On "Post-modernist" Education

Having read a few of the articles for this week's Q & A, I felt compelled to make a few observations on so-called "post-modernist education theory," particularly as was developed in the articles by Hatcher and Sutton.

These two articles show some wonderful illustrations of how constructivists contort the English language and subtly imply the need for an objective "real world" while refusing to accept such a notion. As Hatcher points out, without a real world, who are we to make a claim about objective facts, including the claim that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Sutton counters that such claims are not particularly important, since they are only based on our cultural assumptions, and anti-realism of course takes this into account.

Perhaps most off-putting is Sutton's claim that, since philosophy has not yet arrived at objective truth, it cannot, and the search is futile. This is, I think, an incredibly dangerous claim. After all, if medicine has not yet produced a cure for cancer, does that mean we cannot and should stop trying? If we have not yet developed a cheap fuel that is safer for the environment than the coal, oil, and natural gas we use, does this mean that we cannot and should stop trying? Such a claim is at best absurd, and at worst a direct attack on scientific and intellectual progress.

Key to Sutton's claims to keep knowledge alive without truth is the claim that all knowledge must be "in context." This is, again, the constructivist's attempt to mangle the English language to produce "truth" by a different name. Either that, or it is a way to allow society to fragment and fall apart because of "context" and difference of opinion. After all, if South Carolina wants to teach that slavery was good and moral and that the south won the Civil War, who are we to argue? We are not from that context, nor do we have access to their particular viewpoints, and without any objective truth to reference, we have no way to disprove this radical claim.

At the end of his article, Sutton asks "Does this sound like a description of educational bamboozlement or of philosophical education conceived as both therapeutic and edifying?" My answer is that this does, in fact, sound like a description of educational bamboozlement, and to try to enact this would almost certainly come at the expense of students and their education.

To end with a question: Should we allow curricular flexibility for "local standards?"