From: mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas)
Subject: Morality and the Public School
Organization: Gordian; Costa Mesa, CA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 01:27:21 GMT

In article <1992Dec31.135554.9320@kodak.kodak.com>, bryant@neural.Kodak.COM (Steve Bryant) writes:
> I don't want someone teaching my children your christian values, your
> moslim values, your jewish values, your homosexual values. I don't want 
> any of your values. I'll teach my children my values, thank you.
> 
> The primary purpose of schools should be a basic education including,
> reading, writing, and arithmatic. And, should exclude social engineering
> masquerading itself as education. If you want someone other than 
> yourself to teach your children values, take them to sunday school.

  Of course although this seems nice on paper, it is impossible in 
practice. Values and morals are implicit in teaching at all levels. 
It would be absolutely impossible to render schools absolutely void of
teaching morality of all forms. 
  Think about banning Aesop's Fables. Think about banning all forms
of history. Think about banning all literature. Think about banning
all science which contradicts some religious/moral teachings. Do this
and you will find that education is utterly contentless. 
  Data from which no conclusions are drawn is just that, data. 
Schools must put some spin on what conclusions ought to be drawn
about certain situations, even if the spin on it is *wrong*. To
just give children facts with no interpretation is useless. Children
must be taught the tools of how to reason critically. Part of that
is teaching them how to draw conclusions from the evidence presented.
Morality and judgement are inescapable necessities in education.
  Morality and values used to be unabashedly taught in schools.
Of course they were your standard Christian and local prejudicial
values. If you had a different opinion, too bad. It wasn't called
"social engineering" in those days, but the term certainly would have
fit it. Clearly this was not right though; those alienated were part 
of the common weal as well, weren't they? Why should somebody be paying
for a religion/morality they don't approve of? But what should the 
solution be?
  This, of course, is one of the great debates and contradictions of
public schooling. The modern solution is to basically try to divorce
morality and judgement from facts (aka the three R's). It is OK so long
as you don't try to put any moral spin on a subject. This only sort
of works, and what really happens is that the morality which really
gets taught is the least common denominator of what is least objectionable
to the most people -- sort of a perverted Millian Greatest Good
principle. But the further you take this, the more naked the false
premise becomes. Observe things like the Columbus flap and other 
multiculturalism problems. Look at the quality of text books today 
and ask why they are so dull and lifeless. There are no heros and
no villians, only facts. Mindless puppets dancing to a play which
has a stage but no meaning.
   [NB: I'm not slamming multiculturalism, I'm just using it as an
    illustration of what happens when you try to divorce morality
    from fact teaching].
  The current debate surronding teaching school children the facts
about homosexuality, even something as simple as mentioning that
it just exists, demonstrates perfectly why this artificial division
is a false one, and cannot go on without destroying education en
toto.   
-- 

		Michael Thomas	(mike@gordian.com)
	"I don't think Bambi Eyes will get you that flame thrower..."  
		-- Hobbes to Calvin
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