SUICIDAL TOLERANCE: championing a judgement free world

The most “woke“ among us champion what might best be called "suicidal tolerance." Why suicidal? Because the foolishness they preach, essentially a judgement and ranking free world, would ultimately eradicate expertise and tolerance itself.

Whence springs their wooly-headed demand that value judgements and rankings must all perish? The main source is their conviction that values are mere “social constructs.” That leads them to jump wildly to the conclusion that cultures themselves are value free. And one is as good as any other. Yet some cultures are so violently intolerant that merely advocating tolerance, as these folks enthusiastically do, would get them killed. (Isis comes to mind.) That obvious fact somehow escapes them.

Paradoxically, women are among the most vocal boosters of this new-found religion. And among the the worst offenders are academic women. One wants to ask these females, so you don’t think it wrong to have some crone excise village girl’s clitoris’s with a razor blade? How about forbidding women to vote? Requiring them to be absolutely obedient to their husbands? To suffer death by stoning if thought to be guilty enough of adultery? Should these hyper-tolerant ladies disapprove of any such things, they cannot logically insist that cultural practices are value free! Still, they do..

In the real world, cultural practices often have weighty moral content. Attitudes regarding individualism provide one example. The fact that individualism has moral content is precisely why some cultures suppress it. They disapprove of the underlying value it places on individual perceptions, judgements and choices. The Taliban, for instance, permit nothing of the kind. For example, these zealous fanatics punish any individuals who question the smallest details of their very narrow interpretation of Islam. These true believers even forbid listening to music and flying kites — the later a very popular past time with Afghan children. Why? Because they perceive such enjoyment as having negative moral content.

So, of course cultural practices can have weighty moral value. And that is exactly why they do NOT have equal value. Just the opposite. In fact, that’s why cultures are more or less dysfunctional. Because of what they will or won’t tolerate and the human happiness or misery this spawns. 

The Taliban are a sterling example of a dangerously dysfunctional culture. Of course it’s intolerant to make such a claim. But, tolerance is not always desirable. After all, some practices, rape, honor killing, and genocide, for instance, are plainly intolerable. Even a Harvard professor should be able to see that. Although some don’t.

Let’s dig a little deeper into cultural relativism’s implications. A major one is that relativism opposes any rankings based on merit. Do you want your favorite baseball team to acquire a highly skilled pitcher. Would you prefer having your heart surgery performed by a highly skilled surgeon? Well, according to these believers in their secular religion, you are supporting existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies. So does insisting these “woke” individuals be able to tell their ass from third base. And apparently most can’t.

A recent protest by Harvard students illustrates how far this silliness has advanced. Concerned that A’s now make up 60% of all Harvard course grades — up from 24% in 2005 — Harvard has now capped course A grades at 20%. This prompted a student petition asserting that assigning grades on the basis of performance creates “a system of ranking and sorting that mirrors and reinforces existing racial and socioeconomic hierarchies.”

To some extent it does mirror these hierarchies But far from perfectly. If it did, neither upward nor downward mobility would exist and both certainly do. For example, I know a woman who was born in a deep south home with a dirt floor and parents near the bottom of the social hierarchy. But, by dint of academic accomplishment, risk taking, good judgement and damn hard work, she now owns her own accounting firm and also is producing major motion pictures. Are there similar success stories? Of course there are. So the assumption that a system of ranking and sorting simply “mirrors and reinforces existing hierarchies” is plainly false. 

Besides, where would we be without ranking and sorting? We would find ourselves in a competence free world. Heart surgeons selected non-judgementally wouldn’t necessarily know a damn thing about what they were doing. Buildings and bridges would regularly collapse because they were designed by incompetent structural engineers. In short, we couldn’t rely on any specialized expertise whatsoever. What a nightmare.

Clearly a system without judging and ranking belongs in Lala land. So we must vigorously reject the judgement free style advocated by the most “woke” among us. Besides, these folks aren’t really woke at all — they’re dreaming! But as their crackpot social philosophy gains ascendence, their dream is becoming our nightmare.

ARE MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS A THREAT? an historical comparison

A significant number of Americans find Muslim immigration frightening. They see these newcomers as culturally incompatible, dangerously intolerant and potentially larcenous. Moreover, they imagine they are flooding into this country in unacceptable numbers. What should we make of this? Let’s look at it historically.

In the 19th century many Americans were similarly concerned about Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, pouring into an essentially Protestant America. One major worry was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch, the Pope. He directed an authoritarian and anti-Protestant institution that Protestants found especially threatening. They also asked how a people accustomed to religious
tyranny and intolerance could ever learn to live in democratic America? Wouldn’t these Catholics band together and become another America altogether? 

