[zahlman]

> The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem.

I'm not sure this distinction can be made, really.

> And don't get me started on the false disability claims (see [0] for a taste). If you even verbalize questioning one, you're eligible for discrimination.

Case in point. It's exactly because of the politics both that the students feel empowered to make those claims, and that the culture suppressing that questioning exists.

> I had a student claim...

Again, this is the student expressing the politics in question.

[projektfu]

I thought the politics refer to basically the office politics, not the general political environment. The previous comment was talking about the politics that made being a high school teacher not fun, which I took to mean the demands of administration and other faculty, possibly parents as well.

[zahlman]

Those demands are what they are because of the general political environment.

[jazzpush2]

Of course teaching pre/post-COVID is very different. Studies abound reveal this, as do plentiful anecdotes from both teachers and staff.

> I'm not sure this distinction can be made, really.

Which distinction can't be made?

> It's exactly because of the politics...

Which politics, concretely?

I'm not actually sure what you're saying at all. I don't think you've articuled a point here. I actually came away confused at multiple levels.

Did you read the linked article? Do you have a response to that?

[zahlman]

> Which distinction can't be made?

You said, and I quoted:

> The politics were mostly fine, but the students... were the problem.

The distinction, thus, is between "the politics" and "the students".

In the rest of my comment, I clearly exhibited that the thing that made "the students" problematic for you were "the politics" that they were expressing.

> Which politics, concretely?

The politics that underlie the false disability claims.

And also the politics that your student expressed by making the statement:

> I had a student claim, in the classroom forum for a STEM course, that making attendance optional (which I was pressured to do because of the high disability rate) was itself discriminatory

Which are the same politics described in the post above yours:

> it was a lot of fun interacting with them. But the politics behind it all got too annoying.

Which are also "the politics" that everyone means when it comes to conflicts between students and teachers in the modern era, and the ones that form the basis of the conflict that TFA is about. Which is to say, the politics whereby educators can do no right, and everything is discriminatory. You described yourself being put in a double bind: first you were politically pressured to make an accommodation for a "high disability rate" that you didn't even believe to be legitimate (and I think you were probably correct in this), and then you were told that this, too, would be considered discriminatory.

In short: the politics whereby the term "discriminatory" (and "bigoted", and the family of related -isms and -phobias) is simply a political bludgeon, which need not be connected to any ordinary understanding of what it means to treat people fairly or equally.

It is all shell games because the goal is not actually to improve outcomes (there is not even agreement about how to measure outcomes), but to keep the system feeling constant shame for supposed "discrimination" when outcomes are disparate.

> I'm not actually sure what you're saying at all. I don't think you've articuled a point here. I actually came away confused at multiple levels.

I explained a very clear notion: that when you described "the students" causing problems in response to someone describing "the politics" causing problems, you were talking about substantively the same phenomena. The students play a key role in perpetuating the political games, either because they stand to benefit personally or because they have been indoctrinated in some form or another.

> Did you read the linked article? Do you have a response to that?

You seem to be under the impression that I dispute your claims about false disability claims. I absolutely do not, and I was agreeing with you on this point.

What I am trying to explain to you is that these claims are part of a political expression: the fact that they might succeed is a show of political power, and the underlying theory of how to accommodate them is either not scientific or not actually aimed at optimizing per-student outcomes (or both). In particular, the metrics are not based in anything related to the described goals, but given purely in terms of identity-characteristic demographics of those who succeed.

[zahlman]

For those who downvoted without comment: how did I say anything disagreeable, untrue, or otherwise meriting a downvote?

[CamperBob2]

Challenging someone else's lived experience without providing any justification or alternative explanations, would be my guess.

[mvdtnz]

I downvoted you because you're very obviously one of these "disabled" zoomers who's arguing for the whole concept without bringing any actual arguments.

[zahlman]

Incorrect on every count, as a matter of fact. I do not treat my likely neurodivergence as a disability; I argued my point (which is absolutely not "for the concept" of those disability claims) very clearly; and I am in my mid 40s.

It seems that multiple people read:

> It's exactly because of the politics both that the students feel empowered to make those claims, and that the culture suppressing that questioning exists.

and somehow concluded that I am somehow legitimizing "those claims". I am genuinely unable to understand that.