103
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
103 points (99.0% liked)
Not The Onion
21547 readers
153 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
how else are you suppose to select school board members? should they be appointed by the town/county or something?
In a sane world, by ability and competence
How do you assess that exactly? What are the qualifications or objective measurements of competence as a school board member?
And furthermore, according to whom? your personal assessment in particular?
There isn't a single right answer to that and I'm not going to suggest there is.
How any organisation operates, be that public or private, is down to the culture of the organisation, and culture comes from people, process, motivation, legislation, and a whole bunch of factors.
If an organisation has a clear mission, is held organisationally accountable in appropriate ways to that mission and makes people feel professionally enriched and valuable, it will attract competent people. And importantly, an organisation full of competent and principled individuals will attract other competent individuals.
On the flip side, if an organisation is subject to decades of mismanagement, has very poor oversight, doesn't reward people for being good at their jobs and in fact rewards the wrong behaviours then exactly the opposite will happen. People who are competent at what they do will either leave or be crushed down, while those who know how to play the bootlicking game will be raised up, and this type of organisation again becomes self-perpetuating.
None of this happens overnight, in either direction. Failure can take years or decades, and so can the reverse.
By merit??
who judges that merit? how is it defined?
Do you know what a bad faith argument is?
Yes, and it's not this. I'm not making an argument either. I'm asking you a clear and obvious question.
I hear schools are pretty good at giving people these funny things called "tests" to assess an individual's knowledge on a certain subject. Not only are schools good at testing, I hear there is a WHOLE INDUSTRY built on creating and running them.
You know, they could give those to other people too I'll bet! In fact, I'll bet you can use them to qualify doctors, lawyers, barbers, auto mechanics and all sorts of people!
Oh wait, these are politicians. We shouldn't do that to them. I don't know why, but it just feels wrong. Never mind.
Shhhh, don't overload them with reason, it's rare to see this kind of naivete in it's natural form.
edit: some salty salty lurkers around today, come on in, the waters fine, i'm sure you have coherent arguments to add.
In typical fediverse fashion, the users responding to you have no answer so they get stuck on semantics and counter arguing your question rather than the intent.
I genuinely would like a well thought out response to this too. Would merit be someone with many years of teaching experience? Maybe school administration?
Do those things make that person capable of performing board responsibilities? Do those things preclude them from making creepy remarks (I highly suspect they don't)
For the record, the dude here has been on the board for 12 years, which should be more than enough time to learn the necessary skill set to do the job. Doesn't make him less creepy though.
Perhaps the argument that it isn't possible to assess merit for a job position is so far outside the realms of reason that asking for clarification is the only way to formulate an answer.
But if you want a simple, quotable answer for the obvious question as it is written, here you go:
It's tremendously disappointing to see people act like assessing fitness for a role isn't a thing that has been going on since the dawn of civilisation.
Get a grip.
Now, if you want argue that this isn't how things are currently done ? I’m right there with you.
The system is a shambolic remnant of what it should be ? couldn't agree more.
A lot of it is probably by design ? sure, i'm down for that perspective.
But "It isn't possible to assess merit for a job role", is a troll at best or extreme ignorance at worst.
If people weren't asking "are you sure that this is what you meant?" i'd be worried for the state of basic reasoning.