Then there was the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics immigrants. At the dawn of the Civil War the Catholic presence in America already exceeded the total population of the U.S. just 70 years prior. And their number quickly swelled to five million. That was a lot of culturally different people to absorb so quickly. But Irish Catholic immigrants, despite strident opposition, proved so capable of blending in to the fabric of the nation, understanding, embracing and even exploiting democracy, that a third generation Irish-American, John F. Kennedy, became the 35th President of the United States.

How have the Muslims done in contrast? Well there has never been an America without Muslims. But most of them arrived as slaves and soon lost this religion. Contemporary Muslims arrive in very different circumstances. Coming, as they do, directly from Muslim lands. These new arrivals pledge no allegiance to the equivalent of a Pope, nor even a unified religion. In fact in many areas there still are bloody disagreements among them about what it takes to even be a Muslim. But the one thing they aren't, is Christian. And that makes a decided difference in their reception.

First of all, there is not always a happy coexistence with Christians or the Western way of life. The most fanatical among them, a minority to be sure, want to convert all of the United States to Islam — if necessary, by the sword. And to institute their version of Sharia Law in place of current law. 

Of course internationally a comparatively small number of Muslims have proven to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent But these perpetrators were foreign nationals. However, in many American’s minds terrorism links to Muslims. That’s certainly not fair. But it is still true. And that means a sizable segment of Americans will oppose more Muslim immigration.

That fanatical variety is certainly dangerous. But keep in mind that Muslim immigrants constitute a tiny fraction of the 19th and early 20th Century flood of Roman Catholics. In fact, the entire Muslim population of the United States amounts to less than 1% of America’s total population. Plus less than 5% of all immigrants currently entering the U.S. are Muslims. Of course, the dangerously fanatical among them is very small indeed.

What about present-day Muslim immigrants fitting in? Will they, unlike the Irish Catholics, prove durably alien? Will they become something of a separate America? Or will these Muslim immigrants prove to be solid American citizens, just like the Irish. We shall see.

Recently some Somali-Americans defrauded Minnesota and the United States government out of multiplied billions of dollars. This massive fraud is causing some Americans to link criminality and lousy citizenship to Muslims collectively. That’s certainly unfair. But if people believe it to be true, it will be true in its consequences.

Besides, the Irish-American experience suggests Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish were gangsters of the first magnitude. In fact the Irish Mob once was one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime gangs. Later arriving Italian-Americans proved even more capable of organized criminality. So the Somali’s have no patent on that kind of behavior. 

However, a substantial number of Americans, especially those in the Bible Belt, regard the United States as a Christian nation For them, non-Christians are, ipso facto, un-American. A substantial number of these true believers even maintain that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. (A false belief constantly reinforced by right wing preachers.)  This despite the fact that some of America’s most influential founders like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, were deists or rationalists. Plus the great majority of founders agreed that the United States should  NOT to have a state religion. However, this reality gives no pause for those who believe, or at least promote, the Christian American myth. 

 Looking back, though, many Americans once thought Irish-American Roman Catholic immigrants were a distinct threat. That has faded away. Does that mean Muslims will also attain, even desire, the same degree of integration? That remains to be seen.

"WOKE" RHETORIC AND THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY

Over emphasis on injustice backfires. It discourages the personal responsibility that is essential for meaningful growth. Become convinced you are a powerless victim and you will be. 

For instance, African-Americans have dealt with profound injustice in immoderate amounts for centuries. But repeated hammering on this injustice, by excessively "woke" educators, for instance, can trigger the self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Better known as the Thomas Theorem by sociologists, here is how it works. Put simply, when a situation is defined as true, it is true in its consequences. Why? Because outcomes depend as much on the individual’s perception of the situation as they do on the situation itself. Should a person believe that they are a hapless victim, they will behave accordingly. 

Human behavior is not defined by objective facts, but by how people view and make sense of those facts. So as "helpless" victims, they discount their own agency; their own ability, even their own degree of responsibility, for what happens in their lives. When that happens no oppressor is needed. The "oppressed" become their own oppressor. Seeing themselves as powerless, they do nothing but impatiently await salvation. And that can be a long wait indeed. 

I spent over 50 years as an educator. And one of the saddest and most disheartening aspects was watching the above happen over and over again. Instead of availing themselves of the opportunity a free education offered, too many kids, viewing effort as useless, turned their backs. And in so doing they threw away the very best life chance many of them will ever have. 

In 2025 providing this gift to all of America's kids cost the public an average of $17,000.00 per student per year. That's one hell of a present. And it's made repeatedly over 12 long years. Perhaps so many kids do so is because accepting that gift has been made compulsory — possibly a critical mistake. But whatever the reason, a dispiriting number of kids turn up their noses at a gift worth over $164,000.00 — actually far more considering inflation. 

