When I first began to awaken politically, I called a friend to ask what I would need to know to advocate for the causes I care about. My friend gave me a brief tour of the Texas Capital. Walking through the pictures of former legislators he said, “This is what you have to realize. Look into their faces. These are some of the dumbest people you will ever meet. Just don’t think you can reason them out of positions they did not reason themselves into.”
I don’t think the powerful are necessarily dumb at all, but they do benefit from a rejection of reason in favor of patriotic, capitalistic demogogery. Reason holds truth claims in the same scale no matter how much money is behind them. It is understandable then that many rich would want to destroy public education to keep a cheap workforce for their own progeny.
So we should have seen this coming. The Texas GOP has launched a war on reason. One battle in that war is a proposal to end the teaching of critical thinking skills. For a broader look at the GOP platform I have attached a recent Huffington Post article by Beth Broderick.
To read Truthout article on assault on critical thinking skills, click here.
To read Broderick article, click here.
It always amazes me that folks on both sides of the political spectrum think that the other side is obstinate, stupid, and unreasonable. To quote your friend, “Just don’t think you can reason them out of positions they did not reason themselves into.” If you subsitute “them” for tea partiers, progressives, liberals, conservatives, or whatever you choose, won’t the same logic apply?
My guess is that folks on one side of the spectrum look at others on the opposite side, and say exactly the same things. We all have positions that we cling to, and it has nothing to do with how much money we make at our job, or how stupid we want others’ children to be, or how cheaply we can get them to work for us. I don’t believe that at all. For instance, could you agree with this reinterpretation of your statement: “I don’t think the leftists are necessarily dumb at all, but they do benefit from a rejection of reason in favor of do-gooder, progressive demogogery.” Could you support that statement?
I also find it interesting that Mr. Weil believes that critical thinking leads to challenging beliefs, and he seems to say that the only beliefs that should be challenged are those of the backward-thinking, bigoted, right wingers. Right wing religious ideas, challenge! Progressive ideas, challenge? Flat income tax, challenge! Redistribution of wealth, challenge?
I think it would be better for all our school children if we concentrated more on basic learning skills, and less on critical thinking skills. Leave that for college, when kids would be more capable of having an opinion and defending it. In that regard, I think I am more in line with Mr. Weil than I am with those who think we sould teach the Loch Ness Monster as fact. We spend billions and billions of dollars, both Federal and State dollars, each year on education. We’re sadly at the bottom of the scale in engineering, science, math, even language skills. My son taught for 3 years at the middle school level, and spent most of his time trying to keep the kids who didn’t want to learn from ruining it for those who did. Without much success. I am sure he is not the only teacher who has similar problems.
We need much more attention to basic learning skills. I know you will find this John Stossel video interesting: http://youtu.be/Bx4pN-aiofw Please watch if you haven’t seen it already. From the comments below the video it has sparked a lot of discussion. Some of which is pretty awful. So don’t read that part. 🙂
Mike, thank you for writing. As I hope you know, I do not identify as liberal as opposed to conservative. If you’ll look back I wasn’t talking about left and right. I was talking about the haves and the have nots. I believe that the dividing line is not between the political left and right, but between those who have power and those who do not. In the “quote” you used, you unconsciously transfered from my vocabulary of “have and have not” to one of “left and right.” I am not advocating for one side of the equation, but for the common good of both. But for the “have nots” to have a chance, the “haves” are going to have to stop hoarding so much of the world. This world belongs to all of us. The poor are not born trespassing on someone else’s world. I don’t believe that’s choosing a side, I believe it is seeking the common good.
As far as critical language skills I appreciate your arguments. I don’t see critical thinking skills as values clarification, but learning to spot propaganda and poor logic. I can’t think of anything more basic. What good is it to be able to make a lot of money if someone can swindle you out of it with fly by night reasoning. How are people supposed to participate in democracy if they cannot spot a demogogue?
Again, thanks for writing.
Jim.
Thanks for clarifying that for me. I appreciate it. I guess I have heard “haves and have nots” so much from self-admitted “left wingers” I guess I did assign labels, and I apologize. You did mention the Texas GOP as the ones who were going to abolish critical thinking in schools, and also patriotic, capitalistic demagogery, which in some folks’ minds stands for “right wing.” I stand corrected.
I don’t understand though, what a better alternative than the system of government/social activity than we have now would look like. It appears to me that each form of government that humans have endeavored at, have had serious flaws and usually come to bad ends over time. Our own government is so far from what “the Founding Parents” envisioned, I doubt they would recognize it. I sincerely doubt they would approve.
Let me run this by you. In a system where there are no haves and no have nots, wouldn’t there have to be a very strong and totalitarian government to enforce the rules? Someone with a lot of authority would have to step in if one person “had” too much and another didn’t. I can’t imagine that human beings would do well in that sort of system. (I have been wrestling with this for a long time, can you tell?) Anarchy is unsustainable, even with Ms. Rand’s idea of enlightened self interest. Total freedom is anarchy, in my opinion. Humans cannot operate that way, or else some society would have done it by now. On the other hand, unfettered capitalism gets poisoned eventually by greed and deceit and needs regulations by government to keep it from enslaving people. So what is the answer? I wish I knew.
I think what has gone wrong here is that so many people think that instead of each person/family/community giving of themselves to their church, a favorite charity, food banks, etc., that the government should use the power of confiscation (think IRS) to take from those who have and give to those who don’t. We have told ourselves that by doing that we are truly being our brother’s/sister’s keeper. I am coming to the conclusion that that idea is also unsustainable. I truly wish that we could get to a “community helping each other” and get away from “every person for themselves, and let the government do the rest.” I have seen glimpses of it, when Katrina happened, and when the fires destroyed Bastrop. But by relying on the government to do our helping for us, we have lost that sense of community.
Well, that’s enough for now. Thanks for listening again. Your comments are appreciated.
And I appreciate your comments Mike. It seems to me that things have gotten too complicated for one system to work, so we are looking for a hybrid. All of the major options have proven to be disasterous when applied just by themselves. I talk about preditorial corporate capitalism because that is the disaster we are currently living out, but as you say, anarchy, socialism, and pure democracy have all imploded when left to their own devices. So to me the question is what can each do and not do. Socialism seems to have value, but no real method, capitalism seems to have method, but no real values. So I think it’s time to ask what can each system do, and what can’t it do. We might disagree, Mike, but I’ll bet we could work together in that direction.
I agree that any government that is big enough to give you everything you need is also big enough to take away everything you have, but Corporations will do the same thing. We live among giants and must learn to play them against one another. Just my opinion. I look forward to hearing yours.