By now, you should know how I feel about Truth. It exists, and it should be fought for. I came across an interesting editorial in The New York Times online that raises a very important issue. The original article can be found here, but I want to copy/paste the text because it's so important. Remember, I'll take Truth from whomever speaks it.
— Copying homework assignments is wrong.
Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts
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What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?
I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.
What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?
A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:
Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.
Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.
Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” The definitions I found onlinewere substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.
So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts?
First, the definition of a fact waffles between truth and proof — two obviously different features. Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it. Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false. For example, many people once thought that the earth was flat. It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives). Furthermore, if proof is required for facts, then facts become person-relative. Something might be a fact for me if I can prove it but not a fact for you if you can’t. In that case, E=MC2 is a fact for a physicist but not for me.
But second, and worse, students are taught that claims are eitherfacts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both. For example, I asked my son about this distinction after his open house. He confidently explained that facts were things that were true whereas opinions are things that are believed. We then had this conversation:
Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”
Him: “It’s a fact.”
Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”
Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”
Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”
The blank stare on his face said it all.
How does the dichotomy between fact and opinion relate to morality? I learned the answer to this question only after I investigated my son’s homework (and other examples of assignments online). Kids are asked to sort facts from opinions and, without fail, every value claim is labeled as an opinion. Here’s a little test devised from questions available on fact vs. opinion worksheets online: are the following facts or opinions?
— Copying homework assignments is wrong.
— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.
— All men are created equal.
— It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.
— It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.
— Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.
— Drug dealers belong in prison.
The answer? In each case, the worksheets categorize these claims as opinions. The explanation on offer is that each of these claims is a value claim and value claims are not facts. This is repeated ad nauseum: any claim with good, right, wrong, etc. is not a fact.
In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.
The inconsistency in this curriculum is obvious. For example, at the outset of the school year, my son brought home a list of student rights and responsibilities. Had he already read the lesson on fact vs. opinion, he might have noted that the supposed rights of other students were based on no more than opinions. According to the school’s curriculum, it certainly wasn’t true that his classmates deserved to be treated a particular way — that would make it a fact. Similarly, it wasn’t really true that he had any responsibilities — that would be to make a value claim a truth. It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on.
Indeed, in the world beyond grade school, where adults must exercise their moral knowledge and reasoning to conduct themselves in the society, the stakes are greater. There, consistency demands that we acknowledge the existence of moral facts. If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others?
Our schools do amazing things with our children. And they are, in a way, teaching moral standards when they ask students to treat one another humanely and to do their schoolwork with academic integrity. But at the same time, the curriculum sets our children up for doublethink. They are told that there are no moral facts in one breath even as the next tells them how they ought to behave.
We can do better. Our children deserve a consistent intellectual foundation. Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.
That would be wrong.
Justin P. McBrayer is an associate professor of philosophy at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. He works in ethics and philosophy of religion.
Justin P. McBrayer is an associate professor of philosophy at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo. He works in ethics and philosophy of religion.
From the comments: "Yet another thing schools are being given primary responsibility for. I am an English teacher, and I cover all kinds of things in my curriculum (sentence structure, plot, character, gerunds, vocabulary, etc.). Moral issues come up, of course, and ultimately my hope is to teach the students to be kind and loving to their fellow living beings. But when it comes to directly teaching morality: sorry to say it but it's not my job to impose my own moral code on the students. That's for the parents to do.
ReplyDeleteWhen is SOMEONE going to have the courage to blame parents for the way they raise, or don't raise, their children? Politicians will never do it, for obvious reasons. Public officials are always too timid. But it's time for people to start speaking up about the fact that there are millions of parents out there who do little to nothing to drill moral values into their kids."
I mostly agree with the article. I also mostly agree with the commenter. Being exposed to such beliefs is bound to affect the children. Hitler's Youth did essentially the same thing. However, parents also have a responsibility to be aware of what is being taught and to challenge their children with other ways of thinking. Apathetic parenting is worse than bad teaching.
It may be quibbling, but some of his examples of moral truths/opinions are hard to distinguish. We have trouble with international students plagiarizing because they grew up in cultures where copying someone's work is a sign of respect. Yet here, it is severely punished and called wrong. Is it a moral truth in our country? Or is he calling it an opinion? I guess my point is, rather than blaming the school system for failing at teaching basic morality, parents need to question what is being taught and they need to teach their children to do the same thing.
P.S. I have a sneaking feeling I missed something about the issue. It may be revisited later. Feel free to point out any obvious hidden holes in my logic.
I would agree, it absolutely shouldn't be solely the educational institution's job to teach morality. But I think a lot of parents have abrogated their responsibility onto teachers and the school system. And schools do have an obligation to teach students what it means to be good citizens. But as the definition of that drifts further away from Truth and becomes reflective of current culture, we're just going to keep shooting ourselves in the foot. Parents absolutely need to ask questions and be aware of what their kids are being taught. It seems like such a small difference in definition between fact and opinion, but even the smallest thing can be an insidious influence that spreads to other areas of thought. If you can't definitively say that something is wrong, then you can't punish anyone for anything. Why not destroy a city because you're upset? You can't tell me it's wrong because you have no basis for a moral code. It's just your opinion.
DeleteThat's where we're headed.