Yes, school curricula, policies and procedures can be out of step with the world many of these kid's live in. But however imperfect it may be, schooling still provides them with a precious means of life enhancement. 

It's especially ironic that many of the kids I saw rejecting this opportunity are African-American. Are these kids aware that slave owners rigorously opposed any and all attempts to school "their property?" Do they know that enslavers also stifled any attempts by that "property" to learn on their own? Their enslavers knew that an education was potentially liberating. Too many of their descendants do not. 

Whatever our school's shortcomings, and there are many, they still offer one of the best opportunities for advancement many kids will ever have. But that opportunity can only by seized by youngsters who stay clear of self-pity, focus sharply on their own agency, and take full responsibility for their own behavior. And, ironically, the well meaning sympathy of the excessively "woke" undermines all of that. In trying to be supportive, they do these kids a profound disservice by preaching the gospel of defeat.

 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: who's really in charge?

Until the 1920's America's public schools were chiefly a local responsibility. In the 1920's, for instance, some 162,800 local school districts were governed by locally elected lay people who raised the bulk of the revenue, enjoyed considerable autonomy and were responsive to local pressure. These days, state imposed consolidation has reduced that number by 88%, or a total of 13,598. Consequently local autonomy, control and sensitivity to local pressures have shrunk dramatically. 

At the same time school funding gradually shifted from the local to the state level — although the proportion varied from state to state. These days Vermont provides the most: 87%. Utah the least: 58%. The remaining balance of the funding falls mainly on local school districts. The federal government provides just 8%. 

Here's why this matters. Whoever pays, usually sets the rules. With state funding predominating, most key decisions are made at the state level. And when the federal government has gotten more and more involved. Local authorities often are not consulted in any meaningful way. Just told what they must do. These local authorities also are often required to pick up some, sometimes all, of the tab. (State and federal law-makers are fond of enacting one requirement or another then imposing much, sometimes all, of the cost of accomplishment it on local school districts.

There was a brief increase in federal funding beginning most markedly with the administration of George W. Bush — the self-styled "Education President." At this time the federal government increased education spending about 33% to 12% of the total. This further diminished state and local power by adding federal rules that went with the funding. As time when on, enthusiasm for education spending diminished and with it all the increased federal funding. Their rules, however, are still around. Consequently parents and local communities find themselves further and further removed from meaningful influence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another source of community and parental disempowerment is the ever decreasing number of schools and a concomitant  increase in the number of students per remaining schools. In 1920 there were some 190,000 public schools, k-12, with an average of 100 students per school. By 2020 there were only 131,000 public schools serving an average of 528 students per school. That's five times more students per school than in1920.  

As school populations grew, individual student differences became less and less important. The chances of a principal even knowing the name of every student, much less anything about them, shrank to nearly zero. Their knowledge of individual parents also shrank dramatically. 

So where does this leave us? With public schools that are less and less responsive to individual differences and more and more indifferent to community values. Who's really in charge? State and federal bureaucrats who are in the hire of state and federal legislators, that's who. Whether or not that's what we want, that's what we've got.

LEARNING WHAT THEY LIVE: not what they're told

Years ago the famed educational philosopher John Dewey tellingly observed that children "learn what they live." Teachers can drone on and on about democracy, for instance. But if they run a despotic classroom, the kids learn to adapt to it. Maybe even learn to need it. Dewey was precisely right. Children learn what they live.  

It's hard to overemphasize the importance of this "hidden curriculum." It is powerful, yet often overlooked. Lessons "taught" in this way can last a lifetime. The person who taught me the most about tyranny and abuse of power, for instance, was my fourth grade teacher, Miss Weast . (Behind her back we kids called her: "Miss Weast, the big fat beast.") Feared by all, this angry, defective, frustrated woman extorted compliance by means of threats and violence. A ruler across the knuckles of your out-stretched hand, for example. 

Eventually, she did go too far. She held a youngster against a hot steam radiator as punishment. His relatively minor burns did not get her fired, as you might expect. But she was transferred to another school. Not before she had unintentionally taught me about the abuse of power, however. I still remember that lesson well even though it was many, many years ago. 

Here's another example. This one concerning Catholic parish schools of the 1950's. In those days a number of overworked and under appreciated nuns bullied, slapped and otherwise mistreated the children in their charge. This taught the kids some unfortunate lessons. For instance, the little girl who lived next door to me developed severe school phobia even though she was never touched herself. She learned school was dangerous. 

