Guest post: There are facts, and there are perspectives
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Ask the consultants.
I stlll have the opinion that schools should be teaching students how to analyze competing claims critically rather than shoveling facts at them. Yes, they need to have a grounding of relatively solidly established facts. But they also need to have a Zinn/Loewen style understanding of how to find perspective in the way that history is taught, so that the Charge up San Juan Hill is understood in context, or why the Phillipines were denied their independence by the United States due to realpolitik concerns and their strategic location.
Students should be encouraged to understand why there were riots following George Floyd’s murder, and what is the relationship between the governments of St. Paul and Minneapolis to African-Americans or to the way that metropolitans areas in general have moved school districts, redlined, built freeways through certain neighborhoods, in order to favor one race or another. If all they learn is about the Shining City on the Hill they are going to end up posting “Those people are just destroying their own neighborhoods” when they unfriend me on Facebook.
There are facts, and there are perspectives, and the perspectives do mean that people can look at the same set of facts and still logically come to different conclusions about the meaning of those facts. That’s not post-modernism, that is observable truth. When it comes to teaching civics, our pupils need to learn what other perspectives are so that they don’t perpetuate misunderstandings.
Mike, I think a lot of schools don’t even teach Civics anymore. I know they don’t around here; my students didn’t even know what the word meant.
I feel fortunate that I grew up in a time when Oklahoma was trying to distance itself from any hint of being part of the south (they weren’t even a state then! White settlement was sparse). Because of that, my teachers were doing this. They wanted us to think of slave owners and Confederates as “other” that we weren’t.
Now Oklahoma is forefront of the move to keep the non-white perspective from being taught. I say non-white, because there is also a lot of Native American culture in Oklahoma, and I was taught about dispossession and land grabs and cruelty. I don’t think they are teaching that now. Teachers are running scared.
I was fortunate to attend High School in the 60s where critical thinking was part of the curriculum, where history was taught by looking at source documents, eg Magna Carta, Treaty of Versailles, Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, etc. Economics was taught as explanatory, not as scientific prediction, and there were two English electives, Expression and Literature.
Yep, old as mud and pining for real education.
@iknklast – “Tell me how old you are wthout saying how old you are:” When I lived in Oklahome City there was a Democratic governor, and then I moved to Texas, and voted to re-elect a Democrat for governor. It’s actually not that long ago, is it?
@Rev, I think you may be right. It seems like the only thing some people know about the U.S. Consitiution is that there’s a 2nd Amendment that was taken directly from the Bible, that the !st Amendment guarantees the right of coaches to lead the team in prayer at a ball game, and that there’s no mention of abortion. I think that history is also lagging, too, as there were some kids who got in trouble for running around their school with a Dixie Fighting Flag and when they got on the radio for an interview (this was about 20 years ago) they claimed that “this is our heritage.” They were from Minnesota, home of the 1st all volunteers army in the Civil War. So, they only get taught whet they need to get taught in order to do their patriotic duty which is to support insurrection.
Corollaries to the lesson that different people can rationally adduce different conclusions from the same facts:
i. Coming to different conclusions doesn’t per se make one evil.
ii. Those different conclusions are sometimes correct in whole or in part.
iii. (i) and (ii) will make often make you very uncomfortable.
Mike, good comment. I wasn’t taught critical thinking as such, but it was the result of our teachers method. For authoritarians teaching facts rather than thinking is a huge advantage. You get a skilled and productive population that is easily led and manipulated. Last thing they want is people thinking for themselves.
Rob, it’s gone so far that we are told the administrators want us all to teach the same. “The student should have the same exact class no matter who they take!” Then we are supposed to emulate the lowest common denominator. “We aren’t graduating enough students!”
I have been a rebel, I’m afraid, as have most if not all of my science colleagues. We just can’t fathom being part of the education army goosestepping to a martial tune. And I am probably the most difficult of all, which could have to do with my additional background in the arts, always known for being difficult to herd.
Thanks, Rob. My mother taught me that she had made the mistake in college of being focused on grades rather than learning, so she didn’t retain most of what she had studied in college. She made up for it by taking continuing education courses when she could.
I think I would like to take classes from you rather than other professors, iknklast!