Children’s interests. Parent’s rights. Teacher’s expertise.
Government power. All of these things come into play in thinking about who
should have authority to make curricular decisions. As always, a diversity of
viewpoints was expressed in our blogs. By and large, most folks favored
something like Gutmann’s democratic vision. But not a few (including Jeffrey B,
Erin V, and Jessica K) wanted to give more authority to teachers as guardians
of the interests of children. In these concluding comments, I’m going to focus
on a few particularly interesting highlights from our discussion relating to
the following things:
- Opt-outs and parental authority (and a pedagogical comment on responding to others)
- Evolution and popular democratic control
- Brighouse and Swift on parent’s rights
I also want to make one brief pedagogical comment on the use
of links in blog writing. While it is fine to list related resources at the end
of a blog, the best blogs I’ve read so far do two things here: They integrate
linked resources into the blog and discuss the content of the linked resource
as part of the case made out in the discussion. At the very least, anyway, it
is a good idea when linking to a resource to explain what the link is to and
its importance or relevance to the discussion. This way your reader knows what
it’s doing there and whether it’s something they might want to follow.
Opt-outs and parental
authority
When a parent strenuously objects to some part of your
curriculum, should you excuse their child from it? That sure seems like one
easy way to handle things that (a) is responsiveness to the wishes of parents
and (b) does not disrupt the learning of others. In interesting comments on
this, however, Jessica K and Kimberley R question whether this is quite
correct.
On (a), Jessica remarked that children exempted from, e.g. a
sex education unit, are just as likely to end up learning about it on the
playground as at home. One point of this, I take it, is that opt-outs are not
in fact the shields parents might think they are. Insofar as that’s true,
teachers I suppose can honor the requests of parents without fear that their
children will learn nothing. On the other hand, the suggestion could be that
opt-outs are problematic insofar as parents who request them may have no alternative
plan of instruction. In that case, what the child learns depends on what her
peers tell here, and that’s problematic.
By contrast Kimberly argues relative to point (b) that opt-outs
can take forms that potentially threaten the learning of others. She writes:
…there are other cases
where this “opt-out” option for families has affected the rest of the school
district. For instance a Davis School District in Utah pulled a controversial
book off of their library shelves and placed it behind the counter for “request
only” because of one parent’s complaint. This parent did not agree to the book
In Our Mother’s House by Patricia Polacco being a part of the library shelf for
her child or any other child to have free access to. Because of her feelings
that homosexuality should be discussed at home, she gathered other parents to
sign a petition. In this situation, the parent may be looking out for her
child’s best interest, but she imposed her belief upon the rest of the school.
I think probably the truth here is that opt-outs can do both
good and harm and we have to be careful thinking through the consequences in
each particular case. If the opt-out would affect the learning of others, then the
parents requesting it bear a larger burden in justifying the request.
On a pedagogical note, Kimberely’s comment here is a
model of the kind of thing I hope to see people doing in responding to others—engaging
with the ideas in a way that helps advance our thinking about the issues. Generally
I’d like folks to avoid commenting as a teacher, e.g. on the quality of the
writing or on how it could be improved. Leave that to me for now!
Popular democratic
control and evolution
As I mentioned above, by and large folks favored some
version of Gutmann’s democratic ideal. But not everyone. Some disagreement is measured,
guarded. In thinking about controversies such as those over evolution, for
instance, Jessica K writes:
It is imprudent to think that one idea,
theory or principle suggested by one individual or group could be the best for
all. The ongoing national controversies
about the teaching of evolution show the risks of an educational system
dominated by factionalism. Who is to say no students should learn about
evolution because its teaching goes against the wishes of a few? Parents have
the responsibility to talk with their children at home about their faith and
what evolution means to them. As an educator, I need to be thoughtful of those
beliefs, and I am: I explain that evolution is science-based, but that they are
free to disbelieve its principles and will not find themselves alone in that
stance. If parents had greater control
over the educational system, it is unlikely that evolution would be taught in
schools, nor the controversy that surrounds it…Parents already wield
considerable power in schools. I see how
much power parents have in the educational system, and I realize the value of
differing opinions: their input assures us that everyone's needs are being
taken into consideration. Still, I think
it sensible to limit parents' control. Think back to all the books challenged
or banned from school libraries because parents could not see their educational
or historical value. Many of these works
are some of our most important national literature. To deprive students of access to such
opportunities is to do them a disservice. It is vital that everyone understands
their role in the educational system and ensures that everyone does what is
best to create unbound, happy, productive citizens.
To some extent Jessica is of two minds here. On the one
hand, we want educational institutions to be responsive to the diversity of viewpoints.
No one theory or principle suggested by any one individual or group could be
the best for all, she says. At the same time, some knowledge—Jessica seems to
suggest—must be protected whatever some citizens think about it. On this point,
Erin V is rather more blunt. She also questions how much influence the public
at large—through the schools boards they elect—should have. She writes:
I think it is
dangerously arrogant to proclaim a democracy will always uphold critical
thinking and other important skills. I’m sorry to bring this up again, but
remember the case of the Texas Board of Education from my previous blog? The
people who instituted a white-washed, Euro-centric, anti-secular curriculum
were all democratically elected officials. I believe in the power of democracy,
but I also know that democracy depends on the will of the people and the will
of the people can change.