I'm not sure what these nuns thought they were doing. Making 'better' Catholics, perhaps. But in this girl's case they taught her that the sermonizing about Christian love, mercy and forgiveness, was all talk. She also learned that it's not what people say, but what they do that counts. Valuable lessons, to be sure. But hardly included in the official curriculum.

Here's still another instance involving an entirely different circumstance. As a professor of education I visited a lot of inner city schools. Most were chaotic. In some the turmoil was so bad that learning was nearly impossible and personal safety doubtful. Evidently those in charge lacked the power and/or will to impose meaningful consequences for gross misbehavior. What did youngsters learn while enduring this chaos? That bullies rule? That might makes right? That there is no point in even trying to learn? That the real world is not even close to what it's supposed to be? Take your pick. 

Do children learn what they live? Count on it. So what did you learn from the "hidden curriculum" you experienced?

COMPULSORY EDUCATION: has it turned out to be a disasterous mistake?

Has compulsory education turned out to be a disastrous mistake?  That essential question remains oddly unaddressed. This is most peculiar, given the serious school problems that unmotivated, disruptive, sometimes openly hostile, kids create when compelled to attend. They learn little, waste prodigious amounts of taxpayer's money and disrupt the entire process. 

To learn, ya gotta wanna. And those who must be compelled to even attend, generally don't wanna. They are the kids "graduating" from high school who still can barely read. Moreover, they are frequently truant. In fact truancy rates in many, perhaps most, inner-city schools, are comically high. 

Wouldn't it be far better if these "students" weren't there? Better for whom? Better for those who want to learn, certainly. And better for their teachers as well. But there seems to be little concern about the fate of the motivated kids, or their teachers,; both of whom pay an unacceptably high price for the disruptive presence of these others. The focus is typically on motivating the disrupters. Those whose behavior causes serious problems, sometimes physical danger, for everyone around them.  

We waste enormous amounts of tax money continuing this process. The latest 2022-2023 data shows the average cost of "educating" a youngster in a U.S. public school is some $163,000.00. Now, imagine giving a child a gift worth about $13,600 per year for twelve or more years and have them refuse to even open it, or possibly destroy it. Not just their own gift, mind you., but other's gifts as well by making it impossible for them to learn. This is what we've been doing, year after year, decade after decade, for well-over a century. 

When "students" are compelled, educators must at least try to force-feed them. Sure, some initially unwilling kids can be coaxed to learn. But this coaxing is so time consuming and costly that it is impractical in a typical classroom. After all, our public schools are, for cost control purposes, run like factories. And factories run very poorly when the raw material is uncooperative, even hostile. Painstaking efforts to seduce uncooperative learners disrupts the production process and consumes vast quantities of scarce resources better used educating the willing. Nevertheless, we  pretend that compulsory education is working — or at least should be working. So we go on forcing kids to attend, then pretending they are learning.

Meanwhile legislators and judges, safe in their offices, have stripped teachers of any ability to impose meaningful sanctions for misbehavior. So they can't even coerce a semblance of civilized behavior from the disruptive. Worse, a similarly emasculated school administration offers besieged teachers little help. Some of these administrators even side with the malefactors. And so it goes, with turmoil and wastage rolling on and on. 

Folks worry that if we abandon compulsory education, menacing kids will roam the streets threatening the peace. That has some validity. Although, because of truancy, a lot of disruptive, potentially dangerous kids aren't in school to begin with — especially when the weather is nice. But, and here's a key point, it is NOT  the school's proper businesses to conduct part-time incarceration. The school's distinctive function is to educate, not incarcerate. And it is way past time to face up to the fact that when educators try to do both, they often can do neither?

In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017) ruled that schools must provide educational services that are reasonably designed to enable students to make progress appropriate in light of their circumstances. But what counts as "reasonably designed?" Suppose, for instance, a student is failing to make educational progress because his mother is a crack whore who is abusively neglectful and the absent father's identity is a multiple choice question? There are tens of thousands of kids facing similar situations in what passes for their home. And, of course, they are often among the kids who reject and disrupt the educational process. Is there any "reasonable design" possible for them, given available resources and a factory style setting? 

Let's take a fresh look at this and ask why we continue to spend billions upon billions of dollars every year trying to force-feed knowledge to kids who not only resist and resent it, but often also prevent their classmates from learning. Isn't it time to consider public education to be a privilege rather than a right?  After all, the public is providing these youngsters and their parent(s) with free expensivn services.

Of course day care is another largely unacknowledged function of public schooling. Teachers spend an average of 7 hours a day providing that service. Given a class of, say, 25, that means an elementary school teacher is providing day care 175 hours a day or 875 hours per week. That's 31,500 total hours of day care per school year. If the teacher were paid $15 an hour per child, he or she would have earned $472,500.00!

