Even those who aren’t surprised by the simple fact of Donald Trump’s assault on America’s universities must be shocked by the full frontal magnitude of it all, belated attempts to walk back parts of it, notwithstanding. (Harvard is putting up a courageous, clever, and effective defense.)

  • Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    2 days ago

    This is nothing new for the GOP. The Texas GOP accidentally said the quiet part out loud in 2012.

    From the Texas 2012 GOP Platform

    We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

    This is why educational outcomes in red states are so bad, particularly in the south where the GOP often controls legislative and executive branches. People are scared of things they don’t understand so undermining education makes people easier to scare. Why do they want to scare people, you might ask? Because scared people tend to vote conservative.

    Over the past few years, a number of experiments have begun to shed light on the relationship between emotion and political inclinations. “There’s empirical research that suggests that when people are primed with images of mortality—graveyards, hospitals, the elderly—this can move them to the right,” said John Hibbing, who directs the political physiology lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Some studies suggest that people who are already conservative may be extra-sensitive to these images.