This Atlantic article touches so many topics that DL often talks about.

^^these are just random quotes from the article, not intended to make sense read consecutively

I tried. I did. I got to the point of parents sleeping outside in sleeping bags for admissions like a Black Friday doorbuster and had to close out before I stroke out. And that is before the article has ANYTHING TO DO with the political quotes above.

Liberal, upper-middle class parents are the fucking worst.

[quote] This Atlantic article touches so many topics that DL TROLLS often talks about.

FTFY

Re Target "failing to accommodate non-binary, transgender people": most new Targets have a family/large accessible bathroom that seems to be used predominantly by the ablebodied. This is exactly the bathroom that can be used for non-binary etc.

Same for women's restrooms with single stalls: I don't care if it's Caitlyn, cross dressers, dragqueens or self identified females using those restrooms. At schools though, a sensible approach would be the clinic bathroom.

Did the article mention Target R4? I missed that. Or is that from prior DL convos?

This article is great, OP; measured and thoughtful. Thanks for posting it!

The school the author’s 10 year old son and 5 year old daughter go to seems to have gone nuts!

The author and his wife and most of the school were *vocally anti-Trump* and yet after the election all the students start being taught only about slavery and the massacre of Native Americans (in regard to U.S. history) and the subject of American civics is completely eliminated.

The family is very politically liberal and yet one day after school (and the school’s new curriculum changes) the author describes this scene from his *5* year old girl:

“Our daughter wasn’t immune to the heavy mood—she came home from school one day and expressed a wish not to be white so that she wouldn’t have slavery on her conscience.”

[quote]the election all the students start being taught only about slavery and the massacre of Native Americans (in regard to U.S. history) and the subject of American civics is completely eliminated.

This is horrifying.

Maoist China, anyone?

This article describes the deplorable's view of 'The Liberal New York '.

No wonder they hate us.

In the futile attempt to include everyone, you end up excluding everyone.

These days, the more privileged people are the more they feel the need to drink the PC Kool-Aid, no matter how crazy it is, to establish that they are decent people.

When I was young I said, thought and did all kinds of crazy things. The adults I knew just politely ignored it or scoffed at it, like they should. People should stop treating their kids like enlightened little princes and princesses. Humans under the age of 25 should be taken with a grain of salt.

r11 I live in a woke part of New England. I was recently at a social function where a woman introduced her son as "My child" (to avoid gendering him).

I thought, GTFO.

Couple of things I found a bit curious:

* Packer is pretty old to have such young kids. He's 59, an age when many of his peers are grandfathers, not dads. So sort of odd that he never mentioned that the other parents were (I'm guessing) a good 20 years younger than him.

* He glosses over the fact that they decided to send their younger daughter to private school and (more important) seems to gloss over the fact that his familu has options (including moving to the burbs) that his son's Caribbean friend does not.

* The kid "crying uncontrollably" because Trump one. First off, what 9 year old kid is that invested in a presidential election and also, IIRC, we were all more in shock that day and trying to convince ourselves that Ivanka would save us or that he'd grow bored with the job and resign after a couple of months. The full totality of how awful Trump is didn't really sink in for a good year.

Progressives are disgusting. They are the inheritors of every other evil fucked up thing rich white people have perpetrated against everyone else for decades, centuries, millennia. They're just white people's latest twisted bullshit, and that's all. Put today's progressive next to the shits that perpetrated colonialism, the Inquisition, the Crusades.... same fucking thing, different suit.

[quote] These days, the more privileged people are the more they feel the need to drink the PC Kool-Aid, no matter how crazy it is, to establish that they are decent people.

I don't agree with this sentiment.

These people are sort of upper-middle literati class. My brother attends a private school that charges $35k tuition. I promise you, if anything like this happened at his school, the parents would pull their kids in a minute. The real privileged people don't waste their time with the "woke" stuff.

Well R14 makes FOUR racist accounts created by a Nazi Troll to scream nonsense about "white people" "progressives". Getting mighty sick of this shit.

Truth hurts, r16. White people's time is ending. The insanity will only get worse until the final coup de grace.

r15 but look at places like Williams or Amherst.

They're drowning in stuff like this.

R18, I honestly don't really know what the student body of these schools derive from. Are they mostly New Englanders or New Yorkers? What do their parents do, and how much do their parents make? (Are they known as schools for the wealthy?)

