I think you have to be a paid subscriber or something to upload photos. Otherwise, this free service works well: https://postimages.org/

Your move

I don't know that jargon, but a quick google tells me it includes teaching phonics, which means it is not the whole language approach.

The whole language approach is using contextual cues, guessing, etc to learn vocab without the sound-it-out basics of phonics. And it works fine for privileged kids - books around the house, parents that read to them, etc. I was taught this way, and you were too most likely. It's only the past few years where the failure of the approach has been addressed, and only in certain sectors of ed.

Turns out poor kids generally need direct instruction. This is ancient history man. I'm surprised you don't know what I'm talking about with a partner who teaches. — Jeremy Murray

You wrote clearly but I got mixed up somehow and thought you were saying that phonics was woke. I guess because the phonics approach is a relatively recent development. Anyway, I still don't understand how either approach to teaching reading is woke. Can you explain?

Your move

Who is the Nietzschean here? — Baden

Armless violinist Carl Herman Unthan.



I will seize myself with an iron fist to get everything out of myself.

I thought we might be playing suicide chess for a minute and you didn't tell me so I retreated. In the immortal words of Sun Szu – “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”



Your move

Does your wife still teach? — Jeremy Murray

Yes, she's taught high school English in a variety of districts—some more liberal, others more conservative; some affluent, and others less so.

Even the insistence on whole language over phonics is 'woke'. — Jeremy Murray

It's quite a stretch to consider the Science of Reading movement woke.

Your move

I fail to grasp your meaning.

That’s an unusual opening, exposing your king like that.

Your move

Sorry man, I thought I was clearly indicating I see wokeness as a primary problem for the issues I listed? I mean, there are non-woke related issues, but yeah, the failure of discipline, literacy rates? Wokeness wears a lot of that. — Jeremy Murray

Literacy rates are typically attributed to socioeconomics, instruction quality, funding and resources, language barriers, and broader social factors like nutrition, healthcare, and family support. How does wokeness impact any of that?

"the conservative wing of MAGA" :lol:

Trump sues ‘degenerate’ New York Times for $15B

Apropos, DOJ Deletes Study Documenting Frequency Of Far-Right Violence: Report

I found it only works on a desktop and not an iPad or touch device, FYI.



Your move

The game is afoot.

My point is that it might be procedurally woke to argue power, equity, identity. But it’s not substantively woke to argue whites are being oppressed and women aren’t.

Do you agree with that at least? — Fire Ologist

I agree that it could be difficult to meaningfully argue, though you might have an uncommon argument that looks at it in a unique way.

If you're trying to say that wokeness is like religion in its moralizing, then yes, I completely agree.

Wokeness was the language of OISE in 1997 when I did my initial teacher training, and was the language in the early 2000s when I did my masters of ed.

It feels safe to say that schools have been 'woke' since before the term emerged in popular parlance. Should we not hold these educational leaders - who have failed to curtail abseentism, declinging standards, increasing violence and declines in mental health, students and staff alike, accountable
for these failures? — Jeremy Murray

Absolutely, though it's not clear how much of these failures you're attributing to wokeism. I'm sure that plays a part. Anyway, funny coincidence that my wife did her initial teacher training at about the same time, teaching High School English, in the deep blue state of California.

You asked if I saw the end of woke and I responded to that question. I think the 'woke viewpoint' will continue because once a new and useful perspective is acquired it's difficult to forget, especially if there's an abundance of subject matter to look at from that point of view.

There's a difference between observation and action, however, and identity politics can ultimately be self-serving rather than serving the interests of the marginalized. For example, are "deplorables" actually doing better now than they were before MAGA? Are trans people doing better now than before woke became mainstream? Violence against the trans community is increasing. I imagine it will spike further after the Charlie Kirk incident and the way MAGA is politicizing the tragedy.

Regarding dogmatism, you're free to argue that whites are being oppressed and that women aren't. There is no God-like authority figure to judge you harshly for doing so. It's not a sin.

Clearly woke went mainstream in the 2010s. Why would anyone say otherwise? There must be a reason.

Do you see the “End of woke”? — Fire Ologist

Interpreting events, institutions, and cultural norms in terms of power, inequality, and identity categories became mainstream in the 2010s. I imagine that lens will last as long as it is useful.

[woke] Went mainstream in the 1960s. Institutionalized by 2000s. — Fire Ologist

Went mainstream in the 2010s. I can’t tell what your game is but it’s very late in the game to be playing games.

How is "Cynical Theories"? That's been on my list for a while. Stock I know from Spiked and other Brit heterodox cites, is she worth reading in depth? — Jeremy Murray

It’s been some years but I would say good and worthwhile. Though it was not the intention of either book, I developed somewhat of an appreciation for the more philosophical aspects of wokeness. For instance, the question of why shouldn’t a society bend to the weak? Efficiency, predictability, and hoarding wealth & power are also forms of weakness.

I assume Vivek is not serious. — Jeremy Murray

Political garbage. It can be interesting to dig through the trash on occasion.