Ignoring the difficulties created by compelling attendance, school districts adopt truancy prevention programs. They are, in effect, encouraging the attendance of potential troublemakers. A major justification of these programs is that truancy breeds broader social problems. It's asserted, for instance, that 95% of juvenile offenders started as truants. We're told that truants are more likely to:

• join a gang running the risk of disease, injury or death; 
• use marijuana, alcohol and hard drugs; 
• become pregnant and drop out of school; 
• have low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure; 
• be illiterate or have serious trouble reading; 
• engage in violent and criminal activities. 

But every one of these assertions suffers from the same fatal flaw. Just because these things correlate, does NOT mean the one causes the other. All juvenile offenders start out as babies, for instance. But does starting life as a baby cause a youngster to become a juvenile offender? Of course not. Correlation is NOT causation. 

Why assume, for instance, that gang membership begins with truancy? Isn't it more likely that gang membership encourages truancy?  The same applies to marijuana, alcohol and hard drug use. Sure, truants are more likely to engage in these behaviors. But why assume that it is truancy that causes them to do so? Are truants more likely to become pregnant and drop out of school? Sure they are; but is truancy the cause? 

As for low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure, isn't it more likely that these things provoke truancy, rather than cause it?  The same applies to serious reading difficulties. And as for kids that engage in violence and criminal activities, don't blame truancy, blame lousy parenting, dysfunctional families, broken homes, poverty, violent neighborhoods, the illicit economic opportunities created by making certain intoxicants illegal, ad infinitum.

Truancy prevention stops being a problem if we quit compelling school attendance to begin with. We've grown used to kids rejecting, even actively destroying, the extremely expensive educational opportunities taxpayers provide. In fact, this sort of behavior is so commonplace in some schools that the educational process is largely a pretense. Teachers pretend to teach and administrators pretend to running a school. Meanwhile standardized testing proves that the whole thing has become a farce. Isn't it time to ask if this very expensive endeavor has failed and, instead, concentrate on effectively teaching those youngsters who are willing to at least try to learn?

 

ARE YOU SUFFICIENTLY SENSITIVE TO ADMINISTRATIVE INTENT?

I was an assistant professor aspiring to become associate; and had to prove my teaching, publications and service met the mark. My "course evaluations" were quite good. (Actually they were my customer satisfaction ratings — but it is unwise to call them that.) My publications also met muster. The problem was my "service."

 

In this institution, "service" was defined by service on college committees. Here I was drawing a blank. Despite regularly volunteering, in writing, mind you, for whatever committee slots were available, I received no assignments. 

Favored faculty, who often had been educated by the religious order running the school, got the great majority of the key committee assignments. They even garnered these coveted assignments when they hadn't filled out the requisite areas of interest form. In contrast, I filled mine out regularly. I indicated preferences, but even expressed willingness to serve on any committee, Nevertheless, I got zero assignments.

An absence of committee work would doubtless sink my prospects for promotion. So I decided to inquire into this situation. Assignments were made by our faculty senate's "Committee on Committees. It largely consisted of old boy faculty who were alums of the formerly all male school. Oddly, though, this committee was chaired by a woman. What distinctive qualities won her this position? It seemed to me there were two. First, she was a co-religionist. That seemed to be an unwritten qualification. Second, and of far greater importance, she demonstrated slavish servility to every administrative power holder. 

I requested an appointment with this woman, and was in no mood to genuflect. So I opened the meeting abruptly by boldly declaring that I had repeatedly volunteered for any committee assignment, but got nowhere. I noted other faculty had received one assignment after another. What, I asked, was going on? Her reply? It had somehow been determined that I was "insufficiently sensitive to administrative intent." 

Perturbed, I reminded this academic weather vain that my promotion was at stake. I told her that I had kept a careful record of all my futile efforts to volunteer and, as well, those who had received them instead. Then I suggested that if I failed to get promoted because of any alleged "lack of service," she and the other committee members might find themselves legally liable.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I never again had any trouble getting committee assignments. And my promotion followed in due course.

Care to guess what subsequently became of this weather vane chair of the Committee on Committees? It wasn't long before she was appointed, perhaps "anointed" is a better word, Dean of Arts and Sciences. And once in this exalted office, she continued to manifest her finely-tuned sensitivity to administrative intent. Of course, the consequences of her newly-acquired influence frequently disadvantaged the very faculty whose interests she supposedly represented. Before she rise to power this gal was a professor of English, not meteorology. Nevertheless, she always knew which way the wind blew.

What can be learned from this story? 

