Throw your hatred down
Moral disagreement and demonization
Writing for The Washington Post, Robert Samuelson claims that dysfunction in American politics has reached a new low. Samuelson diagnoses several reasons for the surging dysfunction in politics, but one strikes a particular chord with me:
Second, politics has become more moralistic from both left and right. Idealistic ideologues campaign to “save the planet,” “protect the unborn,” “reclaim the Constitution.” When goals become moral imperatives, there’s no room for compromise. Opponents are not just mistaken; they’re immoral. They’re cast as evil, ignorant, dangerous, or all three.
Anybody who is familiar with the basic premise of this blog can probably guess I disagree with this statement. As I’ve written before, the solution to this problem is not to avoid moral philosophy – but to do better moral philosophy. Read more
Does learning begin and end in the classroom?
In a bizarre twist on the grade school classroom contract, ABC News reports that Westfield High School in Virginia has prohibited students in AP World History from consulting any outside sources, including parents, classmates, the internet, or anything other than their textbooks and lecture notes.
It’s not clear if this is a serious policy. A spokesman for the Fairfax County Public Schools described it as “… a little tongue-in-cheek from the teachers,” but the principal of Westfield High claimed that the policy “guaranteed fairness among students and wouldn’t give a student with more resources an advantage.”
There is of course a serious side to the “fairness argument.” Things like a supportive home environment can have a real impact on educational achievement and it is clear that such factors are not consistent across families. It’s possible that the policy was meant to address this imbalance.
But it reveals one of the principle conundrums of the principle of fairness: for things that are not (easily) redistributable, like the quality of parenting, fairness may require bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
This seems particularly troubling in the case of education. It severely truncates the scope of learning and inquiry to the viewpoints offered by the texts and teachers, reducing what should be an exploration to mere rote learning. So even if fairness is important, should it ever be an excuse to compromise the general quality of education?
-Charles
Photo by Flickr user alamosbasement used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Cities on flame with philosophy
A small town in the United Kingdom, hometown of Thomas Hobbes, hopes to become the world’s first “philosophy town.” There are many proposals, including a festival, a philosophy walk, and a bookstore/coffee house for philosophical discussion. ”Town philosopher” Angie Hobbs on the project:
“I think people are hungry for this stuff,” she said. “We’ve got ourselves in such as mess in the world – the environment, the banking crisis, the whole issue of fairness. Philosophy may be able to help a bit. We don’t have all the answers but we can help the debate.” […] But she is excited at the prospect of non-academics getting stuck into philosophy. “You don’t have to want to be a professional philosopher,” she said. “You don’t have to be able to wrestle with the knottier passages of [Immanuel] Kant to be able to get a huge amount out of the subject. “It’s OK to dabble. Don’t be scared. There are a lot of people thinking we really need this because we’ve got into such a mess not using human reason to its full potential.”
I share Hobbs enthusiasm for the project, although I think it should proceed with caution. Learning philosophy – its arguments, its theories – is one thing, but all students of philosophy also want to argue and push back. This is one interesting aspect of teaching philosophy that separates it from teaching, for example, the sciences. When this type of engagement is done carefully and with intellectual honesty, it is a great way to learn and explore the contours of an issue. However, if it is done in haste, without sufficient commitment, it can result in confusion and even dogmatism. The architects of the project should be careful about how they present material in a non-academic setting in order to combat this tendency.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user Dogfael used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Blinded by the light
Feeding the national dialogue
“The dialogue is impoverished.” This lament is heard across the political spectrum, echoing between the margins of opinion pages and muttered by graying professors in an air of resignation. It’s the reason this website was created. It’s a statement we all seem to agree on, and one thing we are all trying to fix. This makes it all the more regrettable when an attempt at the solution only adds to the problem.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Professor Peter Berkowitz begins well enough: liberal commentators have been dismissive in their views of the Tea Party movement, and this is wrong. I agree completely with this statement – there are many powerful (and perhaps ultimately correct) reasons to believe in the principles of personal liberty and limited government. These reasons constitute philosophical arguments, and they’re arguments that opponents of the Tea Party should engage with in good faith, clear logic, and intellectual honesty.
Berkowitz, unfortunately, believes the debate should lie elsewhere. Read more
You know you’re right
Facts and opinion in a liberal democracy
A recent video produced for the “10:10” campaign, which seeks to cut carbon emissions by ten percent a year for the next ten years, has come under intense criticism. The video begins with an elementary school teacher explaining the 10:10 project to her class, and asking for her students to sign up. All but two students agree, and in response, the teacher presses a little red button that causes the dissenting students to explode in a torrent of blood and gore.
The work of British filmmaker Richard Curtis, the four minute spot has been called a “snuff film” by National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg writes:
This isn’t a joke for the benefit of you and me. No, this is a knee-slapper for those already committed to the cause. The subtext is, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could just get rid of these tiresome, inconvenient people?” That’s why they’re blown up without anyone trying to change their minds. That’s the joke: “Enough with these idiots already.
Goldberg considers this to be part of a larger trend within the environmentalist movement, where opponents are regarded as somehow beneath the debate.
Frustrated with the perceived environmental threat of economic freedom and the inconvenience of political freedom, many environmentalists yearn for shortcuts. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wishes we could learn from China’s one-party system […] NASA scientist James Hansen wants to put corporate CEOs on trial for crimes against humanity. Al Gore compares his opponents to Holocaust deniers and insists that the time for democratic debate is over.
