Educators should not strive for objectivity.

First, let me make it clear that I am only talking about educators of people old enough to have their own thoughts. Say, high-school age and above. I am not talking about educators of young children who are susceptible of treating everything they hear from an adult as incontrovertible fact. Nearly everyone believes that educators ought to be objective and to teach only the facts without injecting their own personal views. They denigrate teachers who use the classroom as their own soapbox with which to beat their students over the head with their personal opinions. I feel this is a mistaken viewpoint and that instead we ought to encourage educators to have a point of view and to make that view known in the classroom and in their papers, books, and articles, etc. First, objectivity is impossible. The fact that we are human means that we MUST have an individual point of view. This can not be avoided and any attempt to do so must fail. You may object and say that it is possible to be objective if one only gives the facts. After all, you say, facts are constant and do not change depending on one's personal position. But facts DO change. We do not always know the facts and what is considered fact now, may be considered untrue tomorrow and vice-versa. But more importantly, for any domain of knowledge there are a nearly infinite number of facts. For example, lets say we wanted to study the Civil War. It would literally be impossible to give ALL the facts concerning the Civil War in a one semester course. For that matter, it would be impossible to give all the facts in a LIFETIME. And since giving all the facts (regarding ANY domain of knowledge) is impossible, educators must CHOOSE which facts are the most important and only discuss THOSE facts. But this means they must introduce BIAS into the discussion, whether it is their own bias or that of someone else. It may be their school board's bias. It may be the government's bias. Who knows? So, I have just proved that it is impossible for an educator to be objective. It still remains to be seen whether we should ask them to at least STRIVE for objectivity, even if ultimately they must fail. I believe the answer is clearly "no". By asking them to strive for objectivity, we are only succeeding in making it more difficult to determine the nature of their biases. Their bias will now be obscured in the language of objectivity that can only cause the transfer of the biased point of view to the student to be more effective and more difficult to overcome later. Instead, I believe we should encourage educators, parents, and students to embrace their subjectivity and to challenge each other by putting their own biases and points of view in the open. Incidentally, this goes for News sources as well. We don't hate Fox news or CNN because they are biased. We hate them because they pretend to be objective when they are not. We see others who consider Fox (or CNN) to really be objective and "no spin" as brainwashed individuals. But they are not brainwashed because of the spin. They are brainwashed because they really believe that they are getting all the facts and are being told the news objectively. I listen to Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-radio hosts because I want to get their BIASED opinion, not because I think they are telling me "the truth." I want to know how these people think and compare how they interpret events to the way someone like Amy Goodman from Democracy Now does. So, in short, I believe that educators of all types ought to be encouraged to give their own point of view on events, history, and so-called facts, so long as they make their bias known or do not try to hide it behind a veil of false objectivity. I believe it is easier to learn and come up with a unique point of view that is one's own if we are exposed to many different points of view than if we are only exposed to a few or even only one "objective" point of view.