1. That course evaluations actually measure customer satisfaction. 
2. That there are irreconcilable, though unmentionable, tensions between the interests of the administration and those of the faculty. 
3. That a surprising number of faculty are craven lick-spittles. 
4. That brown-nosing pays — at least in terms of promotion.
5. That one's alleged colleagues might not be collegial. 

What else, more generally, can be learned from this? That there are covert academic realities reminiscent of the often missing genitalia on human anatomical illustrations. Genitalia are obviously critical components of human anatomy. Nevertheless they frequently get “disappeared” on such illustrations. But mentioning their absence is risky.

Are there times to confront the academic equivalent of those anatomical illustrations, point to the blank crotch area and ask, “What the hell happened here?" Apparently there are. But when should one do that? Only when you have more to lose if you keep pretending you don't notice the absence. 

Pulling the sheet off these covert realities can produce a sobering effect on academic power holders when all else fails. It can cause them to stop and weigh potential costs and benefits before messing with you further. But remember, breaking the silence will forever change your status both with the power holders and your colleagues. For good or ill, neither will ever view you, or treat you, in the same way again. 

THE END OF IGNORANCE? sure, if you're politically "correct"

 "In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." Donald Miller

In the world of the most politically correct, no one is ignorant — not even flat wrong, They're "differently informed." Folks who were convinced that Barrack Obama was an African-born Muslim, for example, weren't gullible knuckle-heads. They were, at least according to these relativists, just "differently informed," When Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested a Jewish, Rothschild-financed, space laser might be igniting devastating wildfires in California, she was not astoundingly ignorant, malignantly anti-Semitic, nor engaging in hate-mongering demagoguery. She too was "differently informed. In this case by "alternative facts." 

How deliciously nonjudgmental. No assertion is too ridiculous nor obviously laughable to merit dismissal. Preposterous assertions are merely "differently informed." Informed by whatever half-baked nonsense some nincompoop happens to subscribe to. In this house of mirrors, no one is wrong. It's more like being left, instead of right, handed. You see, there is no right or wrong. Just different, equally acceptable, conceptions of reality.

Yes, really "woke" folks even reject the possibility that some sources of authority are more accurate than others. That is too judgmental for them. Instead they implicitly deny that ignorance even exists. Take, for example, folks who adamantly insist that the condensation trails left by planes flying at high altitude are actually "chemtrails" maliciously laced with harmful substances, being released by the villain of their choice. In a normal world this abysmally ignorant claim would simply discredit the believer. Not in the woke world. Here, any and all conceptions, even those in clear violation of a known natural causes, are plausible. Why? Because factual claims no longer require adequate supporting evidence. If some dimwits believe it, that's good enough.

In the real world individuals embracing puerile buncombe are dismissed out of hand. Not in this world. In this fact-free zone there are no ignoramuses, no blockheads, no dimwits, no cretins. Not even a single shit head! For instance, if someone insists the earth is a mere 6,000 years old, not the scientifically affirmed 4.5 billion, they're not way, way off. The're not utterly wrong. They're merely "differently informed." 

In this Alice in Wonderland any sources become authoritative should someone subscribe to them. When born-again believers embrace the preposterous notion that earth is 6,000 years old, as mentioned above, they probably are unknowingly relying on the calculations of Bishop Ussher — a 17th Century Church of Ireland prelate who painstakingly added up the generations of the Bible, cranked in every post-Biblical generation he could find, and gravely concluded that creation took place on 23 October, 4004 BC at 6 P.M. (Actually he was a bit uncertain about the precise time of day.) 

Was Usher correct? Of course not. In fact, he was as full of crap as a Christmas turkey. But for the fully "woke," the late Bishop's reckoning is at least as good as centuries of painstaking scientific investigation that has unearthed vast amounts of contrary physical evidence. Nevertheless, in the wacky world of the totally politically correct, any fact claim, however hare-brained, is just as good as any other. Of course, the enormous amount of drivel available on social media reinforces this idiocy many times over. Search the internet and you will come up with an enormous amounts of puerile none-sense that enjoys an abundance of believers.

How far does their factual relativism take these true believers? The most zealous end up in a world where truth and fact have become inoperative. The scientific method is coequal with the crystal ball readings of store-front gypsies or the self-enriching preachments of flimflamming televangelists. In this world, the earth really is flat if you believe it is. 

How, in the name of reason, do these zealots end up in this ridiculous position? Well, there is a long-standing debate about whether knowledge is structured by a unique relationship to "reality," or is "socially constructed." In the former an "objective" organization of facts about the world can be constructed, in the later that organization totally depends upon the interests of the organizers?