This raises interesting questions about the nature of democratic debate. Environmentalists’ frustration with their opponents, if it exists, is understandable to a degree. The scientific consensus firmly agrees that man-made climate change is happening. And in a debate that is heavily scientific and technical, environmentalists can do little more than cite the experts’ work.
This is similar, for example, to the debate over teaching evolution. Evolution is the central tenet of biology, and to any scientist, a biology course not focused on evolution is simply deficient. Yet, the public debate still goes on. Read more
Parents v. schools
What to do when parents don’t want their children exposed to certain material?
Charles’ post yesterday raised some critical questions as to when “parents should have the power to ban school texts.” While there are obviously difficult cases, I think most people would balk at the idea of pulling Catcher in the Rye or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn off of the shelves of school libraries. But, what about parents who don’t want the book removed from the library or classroom altogether, but instead simply object to their child having to read the work as part of a class assignment? How far should schools go to accommodate the wishes of the parents of individual students? Read more
The loss of innocence is more than a literary trope
In response to debates over public school library blacklists, the BBC poses the question, “should parents have the power to ban school texts?” The complaints the BBC article addresses are mostly about children’s exposure to sexuality. Some of the books in question are literary classics, though most are staples of pop culture like the Twilight series.
Who is responsible for the development of children, moral and otherwise? A short list of candidates would include parents and community organizations alongside schools. Parents have a great deal of latitude over their children, and can usually choose what activities in the community they engage in. But only the relatively privileged can choose what schools to send their children to, and when questions of sex and morality are concerned there is rarely consensus in the school boards. Someone is bound to be offended.
But in some ways the debate over public school blacklists misses the point. The fact remains that public school libraries are only one of many different ways for children to access information. By hook or by crook children will whet their curiosities. Concerned parents must surely acknowledge the existence of libraries outside of school, bookstores, and the internet.
The issue of public school library blacklists is only a distraction from the more general question of how children should be raised, and whether any one set of preferences should ever prevail against the wishes of some.
-Charles
Image from Flickr user Robert Dumas used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Privatizing the public library
What’s the harm?
David Streitfeld at the NYT reports that Library Systems & Services (LSSSI), a for-profit corporation, has contracted to run the public libraries of numerous municipalities. Their reach is expanding rapidly, Streitfeld reports, and in terms of number of branches, they rank right behind Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.
This raises interesting questions about the proper role of the free market in delivering what are perceived as social necessities, either to the healthy functioning of a democratic system as a whole or to individuals operating within such a society. If we assume that free public libraries are such a neccesity, I don’t see much cause for concern.
The general worries with privatizing public goods are (a) that certain people will be priced out, (b) that all people will be forced to pay more in general or to pay ”too much,” (c) that some goods are so important that no one should have to pay at all (this is a ridiculous argument, since the goods have to come from somewhere, and someone is paying for them, probably through taxes), (d) that, whereas governments don’t usually go out of business (and can deliver goods at a loss), companies do all the time, which would threaten the delivery of the good in question, and (e) that companies working from profit-maximizing motives won’t deliver the good as well, generously, or graciously as a government working with the public welfare in mind.
Hope and change in schooling are sorely needed
Elitism and egalitarianism in education
Courtland Milloy suggests at the Washington Post that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s vision for the D.C. school system is both inspiring and quixotic.
Milloy quotes Rhee as suggesting that elitism, “reluctance by the city’s haves to share classrooms with the have-nots,” is the single largest obstacle to school reform. Overcoming elitism, Warren Buffet once suggested to Rhee, would simply require the abolition of private schools and assignment of all children to public schools by random lottery. The argument goes that well-to-do parents would force schools to improve if they were denied the choice of where to send their children.
Ironically, elitism would militate against the opposite solution as well. Suppose all public schools were abolished and poor families given vouchers and scholarships to attend private schools like their wealthier peers. Milton Friedman’s solution is the polar opposite of Buffett’s –improve education by giving rather than denying choice to all. But in this case, elites too would have to put up with the prospect of rubbing shoulders with the rabble. If elitism is indeed the major roadblock to reform, then this solution, conceptually just as radical, is practically just as unrealistic. Read more
Makes much more sense to live in the present tense
Over at CNN, Will Bunch bemoans how Glenn Beck is attempting to rewrite history in order to support his own political agenda.
For thousands of followers […], there is a genuine desire to relearn American history. The only problem is that what they’re learning is bunk. It’s not history as it happened, but rather a Beck-scripted, Tea Party rewrite of history that demonizes Obama, Democrats and progressive activists.
This problem is a consequence of the harmful reverence for history that I wrote about earlier this week. If we didn’t have such a history-worshiping political culture, then no rewrite of history would have such an effect on our present day politics.
For example, Glenn Beck teaches his viewers that America’s creation was rooted in Christianity. Whether this is historically true or not, it shouldn’t matter. Even if America was rooted in Christianity, it shouldn’t settle the issue about whether today’s America should be a Christian nation.
The solution is a greater reverence – or at least awareness – of philosophy’s place in politics. If we had such a political culture, Glenn Beck and others would have to argue their case with solid theory and sound logic. And if he can do that, then maybe he’s right.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user Gage Skidmore used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
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