In my neck of the woods, and this is just my experience, all the wealthy people are rather hard-headed business people--apolitical, unless the politics affects their business or taxes; uninterested in art, unless they can hang something in their house that elicits envy or respect from people they do business with or know--and our private schools sort of reflect that. This sort of progressive politics--especially to this degree--literally wouldn't occur to them, it's not on their agenda.

In my opinion, this is an upper-middle phenomenon.

It's a phenomenon that's occurring in the upper echelons (the most 'privileged') of our educational system and those whom that system has recently graduated.

[quote]Our son lay on the couch and sobbed inconsolably until we made him go to the bus stop.

MARY!

[quote] I was recently at a social function where a woman introduced her son as "My child" (to avoid gendering him).

She told you "This is my child, which is what I say to avoid misgendering them" or did you just assume?

Or, honestly, is it just made up? Because a lot of these anecdotes, including in the original article, posted by a troll (though I think most of you know that), sound exaggerated or completely invented.

JFC, r22.

No it's not made up.

And it happened in the Happy Valley of western Massachusetts.

The Atlantic's long-form journalism has become very poorly edited over the last couple of years. I am already well into the article and the author still hasn't come to his point. And I fail to see how his quest for a school reflects or represents an actual problem most parents face. If anything, in the rest of the country, schools bend over backwards to attract students and to provide "customer service" that ends up diluting the rigor of education. He needs to take his head out of his ass and get an editor.

Elementary teacher in flyover land here.

The article does not surprise me the slightest, as this has been the trend in professional development and curriculum for some time in a progressive district.

Some of it is long overdue, but some of it does indeed have this Maoist vibe. No challenge or questioning is tolerated in terms of race or gender discussion. It would be like painting a target on your back. Silence is equated to collusion, according to one book we read and one very vocal staff member, so whenever I bite my tongue during our staff discussions, it seems like I’m a Fascist hiding in plain sight.

The far left would worry me as much as the far right if they had political power that the latter currently enjoys.

What seems crazy to me is that I grew up being silent as a means of self-preservation as a gay kid in a blue-collar factory town.

[quote] The author and his wife and most of the school were *vocally anti-Trump* and yet after the election all the students start being taught only about slavery and the massacre of Native Americans (in regard to U.S. history) and the subject of American civics is completely eliminated.

Amazing that they can't connect the dots as to why he won.

[quote]No it's not made up.

So the mother said, "This is my child, a phrase I am using so I do not inadvertently misgender them," then?

The woman said "This is my child," r27. The smug virtue-signalling was clear enough and if you have spent any time in the Happy Valley, you would know what I'm talking about.

Of course, you seem to be deliberately obtuse.

Ten or twenty years ago, she would have said "This is my son" or "This is my daughter."

Actually, r27, I just saw your responses on the Magdalen Berns thread.

It seems you are that obtuse.

Bye, gurl.

[quote]The smug virtue-signalling was clear enough

So even in your own version of the story, you can't do any better than say you assumed what was going on because you're a whiny little baby who sees "virtue signalling" everywhere. Pathetic.

And my poor dad, now 98, though the Russian kids were out of control because they didn't pay attention in his NYC remedial classes circa 1980....he was a substitute. They needed bodies to "babysit" the kids back then.

[quote]At schools though, a sensible approach would be the clinic bathroom.

In high school I always used the clinic (nurse's office) bathroom. Not because I was trans, but because the regular bathrooms were so full of cigarette smoke you could cut it with a knife.

DL catnip

The mother said "this is my child" to emphasize the preciousness of the kid. I see this all the time from parents and administrators who have zero interest in (and probably awareness of) the trans saga.

As a side note, virtue-signalling is one of the idiotic "ideas" that the internet has crapped out.

Just when I thought I couldn't hold liberal whiteys in deeper contempt, along comes this article.

So YMF is a right winger?

How did you get that R36?

The article is written by a noted liberal journo and ran in the Atlantic.

It's basically the story of how even someone with solid liberal credentials was worn out by the extreme left.

And, as I noted at R13, "He glosses over the fact that they decided to send their younger daughter to private school and (more important) seems to gloss over the fact that his family has options (including moving to the burbs) that his son's Caribbean friend does not."

New York City sounds so exhausting. Most people live in places where you just send your kid to the local school. You don’t worry that their life will be over before their fifth birthday and that they’ll be resigned to a life of normalcy, heaven forbid!

