denisc

Rosses Point Golf Club, Budapest, running, reading, politics, history, and family. Not necessarily in that order.

[David Quinn @DavQuinn]

Been doing more digging about that draft Leaving Cert history course. (This is slightly long so please bear with it). A DCU academic called Maria Barry will a key member of the drafting team. She is co-author of a paper called 'Critical historical enquiry for a socially just and sustainable world', which looks at how history should be taught in school. The agenda is very explicit. As the paper explains, it seeks to define "what teaching history for social justice and sustainability means, identifying a range of salient concepts and pedagogical approaches within social justice education (SJE) and education for sustainable development (ESD), and considers how history curricula can be refocused to incorporate these perspectives."
But why should history be taught in this way at all, and what is meant by 'SJE' and 'ESD'?
The paper tells us: "Informed by Bell (2016), this chapter defines SJE as education which enables children and young people to engage critically and analytically with systemic oppression and to recognise their own embeddedness, and that of their communities, within those systems. It also strives to develop the knowledge, skills and concepts that will allow them to deepen their understanding of oppression in all its forms, understand and appreciate their own agency and work with others to bring about change."
In other words, 'social justice' is about overthrowing 'oppressive' systems and children are to be taught how to enlist in this cause. That is, they are to become left-wing activists.
The NCCA's background brief for the proposed history course warns against the rise of “nationalist and extreme political movements and ideologies”. It then highlights the “various movements campaigning for climate action, social justice and equality [that] have also emerged, striving for the advancement of rights of those who have been victims of discrimination or injustice historically.”
You can see the loaded language here.
The question is: why are Fine Gael and Fianna Fail happy to see history class used as a way to turn history students into Catherine Connolly-type supporters? Are they asleep at the wheel, or in some weird way, complicit? I suspect the former is mainly the case. Well, in that case, they need to wake up. @Casey5122dark @declanganley @MaryKenny4 @MichaelPTKelly @john_mcguirk

[Dan O'Brien @danobrien20]

Those of us who are liberals, and conservatives like David, have a mutual interest in preventing illiberal leftists from taking control of what our children are taught. The insidiousness of this ideology set out in a 2024 column.

[SK Tedeschi @skedeschi]

I'm a middle eastern historian. My own family were made refugees. And this is my honest view of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) - the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 1947–49 war surrounding the creation of Israel.

A thread. 🧵

[denisc @deniscollison]

@danobrien20 This also:

[Vlad Tarko 🌐 🏗️ @vladtarko]

More capitalist countries have lower income inequality, not higher. High income inequality is caused by cronyism which goes hand in hand with highly regulated markets. Welfare states also lower inequality, but you need free markets wealth to have generous welfare states.

[Deedy @deedydas]

Billionaire Michael Milken joked “if a US company replaces the US-born CEO with a CEO born in India, I buy the stock”

But he reveals he hasn’t backtested the idea.
So we did.

In the last 15yrs, that would’ve 50x’d your money: 7.5x more $$ and >2x IRR vs S&P500: 30% vs 14%!

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

"More capitalist countries have lower income inequality, not higher. High income inequality is caused by cronyism which goes hand in hand with highly regulated markets."

[Paddy O'Gorman @paddyjogorman]

Irish Times, like the mainstream media generally, is silencing people such as Stella O'Malley and forcing the public to turn to social media to find out what's really going on in the world. As someone who worked in MSM most of my life, this makes me sad, puzzled and angry.

[Dan O'Brien @danobrien20]

More than two thirds of Irish respondents support the EU arming Ukraine, well above the average across the bloc.
More and more poll evidence is showing that voters are well ahead of politicians when it comes to defence and security. Government politicians are far too afraid of those who want to leave Ireland and Europe defenceless. Leadership needed, not followership of the cranks and conspiracy theorists.

[Seán Keyes @Keyes]

https://t.co/3xnLGvHVuW

[Albert Dolan TD @albertdolan_]

We’re now working on Public Spend Tracker 2.0, designed to be more user-friendly and easier to navigate.

The goal is to create a “golden thread” across public spending: linking procurement, contracts, tenders, awards and payments so that any payment can be traced back to the original contract.

That level of transparency is where real insight comes from.

The ambition is simple: if the State spends over €100bn a year, improving outcomes by even 1% would make a real difference to people’s lives.

I also wrote about a new way to think about public spending and accountability. Read here: https://t.co/txQ7Pb1el7

Link to Current Tracker: https://t.co/Sj9gc4pvsv

[denisc @deniscollison]

@danobrien20 @Keyes Just imagine- it wouldn’t matter if you forgot to switch off the immersion 🙂

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

This seems really bad and I don't know what to do about it: not so much the differences in political attitudes, that's fine, but there's a strong gender divide in belief on straightforward factual questions like "is nuclear energy low-carbon?" https://t.co/3nF3Uz0cFC

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Jessica: Starmer is getting a lot of heat over this Mandelson thing.

Me: Are they calling him embattled yet?

Le Monde: Embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday, April 20, that he had been wrong to appoint Labour politician Peter Mandelson...

[Paul Graham @paulg]

If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word. https://t.co/vjjL1Ngwpa

[denisc @deniscollison]

@danobrien20 @WSJ Yes. Though the pipeline infrastructure is susceptible to Iranian attack (if they still have that capability at the end of this conflict )

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

The most exciting longevity trend right now is that we are actually beating dementia.

At a given age—70, 75, 80, etc.—the prevalence of dementia is down compared to what it was decades ago.

Today's 90-year-olds have less than half the risk of dementia that ones in 1984 did!

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The future is already here, but thanks to unions it's not evenly distributed.

[𝘽𝙤𝙗𝙗𝙮 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙮 @realBobbyHealy]

https://t.co/JNFPjh2Lon

[Alan Fryer 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱 @alanfryermedia]

This is quite something. The new Hungarian PM goes on state TV to announce the end of state TV.

[Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome]

Your annual Donald Rumsfeld IRS Tax Day Letter appreciation post.