Posted on 04/11/2015 2:58:22 PM PDT by wagglebee
April 10, 2015 (BreakPoint.org) -- Already this year, we’ve seen a lot of evil: suicide bombings, the attacks in Paris, religious persecution, Boko Haram and ISIS. These have all outraged the world—and rightly so. But here’s a question worth pondering: will our kids be able to recognize evil when they see it? Do they even believe in moral facts?
Well, that’s the question one educator asked recently in The New York Times after making a surprising discovery about what his child was learning in school.
Justin McBrayer, an associate professor of ethics at Fort Lewis College, says he couldn’t figure out why the high school graduates showing up in his classroom had no concept of moral truth. The overwhelming majority of freshmen, he says, “view[ed] moral claims as mere opinions that are not true,” or are true only in a relative sense.
McBrayer was puzzled about this until he visited a school open house with his second-grade son. It was there that he encountered a pair of signs hanging prominently in the classroom. The first read, “Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.” The next one said, “Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.”
Startled by this oversimplification, McBrayer was sure it must be a fluke. So he went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” And sure enough, he found lesson plans from educators around the country that alarmed him.
“…students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions,” McBrayer writes. “They are given quizzes in which they must sort out claims into one camp or the other but not both.”
The problem with this, he explains, is that many claims don’t fit nicely into either category. Many claims are both facts and opinions, because opinions, of course, can be true or false. And he decided to test whether his son understood this.
“I believe that George Washington was the first president,” he said to him. “Is that a fact or an opinion?” And the second-grader’s blank expression when the statement didn’t fit his categories, McBrayer writes, said it all.
But it gets even worse. A little digging reveals that public schools today teach, as a matter of course, that all value claims are opinions, not facts. One grade-school worksheet, for example, categorized the statements “copying homework is wrong,” “cursing in school is inappropriate,” and “all men are created equal,” as opinions—not facts.
“This is repeated ad nauseum,” McBrayer writes. “[A]ny claim with good or right or wrong, etc. is not a fact.”
But if value statements are always opinions, why should anyone believe them? For that matter, why should kids believe a teacher who tells them that hitting is wrong? Or a college ethics professor who tells them murder is wrong?
It’s a problem that’s not restricted to second-grade classrooms. As Jamie Condliff writes at Gizmodo, researchers at Google have reportedly pioneered a new algorithm that ranks Web pages by how well their claims stack up against a library of established so-called “facts.” That library, known as Google’s “Knowledge Vault,” is programmed to sort claims into facts and opinions—just like McBrayer’s son.
“If web pages contain information that contradicts the Vault,” writes Condliff, “they slide down in the ranking.”
Unlike Common Core standards, Google’s system hasn’t been implemented yet. But if it is, our world’s most sought after source of information will be silencing dissent on controversial topics, like origins, climate change, and sexuality.
Now we need to know all of this not so we can panic, but so that we can counteract the false dichotomy so many of our kids are learning. There are moral facts. And if you need some help on how to approach this with your teenager or college age student—send them to a Summit Ministries’ summer worldview conference. It’s simply the best apologetics and worldview training program out there for students. Visit summit.org to learn more. And to see an excellent talk on moral truth by my friend Sean McDowell, come to BreakPoint.org and click on this commentary. It’s called, “Is There Truth, a Moral Law That We Can All Know?” and it’s terrific. Again, that’s BreakPoint.org.
Reprinted with permission from BreakPoint.
And this is the left's tool to destroy society as it has existed for six thousand years.
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Moral relativism.
Rationalization.
Shades of grey.
Whatever, it’s been around forever.
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No. An opinion is neither true nor false. It is simply an opinion. It may be strongly supported by evidence or not. But it is still neither true nor false.
The idiocy here consists of the claim that there are only two categories, facts and opinions.
Not all truths are facts.
A fact is something that can be demonstrated objectively.
Sorry, but “all men are created equal,” while a truth in which I believe, is just not a fact.
The Founders said they “held” to this truth. Which is to say, “to have in the mind or express as a judgment, opinion, or belief.”
Not all truths are facts.
If you have school aged kids, teach them to push back.
Teach them to ask the teachers:
* So you’re saying that slavery isn’t wrong?
* So you’re saying that racism isn’t wrong?
* So you’re saying that it is OK for men to rape women if they are able to overpower them?
Homosexuality is unnatural. This is scientific fact—not an opinion.
Homosexual relations are equal to heterosexual ones<—this is an opinion that’s also demonstrably false.
Both of these statements have nothing to do with religion. They are based on observable reality—that male and female genitalia are designed to work together and only male/female couplings can result in conception. Sadly, we live in a world where people seem to believe that just because we vote or conduct a survey on something, that makes it real.
They were teaching this exactly the same way in the early 1970s when I was in elementary school.
Of course “copying homework is wrong,” “cursing in school is inappropriate,” and “all men are created equal,” are opinions and not facts.
They are correct opinions; proper and appropriate value statements.
Dude, moral absolutes are just so ... un-post-modern.
When all the “shoulds” have been ranked into the bin of “opinion” then they will find themselves with a beast that they can’t contain, and it will be their own fault.
If you’re speaking philosophically, then almost everything is opinion. For example, you may not exist, and your post is just a figment of my mind. Maybe even Free Republic is just an illusion!
That nonsense aside, I’m going to take a big step and believe there’s a reality apart from me. “Strongly supported by evidence” is good enough for me.
The best way is to put these indoctrinators out of a job! Kill their paycheck, generous vacations, and pensions! Permanently! Shut these schools down from pre-k through college graduate school.
How?
1) Homeschool. Encourage others to homeschool. If you must institutionalize your child find a conservative private school. Remember, though, that even private school teachers were likely trained by godless Marxists in Marxist-run godless colleges of education.
2) Vouchers, tax credits, charters to build a private infrastructure. The goal should always be complete privatization of all education.
3) Work toward certifiable qualifying exams as Charles Murray recommends. The less time spent in college the better!
4) Encourage businesses to accept SAT, ACT, and GRE scores, instead of a college diploma, to screen for bright and trainable applicants. Most of the work done in the U.S. historically never required more than a solid 8th grade to 12th grade education.
“For example, you may not exist, and your post is just a figment of my mind. Maybe even Free Republic is just an illusion!”
Try doubting the fact that you doubt! You can’t doubt the “you”(or “I AM” center) that doubts!
“When all the “shoulds” have been ranked into the bin of “opinion” then they will find themselves with a beast that they can’t contain, and it will be their own fault.”
Isn’t that the truth! Oh wait. There is no truth!
Seriously, you’re right. Someone today might say a “should” is just an opinion, but a “should” is usually based on practical experience.
Drivers “should” stop at stop signs is a should. Where did stop signs come from? They weren’t put up the first time someone drove. They likely developed as a result of unfortunate experiences.
I doubt that...
Did Christ enlist children as missionaries? No! He chose mature **men** who were well founded in the faith.
Even seasoned and experienced conservative politicians are humiliated in public and the media by the followers of the liberal/Marxist faith. To expect children to do this in a public setting where teachers have tremendous power over the classroom and their individual futures is actually abusive to the child.
Shoulds and oughts inevitably point to the teleological nature of nature. Or as Einstein would say, God is not there playing dice with the universe.
Keep in mind the biblical concept of who was a child. Bar Mitzvah age was reached for a boy at age 13, the corresponding age for a girl at age 12. This was considered civilly responsible. Our current notions are modernisms.
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