"The New Jim Crow" is woke-adjacent, not woke? — Jeremy Murray

Contrary to Fire’s rewriting of history, wokeness doesn’t go back to Karl Marx. It is also rather narrow in focus compared to full-bodied wokeness.

I realized that after my last thundery post about reading stuff that I hadn't read much DiAngelo, so I read this:

"Beyond the face of race: emo-cognitive explorations of white neurosis and racial cray-cray".

It might be the worst thing I've ever read. I mean, I kid, but, honestly? It might be. — Jeremy Murray

Like the Kirk shooting video, I wish I could unsee that.

a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith — Hanover

Are you at all familiar with his, uh, less than kind hearted beliefs? I could compile a list.

Behold Wagner, who would have made the world a temple of sound — yet his temple became a tomb. The German herd bowed to incense, not fire. Nietzsche was dynamite, and walked among the ruins of his organ, planting stars where bells once rang, with a style that dances.

The US is really blowing it when it comes to social harmony, and I have the same sense of wrong when it comes to "in your face" sexuality, even when it is heterosexual. How many remember when our sexuality is a private matter? In the movies it was alluded to but not "in your face". Could there be a relationship between this modern "in your face" sexuality and Woke? — Athena

As long as it's "in your face" in the traditional way, there's no relationship. If it's "in your face" in a non-traditional way—like in a man's face—then the woke red flags start to fly.

If a business is high risk for discrimination claims or whatever and a DEI officer lowers the cost of insurance, it sounds like a good business decision to have one.

Woke is 100 years old in Europe (white men like Marx inspired it). — Fire Ologist

Like saying that I’m super old and am my great great great great grandfather.

Marx + Nietzsche + Freud + Weber
  ↓
Gramsci
  ↓
Frankfurt School (Critical Theory)
  ↓
Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze (Postmodernism)
  ↓
Butler, Crenshaw, etc. (Identity & Gender Theory)
  ↓
Wokeism / Social Justice

Is the only critique of woke to come from the unwoke? — Fire Ologist

Is the only critique of anti-woke to come from the woke?

The latest anti-woke fascist move by the Trump administration is to deny trans their Second Amendment rights. Nevermind the fact that less than 0.1% of mass shooters are trans.

Reactive fury is a counterfeit of power: it shouts, it strikes, and all the while it gnaws its own heart.

Every morality is a shadow cast by power. What matters is not the shadow, but whether the light behind it warms life or withers it.

You Must Change Your Life by Peter Sloterdij

The same basic power dynamics exist in religion. Though he presents it with a joke, Žižek makes a direct comparison between Rabbis and wokesters. Do you think the religious need therapy also?

The emotionally vulnerable are just being exploited and led in destructive circles, because the grift depends on them not finding a proper cure. — Tzeentch

What is the proper cure?

When one reduces one's own historical and/or cultural identity to "subservience to patriarchy", "slavery", etc. the 'other side of the mirror' is that one is indirectly admitting to one's own inferiority. Hence, observing the woke is like watching a dog chase its own tail. — Tzeentch

This doesn't address how "one's wrongdoing paradoxically grants a kind of moral authority."

Žižek underscores the point that morality is power in disguise. The scenario is what Nietzsche calls the “ascetic ideal” — a way of dominating life by turning life-denying values like humility into a source of authority, powerful not in spite of humility but because of it.

LOL, you're getting much better. — AmadeusD

I trained with the best.

How would you explain this phenomenon in a way that differs from Žižek’s interpretation? — Number2018

Nietzsche's master/slave morality.

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Speaking of socio-aesthetic milieus, there was a recent dustup in the culture war over the logo redesign for a restaurant chain. Trump Jr. led the anti-woke charge against Cracker Barrel and Trump Sr. finished it, damaging the brand and forcing them to abandon their rebranding efforts.

It might be noted that rebranding of this kind is a common practice in the evolution of a brand. It's sometimes called logo simplification or brand minimalism, and the basic logic of it simply that brand equity allows simplicity — the more familiar the brand, the less it needs to say visually. A good literally iconic example of this is the Apple logo. When the brand was new the logo was a highly detailed illustration of Isaac Newton under a tree.

What's remarkable about this is that the anti-woke mob was led by the heads of MAGA, and that the rebrand apparently had nothing to do with wokeness.

Textbook refusal to admit it’s a fallacy fallacy.

If some people can do this, all people can do this. — AmadeusD

Classic hasty generalization fallacy.

To be honest, I imagine this the easiest litmus test for whether or not one is doctrinaire, woke or anti-woke. Have you read any books on the subject?

Has anyone tried to read woke? It's intolerable garbage. Judith Butler? Robin DiAngelo? Candy-ass X? — Jeremy Murray

I've only read anti-woke books like Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Material Girls by Kathleen Stock, and really awful ones like Woke, Inc. (on a par with DiAngelo awfulness I imagine). Though I've read some woke-adjacent books like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.