The upshot, I take it, is that democratic systems make sense
only if they provide very wide scope for teachers or education professionals to
ultimately determine what gets taught in the classroom.
It is hard to argue with the claim that the truth should
prevail in the classroom. Of course, controversy persists over educational
authority because it persists over the truth about hard issues such as morals
and the place of faith in public life. Insofar as teachers and teacher’s unions
align themselves with particular, controversial perspectives on these issues,
they will always face criticism from those who disagree. Since it’s always
possible that we teachers are mistaken, it makes sense that we should be in
some way or other held accountable to the public. I don’t know if that’s to say
anything different from what Jessica and Erin are saying here. But I do want to
take a moment to say something about the evolution controversy, which a few other
folks did mention or discuss.
It is sometimes said that evolution is “just a theory”, one
having no more nor less credibility on the origins of life on earth than other
theories, such as creationism. This is partly right and partly wrong. One
reason for this is that, actually, there are no viable scientific alternatives
to evolution as an explanation of the origin of species. But the origin
of species is a different question from the question concerning the origins
of life. Indeed one coherent philosophical
view on the relationship between these accepts some form of creationism about
the life question and evolution about the species question. In other words,
primitive life is divinely created and this primitive life, by virtue of the
laws of evolution, developed into the many different species we have. This view
is coherent because the theory of natural selection—which is the core principle
of the theory of evolution—has nothing to say about how life began, but only on
how it persists, adapts, and changes into new forms.
But here's the rub: The hybrid “divine creation plus natural
selection” view of the origins of life and species is a philosophical view
that, so far as I know, has no empirical support. At this time, it's simply the
case that no one really knows how life began (though there are many different
scientific theories on this, none has garnered anything like the support of
evolution as an explanation of speciation; see here for some of these theories:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-simpler-origin-for-life).
On the other hand, there's a veritable mountain of hard data supporting
the view that all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor, i.e. the
theory of evolution is correct. There's not space here to review this. I'll
just mention the fossil record, which includes various extinct species bearing
phylogenic resemblance to past and present species, the ‘structural homologies’
in earth’s diverse species (e.g. the common skeletal structures in vertebrates),
and the evidence by example from artificial selection (e.g. the diversity of
animals humans have bread through trait selection). For a deeper review of the multiple
lines of evidence for evolution, see this site here at the University of
California, Berkeley: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_01.
In short, it is just not so that evolution is 'just a theory.' It is widely
accepted fact, its truth confirmed by a diverse and very large mass of evidence.
Now I mean to draw two different conclusions from this. One
is that there's little if any scientific grounds for forcing school biology
classes to discuss anything other than evolution when their topic is the origin
of species. There’s just too little scientific support for creationism as an
alternative explanation of the origin of species. This is not to be
disrespectful of anyone’s religious beliefs. It is to respect the facts. There
is, therefore, no reason even to tell students who disagree with evolution that
they are free to believe anything else that they like. Of course, they can, but
only in just the same way that they can do anything else they should not do. We
are free to believe anything we want, but not rationally free to.
The other thing, however, is that there's plenty of good
philosophical grounds for ensuring that the limitations of the theory of
evolution are well understood and for finding other ways to discuss that
question philosophically somewhere in the curriculum. Evolution does not, so
far as I know, explain the origins of life on earth, and creationism is as
credible here as ‘spontaneous generation.’ The origins of life are deeply
mysterious, and even if science could answer it compellingly, still, there is
still a further question it cannot: Why are we here? Why don’t we talk about
alternative philosophical or religious explanations of the origins of life in this
sense in schools?
Brighouse and Swift on
parent’s rights
Finally, I want to briefly clarify something about Brighouse
and Swift’s view on the rights of parents. One interpretation I saw in a few
posts has it that Brighouse and Swift favor deferring to parental authority,
full stop. That’s not quite right. It is true that they favor deferring to
parents on some matters. This is because they believe that parents have a very
weighty interest in enjoying certain goods (the “relationship goods”) that come
along with having a close relationship with their children. Such goods include
the peculiar pleasures, intimacy, and challenges of acting as a fiduciary for a
developing human being. But by the same token, Brighouse and Swift believe that
it is legitimate for educators or governments to intervene in parental decision-making
insofar as doing so will not prevent parents from enjoying the relationship
goods.
It is somewhat ambiguous how this particular theory applies
to certain cases, such as the Yoder case. Some believe that, because Amish
children educated past the 8th grade might as a consequence abandon
the Amish way of life, the relationship goods theory implies that we must allow
Amish parents to remove their children from public schools at that age. But
this is not clear. This conclusion follows only if it is true that it is impossible
for Amish parents to have a good, parental relationship to their children if
their children pursue schooling instead of Amish work. But this is hardly
clear. Is it not the parent's fault if they choose to break ties with children who,
as a consequence of a cosmopolitan education, decide to abandon the Amish way
of life? It’s an open question so far as I can tell.
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