The value of a socially constructed point of view is that it helps identify potential stakeholders. It suggests whose interests are being served. But it also nullifies the power of a truly revolutionary method for factual discovery: the scientific method. Designed to be independent of special interests, this methodology continuously produces astonishingly powerful results. Consider, for example, nuclear bombs or the eradication of small pox after a successful world-wide vaccination campaign.

Unfortunately, the most "woke" accept the socially constructed view so enthusiastically that they end up believing that all knowledge — except their own, of course — is entirely relative. They therefore believe it follows that all knowledge claims must be given equal weight even if careful scientific .  

analysis reveals them to be wrong.

What are the implications of such unreserved "tolerance" for schooling? For one thing, it lays waste to every form of education that is based on the scientific method. So too all historic claims based on overwhelming evidence. In fact, with the search for truth abandoned, with knowledge a matter of opinion, with any viewpoint as good as any other, scholarship itself is vaporized and insipid, suicidal "tolerance" takes over. 

Worse, schooling's sorting function, in which competence and knowledge are measured and reported, becomes completely inoperative. No more graduating with honors. No more failures either. Everybody get's an "A." Just don't count on expertise in any area of your life. Need skilled cardiac surgery? Good luck with that if your "surgeon" was allowed to become one for political reasons. Live in a high-rise? Make sure your life insurance is paid up because that building might have been designed by some knucklehead who passed his civil engineering exams only because one view of structural integrity is now just as good as any other. Remember, everybody passes!

Does that seem an unlikely happening? Well more and more of it is going on. For instance, I know of a professor at Georgia State who openly states that he cannot bring himself to award any failing grades.He sees that as entirely too judgmental; plus it thwarts the expectations of the students involved. So, semester after semester, he awards counterfeit grades without challenge from the administration. This kind of thing ultimately destroys the value of a college or university degree. Is that what we want?

INTERVIEW WITH THE DEAD: JEFFERSON ON EDUCATION — natural aristocracy and race

Interviewer: Mr. President, the rules for this interview require us to speak only about education.

Jefferson: Yes, and I welcome it. All my life I championed public education, because only an enlightened people can support a democracy. That is why I tried to establish universal male education in tax-supported schools.

Interviewer: I understand you wanted to use schooling to create a “natural American aristocracy.”

Jefferson: Yes, I much prefer a natural aristocracy based on brains and hard work to a pseudo-aristocracy based on wealth. I envisioned a selection process in which every free child would get three years of local free primary education. Families could pay for more. The academically talented few would move on to grammar schools free of charge. Parents willing and able to pay could send their children too. Then the best half of the grammar school class would have the opportunity to study for three more years at university at public expense.

Interviewer: Did you imagine these people rising to positions of leadership in the democracy?

Jefferson: Absolutely. That was the point of the graduated system —to rake the geniuses from the rubbish.

 Interviewer: Why do you think your idea failed?

Jefferson: It was ahead of its time — although the Virginia legislature did approve my tax-supported university idea.

 Interviewer: But what of their failure to support your basic education proposal?

Jefferson: Elementary education is more important than university education. It is safer to have the whole male population enlightened than only a select few, as in Europe. Their decision to raise the apex of the pyramid without the foundation was a big mistake.

 Interviewer: You mentioned schooling only the male population. Why?

Jefferson: Women should be confined to a more rarefied and less contentious domain than men; and are properly excluded from public affairs, No effort need be made to educate them in any way that is not useful in their place as wives and mothers. Their interests should be chiefly housekeeping and childbearing.

 Interviewer: I see. You also said you championed public schooling for every FREE child. I assume that means you excluded slaves?

Jefferson: Yes I did. In my experience, black people are in reason much inferior. I never knew of a black person capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid. But despite the imbecility of blacks and their general lack of foresight, I always favored their emancipation and thought such would eventually become a law in Virginia.

 Interviewer: Imbecility and general lack of foresight?

Jefferson: Yes, for example, though they receive blankets very thankfully on the commencement of winter, when the warm weather returns they frequently cast them off, without any thought as to what may become of them, wherever they happen to be at the time, and then not seldom lose them in the woods or fields from mere carelessness.

 Interviewer: But your own records show that you only allowed them a blanket every three years and your overseers often failed to deliver those.

Jefferson: Well, no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I myself entertain and express on the grade of understanding allotted them by nature.

 Interviewer: But you owned black men who learned to be skilled coopers, painters, smiths, glazers, gourmet cooks, and so forth. Some were even capable of building you a carriage and making real your house designs. In fact it was you who pioneered in the industrialization and diversification of slavery with your gristmill, textile mill, nailery, coopering shop, tin-smithing operation, and so forth. Your estate at Monticello was utterly dependent on this black talent.

