Bari Weiss published an article by one Paul Rossi arguing that the schools have become hostile to educating a free people in favor of teaching tribalism and racism.
My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed. Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”
All of this is done in the name of “equity,” but it is the opposite of fair. In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend.
Recently, I raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting.
"A mandatory, whites-only" meeting?
Aristotle warns in his Politics that an education must help to fit the citizens to the nature of their constitution.
No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.
Again, for the exercise of any faculty or art a previous training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the practice of virtue. And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all[.]
The education being provided is not proper to a democracy in which all are considered to be in some sense equals. It is an education fitted for balkanization, not harmony; to encourage division, not political friendship; and entirely opposed to the ends that the American republic was to strive to attain.
5 comments:
"The education being provided is not proper to a democracy in which all are considered to be in some sense equals. It is an education fitted for balkanization, not harmony; to encourage division, not political friendship; and entirely opposed to the ends that the American republic was to strive to attain."
In other words, it is working perfectly according to the goal of it's designers. Giving education of children to the state, is at this point tantamount to handing them over as hostages.
Aristotle goes on to argue (in that same passage) that education should be public, and not private; but Aristotle was hoping the loyalty citizens showed to their state would be answered by the state. Being governed by a state that hates you, your traditions, and your way of life is not something he covered in his writings on good governance.
The entire premise of this post and comments is wrong. This article is written by a teacher in a private school that charges thousands in tuition. It is not representative of public education or the state because this is not taking place in a public school.
House rules require you to sign your comments. And it’s not wrong if the cancer of critical race theory is also in the public schools — which it is. (Also, private schools in the sense you mean are still open to the public and state regulated; they’re not private in Aristotle’s sense of being education provided by the family instead of the community.)
Private schools are much more loosely regulated by the state, and religious private schools are sometimes completely unregulated by the state if they don't accept state funding.
Regardless, it seems bad to use an example outside of the public school system to try and denigrate and criticize the public school system. It doesn't make for an honest or strong argument. If you believe the cancer of critical race theory is so prevalent in public schools, then there should be ample examples for you to use to make your point.
G.
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