[quote] You don’t worry that their life will be over before their fifth birthday and that they’ll be resigned to a life of normalcy, heaven forbid!

And if you're worried, you move. There's no reason this guy and his family have to live in the middle of all that.

[R39] Yes exactly. The whole time I was thinking, why does he have to be in Manhattan?

I grew up in suburban Long Island, just outside of NYC boroughs. The public school you attended was the school closest to your parent’s residence. So if you are a NYC resident, your child doesn’t automatically go to the nearest public school? You have to go through a competitive process?

[quote]* Packer is pretty old to have such young kids. He's 59, an age when many of his peers are grandfathers, not dads. So sort of odd that he never mentioned that the other parents were (I'm guessing) a good 20 years younger than him.

Eh, there are a lot of OLD-ass parents of young kids running around Brooklyn and Manhattan; at most, he was probably more like 10 years older than the average-aged parent of his son's classmates. Plus, how is his age relevant to what he wrote?

* He glosses over the fact that they decided to send their younger daughter to private school and (more important) seems to gloss over the fact that his familu has options (including moving to the burbs) that his son's Caribbean friend does not.

Weirdly, yes, he did not spend much bandwidth on the decision to send the daughter to private school; however, the general fact that families like his have more options was a salient point of the article, not something he glossed over. A major "takeaway" from the article was that his son's school's quest for equality had led to an equally shitty education for all students—but really mostly for the poor/LMC kids because other kids' parents could afford to remove their kids and send them elsewhere or supplement their education with outside classes and tutoring.

* The kid "crying uncontrollably" because Trump one. First off, what 9 year old kid is that invested in a presidential election and also, IIRC, we were all more in shock that day and trying to convince ourselves that Ivanka would save us or that he'd grow bored with the job and resign after a couple of months. The full totality of how awful Trump is didn't really sink in for a good year.

I know a lot of liberal parents whose young kids were devastated by Trump's election, not because they truly understood what it meant for the country, but because they'd been so thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that Trump is BAD. BTW, what kind of idiots do you hang out with who thought that Ivanka would save us? I know no one liberal or progressive who didn't realize immediately that Trump's presidency was going to be a disaster.

Why do NYC upper middle class professionals wait until they are in the 50s before having kids? Is it because kids are so expensive so they want to stash away a million or two for their educations? Or is because they’re selfish and want a full career first without the extra work of parenting? I guess restoring that Brownstone in Cobble Hill costs a pretty penny.

[quote] Or is because they’re selfish and want a full career first without the extra work of parenting?

I think something like this is the most likely explanation in many cases. Having an IVF/fertility-treatment kid when you're early 40s–50ish (for women) and anywhere between early 40s and Methuselah for men is part of the general sense of entitlement that says "I can do anything my money will pay for, no matter what a shitty idea it is!"

When I see older men with young children I think, Must be a second wife. Especially if they’re rich.

R43, having kids late isn't just for rich people. It's also for people who want to be young and fun beyond their 20s. Then when they're in their 40s/50s, having kids makes them feel young.

But old eggs and old sperm make autistic kids. I think it seems unnatural to see ancient crones chasing after toddlers, anyway.

He's in Brooklyn R40. It's where all the woke liberal types live these days, especially if they have families. Manhattan has become way too expensive.

That's fairly uncommon R43, unless it's a second marriage and much younger wife. At least that was the case at my school when I was growing up--the kids with the much older dads often had step-siblings who were adults. (Think Barron Trump). It wasn't like there was a stigma to it, but you knew whose dad was older, it mostly played out in how the dads socialized, who coached various kids sports teams, etc.

But I would say that at least half my NYC-based hetero friends who are around my age now have at least one kid, plenty have two or three. (I'm 34)

R46 I’m in my 40’s and the thought of having kids now makes me feel old. Raising young children during middle age has got to be exhausting, even if mega wealthy.

I had a friend growing up whose mom and dad had gotten divorced and she married a very wealthy guy who was like 20 years older than her.

His parents got along pretty well, but whenever they would all go out for dinner, like for this birthday or something, the restaurant would just assume that the old guy was the mom's father and that she and the dad were the married couple.

This would delight my buddy and his father, neither of whom liked the old dude that much.