Jefferson: Yes, thank you for reminding me of the many instances of respectable intelligence in that race of men. But learning a trade is different than managing one’s own life. In the 1770’s when the Quakers freed slaves the experiment failed miserably and it soon became obvious that they had set free a parcel of lazy, worthless, Negroes. Brought from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, negroes are by their habits rendered as incapable of children of taking care of themselves and raising young. In the meantime they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them. The march of emancipation takes time. Just abandoning persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children.

 Interviewer: Perhaps they simply were too valuable to be set free. Your own calculations reveal how financially essential slavery was for maintaining Monticello’s profitability. And that Quaker experiment you label a failure actually proved successful. What is more, while in Philadelphia, you must have observed its prosperous community of free black Americans who had clearly mastered literacy, marketable skills and independent living.

Jefferson: Well I heard the Quaker experiment was an abject failure. And I am still waiting to find a natural aristocrat among the men of this race. It is not their condition but nature which has made them inferior. They are equal to whites in memory, but in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.

 Interviewer: Do you recall, while you were Secretary of State, receiving a lengthy letter and a complex Almanac containing much astronomic data both written by a free black man named Benjamin Banneker? In the letter he tried to persuade you to stop publishing statements about the alleged inferiority of blacks, made a persuasive case for there being only one human family and scolded you and the other framers of the Declaration of Independence for hypocritically tolerating the “groaning captivity and cruel oppression” of his brethren.

Jefferson: Yes, I recall both, and frankly I think Banneker had help in developing the astronomical calculation for that almanac. So far as his letter is concerned, it shows him to have a mind of very common stature indeed.

 Interviewer: Let’s turn to the hundreds of black children you owned, worked, used as collateral and sold for profit over your lifetime. How were they educated?

Jefferson: Most of the boys worked at my forge learning to turn iron rods into nails.

 Interviewer: Yes, I read that the labor of the nail boys provided completely for the maintenance of your family.

Jefferson: It was a profitable enterprise.

 Interviewer: Were the boys returned to their mothers at the end of the day?

Jefferson: No. Those who worked at the forge lived there. Initially I housed my slaves without regard for family ties. Later I allowed families to live together, but only until the children were put to work.

 Interviewer: Was it difficult to teach children to forge nails?

Jefferson: Slaves of any age can often be a burden, and these boys were no exception. It took a stern hand to keep them in line. I recall my son-in-law complaining that the overseer was whipping the small ones. The 10, 11 and 12 year olds did not take kindly to beginning work an hour before dawn, so the overseer whipped them for truancy.

 Interviewer: When you learned of this, did you stop the whippings?

Jefferson: I abhor that sort of thing. But some people require vigor of discipline to make them do reasonable work. Besides the small ones had to be kept busy; and building their character required them to be policed. So far as the overseer is concerned, I could never find a man who fulfilled my purposes as well as that fellow. I recall him asking that his pay be based on nail production, and when I agreed production soared.

Interviewer: Were the nail boys taught to read and write?

Jefferson: No, they were taught to forge nails. But the most diligent could ultimately expect to be trained as artisans and not become common field slaves.

 Interviewer: What about the slave girls you owned? Were they taught?

Jefferson: Yes, from age 10 to 16 they learned to spin and weave; then most of them, the least skilled, would go into the ground.

 Interviewer: When you were a young man you championed emancipation. But as your estate became more elaborate, your lifestyle more opulent and your slaves more plentiful, your ardor for emancipation cooled. In fact, when you became secretary of state, vice president and twice president you not only failed to use your great authority try to end slavery, you actually promoted its establishment in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. Was there a connection between your dimming enthusiasm for emancipation and the increasing weight slavery gave your pocketbook?

Jefferson: No, not at all. I favored emancipation all my life, but came to realize that it had to be very gradual in order to lessen the shock which an operation so fundamental could not fail to produce. Besides, American slaves were better fed and clothed than England’s workers and labored less.

 Interviewer: Throughout your lifetime you repeatedly expressed an abhorrence of race mixing. Yet Jeff Randolph, your grandson, reported that you had a parallel mixed race family living on the mountain. He also said you refused to comment on the resemblance between yourself and the Monticello slave children being brought up as house servants.

Jefferson: This interview is supposed to be about education; and I think we should bring it to a close.

 

Interviewer: Thank you Mr. President.

 

Jefferson’s actual quotes were used in the construction of this “interview.” While minor modifications were made to adapt them to fit this format, his thoughts and sentiments remain intact and as expressed. 

For a detailed treatment of Jefferson and his slaves see: Henry Wiencek. Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (2012). 

For extensive bibliographies on Thomas Jefferson, race, and slavery, see “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” Monticello.org, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.