It's easy to promise character education in schools, but much harder to
agree on the definition of truth.
John Robson The Ottawa Citizen
Dalton McGuinty has promised us "character education" in schools. Someone
certainly should teach kids that, for instance, you shouldn't dress in a
phoney way or make promises you have no reasonable expectation of being able
to keep. But inevitably they'll also have to explain why not. In this
regard, it may be yet another campaign pledge that wasn't thought through as
thoroughly as it profitably might have been.
According to Mr. McGuinty, "Character education is all about ensuring we use
our public schools to help reinforce strong community values." It's not
immediately clear why we need to reinforce community values that are already
strong, nor whether schools that consider teaching the times table a major
achievement and make no effort to familiarize students with the Charge of
the Light Brigade are well placed to do so. But the real problem is figuring
out what "values" a state institution should inflict on children whose
parents will have no choice unless they can afford private school.
Inflict? Values? Heck no. According to Mr. McGuinty, "They are not my
values, not the values of the Ministry of Education. Where it has been used
successfully, character education is about developing consensus regarding
community values." Okey dokey. All we have to do is develop consensus
regarding community values between now and the start of the school ... d'oh,
it already started. OK, give ourselves 11 months and we'll have it in place
by next school year. Six thousand years hasn't been enough to produce
consensus, but of course Mr. McGuinty wasn't in charge then.
If you've ever suffered through one of these consensus-building
consultations, you know the purpose is to guide the rats to the right exit
in the maze. So Mr. McGuinty wants parents, students and community leaders
to get together (what, all of them? or just the right-thinking sort
carefully selected by the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice?) and agree on a set of common "character attributes." He
adds, "Inevitably, those include courage, integrity, empathy, respect,
responsibility, honesty and fairness."
Inevitably? So the process is rigged? No, because, "These are universal
values that are shared by all parents." If you already know that, why
consult? And after the teacher lists what's right and what's wrong, what to
tell students who ask where this stuff comes from?
There is an old answer, namely that virtues (that's what we used to call
values) are objectively true, that there's a natural law human legislators
can ignore or mock, but not change. Bright kids will then ask how there can
be laws without a lawgiver.
Even if we manage to cram God back into the closet, there's another problem.
If there are objective moral truths we not only can't change but can't
really not know, they're old-fashioned ones like, "If you don't work, you
die." They aren't gay marriage, free money and soft power.
We could claim the substantial consensus on the old rules through the ages
(including by parents, the real reason schools are stepping in) was a
mistake. But unless we plan to teach honesty by lying, we can't claim
there's a consensus on the new rules, ever was or ever will be. How could
there be, when one of the new rules is that there is no truth?
The Citizen quoted a woman who oversaw the introduction of character
education in two Ontario school boards that values education caused a
"fiasco" in the '70s because of "the subjective nature of values." So now,
"we're not saying anything in terms of values. There are some attributes
that are non-negotiable, objectively good for society, and we all agree upon
them regardless of race, gender, social class, etc."
OK. First we got rid of virtues because they were too objective to bend to
our self-indulgence. Then we got rid of values because they were too
subjective to create agreement. Now we've opted for something we can't even
name that may not be true, but is at least "non-negotiable." Which should
make for some pretty cut-and-dried consultation. "I don't agree." "Shut up."
"Sorry."
Where does Mr. McGuinty stand on all this? As usual, on both sides. He's not
a lead villain. He's just one of C.S. Lewis's modern "men without chests," a
Catholic who says never mind that silly old Pope and, when nonsense comes,
feebly flaps his arms and says I didn't mean for you to transvalue all
values.
So kids, there are no values, no virtues, no objective morality, but
non-negotiable-universally-agreed-already-instilled-desperately-lacking-unco
ntroversial-parental-state-imposed values.
Pay attention because it will be on the exam. And you shouldn't cheat
because um yes well gee ...
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