAGA. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/302 "2018-02-09T05:00:46Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > There is a ton of stuff that SHOULD be taught in schools, but limited time to teach it all. IMHO, as long as what they are teaching can be justified as having similar literary merit, its just a matter of having too many choices. You should work to give students a representative sampling - i.e. not all dead white men, not all Western authors (unless you are teaching American Literature). Not all novels - there should be some plays, short stories, essays and poetry in there too. If they remove TKAM in favor of Kathleen Woodiwiss romance novels or the collected works of Jean Auel and Tom Clancy, I’d have a problem. > > There is an element in teaching Literature that is left to the parents, like teaching values. If its really important to you that your kids read Pride and Prejudice or The Hobbit or Howard’s End or East of Eden or Midnight’s Children or Night or Les Miserables - its up to you to see it gets read. There is simply too much really good and worthy literature for a school to cover. Well, I understand there are only so many books you can have on a reading list. What I do hae a problem with is when people want to remove them because they find them offensive. Whether it’s _Huck Finn_, _Of Mice and Men_, _Inherit the Wind_, etc. THAT is what upsets me. People who complain about language or ideas they might find offensive. I loathe censorship. Find alternatives because hey, we thought this was a really good choice, and we decided to use it instead – no big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/303 "2018-02-09T06:49:28Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#): > > It may be located in “Every Day I Need Attention”, surrounded by bloviating narcissists regularly referred to as “cake eaters”, to quote Mighty Ducks, but they’re doing a phenomenal job at providing a first-rate education to children and preparing them for life beyond a diploma. I agree: If giving kids a quality education is SJW stuff, then let’s SJW the whole damn country and the MAGAdytes can just find a fucking safe space. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/304 "2018-02-09T15:10:24Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Looking at that list, I’m noticing a couple of things: > -Every book on that list of “foundational works of American Literature that are inclusive of multiple cultural perspectives” was written by a man, and all but one were written by a white man. > -None of them were written after World War II, despite the course’s coverage “from the pre-colonial period to . . . the present.” > > I think back to the early nineties, when I took 11th grade English; in addition to Huck Finn and Scarlet Letter, we read Beloved and Invisible Man and Native Son. When I look at this course, my problem isn’t how SJW it is; my problem is that it’s not nearly SJW **enough**. It strikes me, looking at what Duluth has decided to teach, that they have combined U.S. Civics with American Lit. Minnesota does not require Civics, and it is sorely lacking in many of our public schools. I’d rather have a Civics class than shoehorn it into Lit (when did Supreme Court decisions become Literature?), but I think that is where they are going. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/305 "2018-02-09T15:18:43Z")
> [@nelliebly](#): > > Do you teach in a private school? Many states have laws prohibiting public schools and public school teachers from requiring students to purchase textbooks or supplementary reading materials. That’s why in my cash-strapped district, all students were reading \*The Scarlet Letter \*from copies with missing covers. It’s also why _A Yellow Raft in Blue Water_ was considered a relatively recent purchase. I teach in a public school. I think that having students buy texts is more common than not; I don’t know what the actual policy/law is here, but I think in general you can ask students to buy materials for a class as long as it’s not an absolute requirement for graduation: so art can charge a $30 materials fee as long as theater or choir are free and also can be used to fill the Fine Arts requirement. Teachers will say that they work with kids who can’t afford the books, and I think that that helps many kids, but others just don’t even ask or know that they can. > [@Guinastasia](#): > > Well, I understand there are only so many books you can have on a reading list. What I do hae a problem with is when people want to remove them because they find them offensive. Whether it’s _Huck Finn_, _Of Mice and Men_, _Inherit the Wind_, etc. THAT is what upsets me. People who complain about language or ideas they might find offensive. I loathe censorship. > > Find alternatives because hey, we thought this was a really good choice, and we decided to use it instead – no big deal. Why? I understand not censoring what’s available in a school library, or a public library, and I certainly wouldn’t stand for a book to be prohibited on campus if a student brought a copy, but **I** don’t like to teach _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings_ because I find the graphic rape of an 8 year old to be uncomfortable, and because I don’t think I should be mandating students read it. I also think it’s disrespectful to reduce such a story to a school assignment. I also, frankly, think very few teachers have any business teaching _Huck Finn_ because they mangle it so badly that it becomes offensive. I can think of tons of books that have literary merit that have no business in a high school classroom. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/306 "2018-02-09T15:46:59Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Well, I understand there are only so many books you can have on a reading list. What I do hae a problem with is when people want to remove them because they find them offensive. Whether it’s _Huck Finn_, _Of Mice and Men_, _Inherit the Wind_, etc. THAT is what upsets me. People who complain about language or ideas they might find offensive. I loathe censorship. > > Find alternatives because hey, we thought this was a really good choice, and we decided to use it instead – no big deal. To be honest, it probably has more to do with those books giving teenagers the excuse to say “nigger” far more than is actually necessary for a literary discussion than actual censorship. That’s one of the reasons why I would advocate replacing it with a book from the perspective of a young minority in the inner city. It will probably have that word, and quite likely other words, but they would be used in a more contemporary fashion, and not seem as easy to get away with. One of the points of fiction is to create empathy. It allows readers to put themselves in the shoes of the characters in the book. A book that replaced Finn with a young black orphan, moving from home to home, even running away for a time, and living in the inner city areas of several different cities, and showing the different cultures of all the different people he comes into contact with would serve a similar purpose, but also give students a new perspective. Rather than the entitled white student seeing inner city black populations as one monolithic culture that is oft times labeled as “toxic”, they would see that there is value in these people, that they have their own hopes and dreams, just like the student. I have no idea if this book exists. I would replace 'Mockingbird with a court drama about police abuse. Get the same ideas, but more relevant to the times we’re living in. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/307 "2018-02-09T15:54:21Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Well, I understand there are only so many books you can have on a reading list. What I do hae a problem with is when people want to remove them because they find them offensive. Whether it’s _Huck Finn_, _Of Mice and Men_, _Inherit the Wind_, etc. THAT is what upsets me. People who complain about language or ideas they might find offensive. I loathe censorship. > > Find alternatives because hey, we thought this was a really good choice, and we decided to use it instead – no big deal. It depends on the reason people find them offensive and what they are going to replace them with. The NAACP has a problem with then N word - and I suspect particularly in the context (used by white people and written by white authors) - they don’t have a problem with books that have a racial focus being taught. And it sounds like that is more or less the issue in Duluth One of my favorite novels is Lolita - for some of the same reasons I love TKAM or Passage to India - the prose reads like poetry. And its a wonderful study of Americana. (And, of course, you can do a good psychoanalytic, feminist or marxist reading out of it - there is a lot of material to work with). Its on my list of books everyone should read during their lives - but probably not in high school. That isn’t censorship - its common sense - there are other books that you can study prose as poetry - like E.M.Forester - and anyone who is interested in Literature is going to come across Lolita eventually. The value of Lolita specifically is not worth the hassle of even trying to cut the politics. And I don’t think that is really because Lolita has material in it that high school students don’t know about - my high schoolers certainly were exposed to worse - the nightly news exposes you to worse - we just saw the news filled with a man who sexually abused some of the most famous young women in our country when they were minors - and abused hundreds more. But because we want to BELIEVE they haven’t been exposed to it. (And on edit - as Manda JO says, it isn’t fair to teachers or to students to require them to read/teach it). ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/308 "2018-02-09T16:00:43Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > To be honest, it probably has more to do with those books giving teenagers the excuse to say “nigger” far more than is actually necessary for a literary discussion than actual censorship. 😛 You’ve met teenagers, I take it? ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/309 "2018-02-09T16:04:25Z")
You don’t just select books for their content, though. _Huck Finn fills a lot of gaps: it’s a satire, and you need to read satire. It’s a satire of Romanticism, so it works really well as a counter point to Benito Cereno or The Scarlet Letter_ or _Frankenstein_, because it’s openly mocking the exact aesthetic they were embracing. It’s a great precursor to _Gatsby_, because _Gatsby_ is all about the tension between the Lost Generation and their own lost idealism/Romantic tendencies. It’s a good introduction to Realism, and the ideals of verisimilitude and regionalism (which again contrasts nicely with Romanticism). It’s a picaresque, which is a narrative structure worth talking about. It has an unreliable narrator that isn’t too hard to unpack. Kids also like it and can generally understand it, which is worth a great deal. And finally, it’s really well done. It really is a profoundly clever work of art. Honestly, I keep teaching _Huck_ because I think it can be done well, because I think I do it well, and because there really is no substitute I’m happy with considering what I am trying to do with my course. _TKMB_, on the other hand, I can easily find substitutes for. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2018, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/310 "2018-02-09T16:08:07Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > You don’t just select books for their content, though. _Huck Finn fills a lot of gaps: it’s a satire, and you need to read satire. It’s a satire of Romanticism, so it works really well as a counter point to Benito Cereno or The Scarlet Letter_ or _Frankenstein_, because it’s openly mocking the exact aesthetic they were embracing. It’s a great precursor to _Gatsby_, because _Gatsby_ is all about the tension between the Lost Generation and their own lost idealism/Romantic tendencies. It’s a good introduction to Realism, and the ideals of verisimilitude and regionalism (which again contrasts nicely with Romanticism). It’s a picaresque, which is a narrative structure worth talking about. It has an unreliable narrator that isn’t too hard to unpack. Kids also like it and can generally understand it, which is worth a great deal. And finally, it’s really well done. It really is a profoundly clever work of art. > > Honestly, I keep teaching _Huck_ because I think it can be done well, because I think I do it well, and because there really is no substitute I’m happy with considering what I am trying to do with my course. _TKMB_, on the other hand, I can easily find substitutes for. You are convincing me to re-read Huck - I’ve only read it once and remember hating it. Its on my short list of books I REALLY disliked - anything by Thomas Hardy hits that list as well. But I read it at least 30 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/311 "2018-02-11T04:14:42Z")
> [@andros](#): > > Both of these things are true. > > You are ignoring the posts you consider rude. > > You are _also_ ignoring the more thoughtful and insightful. That’s really plain. It’s frustrating, because it feels that you are deliberately ignoring posts that you find challenging. > . I try to respond to as many as I can. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/312 "2018-02-11T04:19:06Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > My wife has a masters degree in social work, and I’ve been saying for years that a lot of the things she learned in school ought to be required for every high school student. We’d have a much better shot at fixing some of the problems we face as a society, if more people recognized the _existence_ of those problems. > > I don’t know enough to comment on this particular school (the article linked in the OP seems like a rather biased take), but as a general goal – hell yes, public schools should be social justice factories, or at least social _awareness_ factories. (And I really believe awareness of the problems leads to a desire to change them, especially among young people who aren’t so set in their views.) So many of the problems we face in American society, and that individual Americans are forced to deal with every day, revolve around issues of poverty and racism. Understanding of these issues ought to be a part of what it means to be an educated American citizen. I’m not saying the school should promote a particular policy to address these issues, but they should promote an understanding of the issues – beyond, you know, “racism is bad, and it sucks to be poor”. > > To give one example: I got good grades in school, went on to college and even grad school, on paper I would be considered “well educated”… and I had basically zero awareness of the history of systematic housing discrimination in this country, until I was out of school and in my 30s. And this is something that [shaped American cities](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/19/498536077/interactive-redlining-map-zooms-in-on-americas-history-of-discrimination) all across the country in ways that persist to this day. I’m sure that at some point I had been required to memorize that the Fair Housing Act in '68 outlawed discrimination in housing based on race – I’m pretty sure at the time I thought the problem was just individual racist landlords, mainly just in the South, and that the issue was basically solved once the act went into effect. I’d never heard of redlining, or of racially restrictive covenants. I’d never even thought about the long-term effects of these disparities. Likewise, I’m sure at some point I had to memorize that the G.I. Bill of '44 provided benefits for veterans returning from World War II, but I learned nothing about the racial disparities in how these benefits were given out.\* > > That’s a failure of our education system, which deserves to be corrected. > > \*One particularly egregious example I’ve seen cited – but hardly the only one – is that in one year in the state of Mississippi, the G.I. Bill guaranteed over 3,000 business loans for whites, and only 2 for Blacks – less than 1/15th of 1% percent of the total loans, in a state where Blacks were more than 45% of the population. Well I think it depends upon the amount of social justice. Plus it depends upon the attitudes of the teachers. Lots of issues were brought up when I was in school in the 70’s and 80’s. Either within reading stories in english class to reading about things in history. We also did current issues in 7th and 8th grades thru a weekly friday newspaper discussion. I really dont think schools have the time to really go into social issues. They barely have enough time to cover the basics. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/313 "2018-02-11T04:23:29Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I teach in a public school. I think that having students buy texts is more common than not; I don’t know what the actual policy/law is here, but I think in general you can ask students to buy materials for a class as long as it’s not an absolute requirement for graduation: so art can charge a $30 materials fee as long as theater or choir are free and also can be used to fill the Fine Arts requirement. > > Teachers will say that they work with kids who can’t afford the books, and I think that that helps many kids, but others just don’t even ask or know that they can. > . I think our basic fees, with “media” fees, is about $100. Art, band, and others are extra. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2018, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/314 "2018-02-11T04:26:21Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#): > > Actually, I haven’t seen anyone answer the question **Urbanredneck** posed at the start: Would I want to send my kids to “Public School Social Justice Factory” Edina Public Schools? > > Given what I know of their alumni, teachers, and families, given the years I’ve worked in Edina - fuck yes, if I had kids. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the pussy-hat-wearing feminist Marxist to become Mrs. Squirrel, so the kids aren’t quite a reality yet. But a PUBLIC school that sends almost 19 out of every 20 graduates on to college has definitely earned my regard. It may be located in “Every Day I Need Attention”, surrounded by bloviating narcissists regularly referred to as “cake eaters”, to quote Mighty Ducks, but they’re doing a phenomenal job at providing a first-rate education to children and preparing them for life beyond a diploma. > > Somehow, several of our local conservatives have a problem with that. I’d be shocked, but #MAGA. I agree that in many ways it might be the best district in the state. However it looks like this all started only about 4 years ago and many parents are starting to see a slide. Sometimes the culture of a school can change pretty quick with one principal. Frankly if there was an issue starting to form, its good that its getting out. If it was nothing then the school will get by. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2018, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/315 "2018-02-12T01:49:51Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Well I think it depends upon the amount of social justice. Plus it depends upon the attitudes of the teachers. > > Lots of issues were brought up when I was in school in the 70’s and 80’s. Either within reading stories in english class to reading about things in history. We also did current issues in 7th and 8th grades thru a weekly friday newspaper discussion. > > I really dont think schools have the time to really go into social issues. They barely have enough time to cover the basics. You can’t teach kids to write if they don’t have anything to say. This is just a central fact of teaching writing. It’d be like trying to teach carpentry but not letting the kids actually build anything: “We are just going to hammer boards into nails and sand 2x4s in random directions until you get to college. Maybe then you’ll be ready to make boxes and things. Just nails for now!”. Furthermore, can you not see that maybe a very good school in a very good district, a school where 19/20 kids go to college, might be a place where they need to move beyond the basics? Those kids probably have subject/verb agreement down. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2018, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/316 "2018-02-12T15:56:06Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > Furthermore, can you not see that maybe a very good school in a very good district, a school where 19/20 kids go to college, might be a place where they need to move beyond the basics? Those kids probably have subject/verb agreement down. Sure, we wrote about different topics. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/317 "2018-02-12T16:07:44Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > I really dont think schools have the time to really go into social issues. They barely have enough time to cover the basics. Schools that don’t go into social issues are, IMIO, failing students. The challenge is to find a way to incorporate them into relevant, multidisciplinary lessons. So as a read-aloud, I always start with **Bud, Not Buddy**. It’s a helluva good adventure story, great for teaching about character traits and relationships and plot structure. It also allows students to learn about racism, class esgregation, unions and labor struggles, the Great Depression, geography, and big band jazz music. As a writing exercise, we write letters to local government. It allows students to learn the difference between facts and opinions, the difference between an unsupported opinion and a supported opinion, paragraph structure, and letter structure. It also allows students to learn about Google Docs, about local government structures, about active citizenship, and about issues like traffic flow, pollution, child labor laws, and the like. Public schools must teach students about social issues. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2018, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/318 "2018-02-12T16:16:46Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Sure, we wrote about different topics. I don’t think you are following me at all. If you want kids to develop as writers, they need to feel passionately about something. They need to feel like they are saying something that matters. They need some skin in the game. If you treat social issues as verboten, if you make school into some Bizzaro Disneyland, where we pretend the world is great and don’t talk about anything that might make anyone uncomfortable, or about which people will disagree, then you won’t teach anyone anything. School needs to be relevant. How can it be relevant if you declare everything that matters to be off limits? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2018, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/319 "2018-02-12T16:24:05Z")
In fact, if you are teaching kids that everything is all sunshine, lollypops and rainbows, then you are still pushing a political viewpoint that things are as they are supposed to be. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2018, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982/320 "2018-02-12T16:59:01Z")
**Urbanredneck** , could you please give us your definition of “social issues?” Then, if you don’t mind, please tell me which social issues I should avoid in my classroom with regards to any of the following topics. This is a pretty broad list, so feel free to pick any or all as suits you best: German civilians and the Holocaust McCarthyism Spanish Conquistadors in the New World Jim Crow Pre-war immigration laws Progressive Era reforms (take your pick - food safety, environmentalism, women’s suffrage, whatever) Heliocentrism Thank you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982.md?page=15) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-send-your-kid-to-a-public-school-social-justice-factory/807982.md?page=17)