Also, while a lot of people are getting caught up in the “peak wokeness” of schools. What I find far more interesting is the devaluing of elementary and secondary public school education across communities in this country. We have allowed (religious and political) discourse to trump fundamentals - in BK one learns about slavery and Native American Genocide in the absence of civics*; in KY one learns that the earth was created in 7 days and discussion of Evolution is banned.

*this curriculum seems terribly short-aided, since inclusion civics into the discussion of both will only enhance the lasting impact of these two tragedies on American history.

That's on the extremes R49/R51

The upper middle classes are still laser focused on whatever it is that will get Oliver and Charlotte into a top college and so they don't focus on anything other than "will it be on the AP exam" and "how can we use this to burnish the college resume."

After reading the article, I'd asked some people who knew about the state of things at my old school, which had started life as a place with lots of people in the arts and entertainment (it was much more casual when my mother went there in the 60s and 70s) but has been mostly Wall Street since I was there, but still has the reputation.

No wokeness of the sort in the article, and the general attitude that if that's what you care about, the school is probably not the right place for you

[quote] But old eggs and old sperm make autistic kids. I think it seems unnatural to see ancient crones chasing after toddlers, anyway.

It's old sperm that make autism, and old eggs that makes Downs.

[quote] [R43], having kids late isn't just for rich people.

True, but as with most things, it's easier for rich people. Fertility treatments are expensive, as are the full-time nannies who chase the kids around so their aging parents don't have to break a hip doing it.

[quote]That's fairly uncommon [R43],

It's really not. Sure, plenty of people still choose to have kids in their 20s and 30s, but in the Financial District, where my brother and his family reside, and all over Brooklyn, where I live, you can't swing a dead cat w/o hitting some gray-haired, 50ish mom/dad/couple dragging a little kid around. My niece and nephew know a freakish number of twins because, guess what, they were IVF babies.

Some women are more fertile than others. I have a friends whose sister had a baby at 46--NO IVF, no treatments, nothing.

Surprised everyone. and the baby is fine.

[quote] Some women are more fertile than others. I have a friends whose sister had a baby at 46--NO IVF, no treatments, nothing.

That's cool, r55, but I'm of the belief that if you CAN'T get pregnant without medical intervention, there's probably a good reason for that.

I teach numerous kids of different ages in a western state, and this article has nothing to do with the average school experience in the US. But then again, the northeast has always been different and has enjoyed being different. For example, the notion of private prep boarding schools (other than run-of-the-mill Catholic schools) has always been mostly an east coast thing. Wealthy people there have been trying to avoid rubbing shoulders with the less well-to-do for generations. With the forced desegregation of the South's school districts, private prep schools sprang into being there as well, although not boarding schools so much.

At the moment, schools are being forced to deal with things that kids never had to think about before. But mostly kids accept in stride that Paul is now coming to school wearing a dress and asking to be called Paulette. In my opinion, it's not a crime that some advanced history texts now include the information that Indians were given blankets contaminated with smallpox, or that numerous treaties with Native Americans have been repeatedly broken by the US govt. I don't think it's a crime that kids are now being taught that many of the founding fathers owned slaves, and that ownership might have had something to do with the fact that the constitution bent over backwards to protect the rights of slave-holding white men. I don't think it's a crime that kids are being taught in school that while most people are heterosexual, not all people are. To me, these are all important facts that have been left out of textbooks since the origin of schooling in the US.

My objection to current testing is that in the past 25 years an industry has risen up to help people of means or ambition to prep for the standardized tests. The sort of preparation is unavailable to people of modest means and skews the results, making them essentially meaningless. However, it would be nice to know how much of material taught children retain. It seems to me that the most important skill is to learn to read critically, to look for definitive statements in a text and to see if arguments are backed up with evidence. The second most important skill is to learn to write standard English, so that the majority of other English speaking people around the world can understand what you have written. The third skill is to learn the basic functions of numbers and problem solving with numbers. This doesn't need to be advanced calculus, however. That skill would be needed by only a small portion of the population in their lives and careers. The main value of this is to teach people to think abstractly. With these skills, kids can progress to learning history, science, and many other subjects. I don't believe that "teaching to the test" is beneficial in the mental growth or development of any human being.

R16, you’re right. It is easily foreseeable. White people might become extinct. Is that so bad? Would you piss or shit a different color if everyone looked the same? Because everyone pisses & shits the same as of this very moment, R16, and white people ain’t dead and gone yet.

