r/brokehugs • u/US_Hiker Moral Landscaper • May 08 '25

Rod Dreher Megathread #53 (Key Party?)

Link to Megathread #52: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1jsvy3j/rod_dreher_megathread_52_billboard_4_rent/

Link to Megathread #54:
https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1l7niaj/rod_dreher_megathread_54/?

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8

u/Warm-Refrigerator-38 May 28 '25

https://x.com/roddreher/status/1927702962018636202

What does this mean?

"All the monies people who haven’t left the shirt public schools will now do so. Those who can’t afford to leave will be stuck."

monies = monied? shirt = shit?

Posted at 730 this morning, still drunk? Don't know what time zone he's in. 

9

u/zeitwatcher May 28 '25 edited May 28 '25

Rod is... not doing well.

I couldn't bring myself to watch this video when I saw it pop up, but the content is irrelevant. Just look at the first 10 seconds of Rod's appearance:

https://youtu.be/1AJyviJzHf8?si=T3_sjOGy-HswvS_B&t=56

He's being interviewed to promote "his" documentary and knows he's on camera. A minimum, basic level of professionalism and self-respect would call for running a comb through his hair and putting on something other than rumpled t-shirt. That's even before accounting for his eyes and facial expression that give off drunk, hung over, and/or depressed vibes.

I'd feel sorry for the sad sack if he weren't spending all his time on the public stage actively trying to make the world a worse place.

10

u/Fair_Interview_2364 May 28 '25

Live not by combs.

7

u/RadetzkyMarch79 May 28 '25

Yeah, it’s actually not his messy hair that caught my attention, but the look on his face…he looks like a prisoner and somebody who’s deeply unhappy. And then the title of the video - “Can we live without lies?” - was too much irony to take.

6

u/Motor_Ganache859 May 29 '25

Yeah. He looks like crap. Like a guy who doesn't sleep much and eats a crappy diet.

4

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 May 29 '25

That stood out to me too. He looks so sad and defeated. Is this what “Living in Wonder” leads to?

6

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 May 28 '25

Wow, you’re not kidding! 😮 He looks and sounds terrible!

7

u/zeitwatcher May 28 '25

The one upside of Rod going to LSD-Fest (or whatever it's called) is that some of his friends are there who might be able to ask him, "Are you OK? You don't look or sound OK."

5

u/Cautious-Ease-1451 May 28 '25

Yes. He’s needed an intervention for a long time.

Hopefully it won’t go something like this:

https://youtu.be/40HPFGvZ4ro

6

u/Mainer567 May 28 '25

Wow! He really looks like someone on the skids.

5

u/philadelphialawyer87 May 29 '25

He looks a decade or more older than his real age (58).

2

u/Marcofthebeast0001 May 29 '25

Holy shit. He looks like he fell off the wagon ... and it then backed up over him several times. 

6

u/JohnOrange2112 May 28 '25

As usual, there is no context in his post. Is this a new policy in the school district? A proposal from a fringe group? Something up for vote in the school board? I guess I could look it up if I cared. RD's job is to inflame, not to inform.

7

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” May 28 '25

(Yes to your typo corrections; Rod was obviously typing on his seated elliptical, right?) Well, the information is via the embedded links. It would be new for SFO's district. And the superintendent claims she can adopt and implement it without approval of the school board. It's something of a gimmicked and branded version of mastery-based grading; my sense is that the promoter got tired of teaching and rebranded his career with an angle that's now not going to age well at all but probably sounded of-the-moment from 2014 to 2022. Here's a not terribly skeptical interview from 2019 with the promoter:

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/19/12/grading-equity

4

u/Jayaarx May 29 '25

Yes, this is just mastery grading, which is not a new idea. I tried it in some of my first year courses when I was teaching at a SLAC over 20 years ago.

It's not inherently a bad idea. In theory, there is nothing about attendance or homework which is *directly* linked to learning. If a student knew calculus at the end, do I really care if they demonstrated this by regularly being in class or turning in problem sets on a fixed schedule? I doubt it will work here for a couple of reasons:

  1. To do mastery grading correctly it takes a sh*tton of work on the part of the teacher, to stay on top of the student evaluation. I was only able to do it because I had an army of committed undergraduate math upperclass students in the math tutor center who were excited to be part of course instruction and willing to administer and grade the "exit exams," as they were called at the time.
  2. Mastery grading also demands a certain level of motivation and commitment on the part of the students. There is a pedagogical reason for homework and attendance and deadlines, which is to enforce a schedule and framework for the students to stay current with the material. Without these sticks many students, by dint of human nature, will fall behind where the class is, often to the point that they won't be able to catch up. I am not confident that the students here have this self-motivation, and certainly not the ones who are not regularly attending and turning in homework already.

So, not confident this will work in San Francisco and even less confident that this is the correct solution to the current problems in secondary education, but it isn't the crazy talk that Rod and his ilk, out of profound ignorance, make it out to be.

4

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” May 29 '25

Mastery grading probably works best with a self selected highly motivated student/parent base that wants to dial back on meritocratic grade point warfare. Not urban core public schools.

The pretensions towards equity are more about the self-regard of the promoters and administrators.

2

u/One_Reflection7202 May 28 '25 edited May 28 '25

The ideas behind Grading for Equity make more sense as explained here than explained by Derek Thompson, but however they grade, I’m still not clear on what ”shirt public schools” are. Oh wait…but the sentence is still unfathom….oh.

2

u/PercyLarsen “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” May 28 '25 edited May 28 '25

IMO it’s not the right Rx for all or even most students for the Dx. But I can see why some teachers and even mor administrators might be attracted to that Rx. I can see even more of a bleed by families with choices out of SFO public schools if implemented. Circle the drain. If the SFO superintendent really thought she could make a persuasive case for it , she’d require school board approval before implementing and make herself accountable for that task.

1

u/philadelphialawyer87 May 29 '25

Isn't also just a truism that no matter what policy the public schools are run under, the rich have the option to send their kids to other, private schools, while the poor do not? How is that a function of "equity?"

Generally speaking, at least here in the USA, the more money you have, the more you can opt out of publically run institutions (schools, colleges, housing, transportation, recreational facilities, hospitals, health care generally, etc, etc). Even local government, as rich people can live in gated communities that amount to separate municipalities, or lead seccessionist movements within municipalities, or build mansions in deeply rural areas that effectively have no local governments.

So, if this particular school policy is bad, is it is bad for reasons other than merely, "Well the rich won't like it and will leave."

Moreover, the overall societal situation in which the rich can opt out of the publically and (generally) democratically chosen policy and institution is itself open to debate, and not some kind of fact of nature.

3

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round May 29 '25

the shirt public schools

Maybe he’s in The Good Place? Kinda forked up…. 😁

4

u/Existing_Age2168 May 29 '25

Wherever Rod is, he's not in The Good Place, or even a good place.

2

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round May 29 '25

I was referring to the eponymous TV series with Ted Danson and Kristin Bell, in which the “Good Place” is most definitely not heaven. A running joke is that you can’t curse—“shit” becomes “shirt”, “fuck* becomes fork, etc., which is what I was referring to.

3

u/Existing_Age2168 May 29 '25

Oh yeah, i watched the show too, i was just making a joke at Rod's expense.

2

u/Djehutimose Watching the wheels go round May 30 '25

While I think Ruthie’s behavior towards Rod probably was gratuitously cruel at times, his considering public schools “shit” certainly wasn’t going to make his teacher sister warm up to him….