It’s all an illusion, R16. You suffer from it too. You play the identity game just by mentioning color.

Don’t come here or anywhere else with your bullshit story about how progressives are ruining America, because you are ALSO rolling DEEP in your own stream of righteous indignation. You are the keeper of your identity and no one here gives a shit if it slips from your hypocritical fingers.

Don’t worry, R16. Like all of humanity, you and everyone on this thread, will keep on rolling down toward that river. At first we are all delusional enough to believe that our destination is unique, and we trudge alone, separated by the different colors of our biodegradable epidermis. But we all move on from the stream, into a river of stones and rapids, that eventually tears us all to little bits & pieces, until we’re a mass shreds, united forever, in the bottom of the fucking sea. See you there, you fucking idiot.

OP, a fucking fantastic op-ed thus far, which I look forward to finishing up, upon awakening.

R54, yep, where I live, plenty of grey-bearded hipster daddies and mommies pushing double prams.

It's people pursuing their career during the best child-bearing years then going the IVF route or refusing to grow up until they're into their 40s.

[quote] It's people pursuing their career during the best child-bearing years then going the IVF route or refusing to grow up until they're into their 40s.

Let's be honest here.

Since we're all seeing our grandparents live into their late 80s--and we'll be around for longer while Altzheimer's will be truly treatable in 20 years, what's the rush? Isn't it better to enjoy your young adulthood than to live to see your great-grandchildren?

Liberal journalists didn't support the Iraq War. Packer did. Nice try OP.

Packer's acclaimed book about the Iraq War

[quote] Packer stated that the whole project became a bungled mess with American officials in the George W. Bush administration cherry-picking intelligence to support their positions, as well as being unable to respond to military issues such as insufficient troops, armor, and supplies.

[quote] Favorable reviews appeared in a variety of publications such as the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Overseas Press Club recommended it. The book was also a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize and won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellent in Journalism.

[quote] Packer describes his own socio-political views as being that of an "ambivalently pro-war liberal".....

I taught high school on the West Coast for a few years. It was a bit ago, and even though I taught English, I was encouraged not to assign essays without also assigning video reports and special projects. I wasn't to make it all about reading and writing. Nothing boring. No "drills." No spelling. Everyone had to be able to read what they wanted. Nothing could be branded literature or more important than anything else. And yet, I was supposed to pass all my students and make sure they succeeded. I saw it coming. We were already being graded (teachers) by how entertaining our classes were. This article reminded me of those sad years. I had students who wanted to learn "real" things (their phrase) but who didn't have the skills to do so. They were pissed off. They KNEW their teachers had lied to them, and they knew their scores were false. I couldn't bear being in the middle of it all and quit. It's a wonder anybody teaches anymore. At lease rich people have options.

Interesting R64

What was the socioeonomic make-up of the school you taught at? Was it a regular public school or a charter of some sort?

R65 Hello YMF. City public school, diverse and low income, although many middle income families . 1/3 asian, 1/3 white/hispanic, 1/3 black. (the classification at the time.) A great school in many ways but compromised by an administration and a city school system, who were controlled by shifting, fashionable educational trends.

I'm so glad I went to high school in the 90s.

Though our teachers used to tell us--every single one of them--that they took a pay cut to work in private school, but they didn't want to deal with the bullshit anymore.*

*Back then, the bullshit was dangerous/lazy students, not the pc stuff of today.

[quote]New York City sounds so exhausting. Most people live in places where you just send your kid to the local school. You don’t worry that their life will be over before their fifth birthday and that they’ll be resigned to a life of normalcy, heaven forbid!

EVERYTHING in NYC is a complicated clusterfuck. Absolutely everything.

Thanks R66. Sorry you had to deal with that and that the kids got a raw deal from TPTB

Same, r49. I don't know how middle-aged people do it, even if they have money. I'm 41 and a sizable number of people I know who are my age are just NOW starting to have kids. I would feel absolutely overwhelmed if I were just starting with kids at this stage of life.

I went to public school in an affluent, mostly liberal, Democratic suburb. It was one of those places that people move to specifically for the schools. We did not have Civics classes in junior high or high school. This was decades ago, but I doubt they teach it now if they didn't then.

I don't think the omission had to do with politics. There was a heavy emphasis on getting into good colleges and subjects that led to lucrative careers. I knew kids who took Latin in jr. high because their parents thought it would help them get into med school.