Common Core and Moral Relativism

This is a post that I've been thinking about for a long time.  It started in my mind when I read a NY Times opinion piece on Common Core and one of their basic tenets.  You can read that article here. 

First, I don't know what I feel about the idea of Common Core--I think the intent is good.  The intent is to have good education no matter where a child goes.  But, it is at the expense of the good.  My best teachers that I ever had were the ones who threw away the rules.  Mrs. Richardson in first grade threw off the standard curriculum and instilled in me a love of science that gave me my life and passion.  By getting rid of water-cycle coloring pages and instead, building biospheres; by getting rid of the dinky little pictures about you chew food and then it goes to your stomach, and instead using real diagrams that used words like duodenum.  By throwing away the stupid little worksheets on how to save energy, and instead building batteries out of lemons and seeking to find out what fruit or vegetable on earth made the best battery (celery by the way).  Mr. Farnus in fifth grade taught me more than ever.  Instead of teaching "Everyday Mathematics" and nine different ways to multiply when one is sufficient, he taught us to balance checkbooks in math class. He taught us how to write checks (why did no one ever think of that). Instead of yet another trip to a waterpark for the end of the year trip, he took us to Seattle and taught us how to ride public busses.  Life skill right there. And he let us love learning.  Mrs. Phillips in sixth grade taught me to love life.  She threw off the list of books we had to read and taught us mythology--even if we don't believe in Greek myths, they shape our world.  She let go of the worksheet writing prompts, and let our creatively fly wherever it needed to go.  I credit Mrs. Phillips with turning me into a creative writer.  But if someone was not a creative writer, she let them spread their wings where they needed to.  And she never made me paint just because the standard-thought was to include art for the non-traditional learners.  She taught us to soar.  My IB teachers in high school who threw away the district-imposed boundaries and taught us to write analytically, to think critically, to come to our conclusions, while respecting everyone's rights to think otherwise.  My teachers who were good teachers were the ones who didn't conform. 

But back to the article.  This NY Times article details how a father (a professional philosopher, by the way), found that one of the standards of Common Core is for children to be able to delineate between fact and opinion.  I do not think that this is a bad standard, really.  After TA-ing American Heritage for four semesters, I have come to the conclusion that schools no longer foster thought and critical analysis, and that the majority of college freshmen are not able to actually analyze an argument, nor to defend their own beliefs and conclusions.  The problem comes in the definitions they give and the way that they teach. 

Common Core defines an opinion as something you think, feel or believe, and a fact as something you can prove through experiment.  First of all, this mutually-exclusive mindset flies in the face of accepted epistemology:  that knowledge is a justified, true belief.  In order for something to be known is has to have justification (not necessarily experimental), be true and be believed.  If you don't believe it, it isn't actually knowledge. If you have justification, and you believe if, you don't actually know it unless it is true.  The author of the article pointed out to his second grader that you can believe, think or feel facts.  I believe that George Washington was the first president, but that doesn't make it my opinion.  If I believe, think or feel something that is, in reality, true, then it is no longer my opinion.  I believe a fact. 

It's worth mentioning that experiment can "prove" things that are in fact, false.  Major example, Romans believed that malaria is caused by bad, swampy air.  As such, they drained all the swamps in Rome.  Malaria went away.  So, they believed that, by the scientific method, their hypothesis had proven correct.  Well, malaria is actually caused by being bitten by an infected mosquito.  When they drained the swamps, they eliminate the mosquitoes breeding grounds.  So, even though the experiment brought about the expected change to prove their hypothesis, they were still wrong.  So, even though they "proved" it, it wasn't true.  So, it remained their opinion, even though by Common Core thinking, malaria is caused by swamp air. 

Then it starts to get very scary.  Because we're teaching moral relativism to third graders.  Now, let me clarify something:  I believe in absolute truth.  I believe in cosmic right and wrong.  It would be slightly difficult to be an active Mormon if I didn't.  If you've ever met a person who has managed to reconcile moral relativism and Mormonism, I would be fascinated to hear it.  But, I don't believe that all-too-common mindset where someone cannot be moral without believing in absolute truth.  I would, however, posit that in order for moral relativism to work in a functional society, that believer needs to concede that, though there may not be cosmic right and wrong, societal mores are necessary. Some things need to be named right or wrong in order for society to work.  So, whether or not murder is cosmically wrong, we decide, in a very Lockean way, that we will arbitrarily define murder as wrong for our own good.  However, third graders don't get that.  Their minds aren't really capable of seeing that.  So, perhaps we should hold off on teaching moral relativism on people who are not mature enough to responsibly utilize that philosophy. 

This writer brought up some things from Common Core worksheets that students are intended to be able to classify as fact or opinion.  Some of them are in fact, opinions:  "All drug dealers belong in jail." "It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism."  These are opinions that can be debated.  Naturally, I, being a believer of cosmic right and wrong, believe them to have factual answers.  However, they are, as we would say in American Heritage, contestable statements--meaning they are not necessarily accepted as fact by all people. 

Then, they introduce some them are not only stupid to introduce to third-graders, but are centrally accepted by our society, such as "It is wrong to copy homework."  First of all, do you really want to have snotty third-graders saying, "Well, that's your opinion," about copying homework?  But, also, in the United States, we have decided that our academic integrity does not allow the copying of homework.  This is not agreed upon in all cultures.  But, you can't call it an opinion, without the accompanying analysis of societal ethics.  And can a third-grader see that big picture?  I don't know that they can. If you do not believe in right and wrong, you do need to believe in order and chaos. 

Furthermore, there are very educated people who hold to the idea of absolute truth.  And I have nothing wrong with teaching the philosophy of moral relativism to...perhaps intelligent high schoolers. But should schools really be teaching moral relativism vs. absolute truth as one is right and one is wrong.  For starters, by your own logic, your definition of fact and opinion, is your opinion.

I started getting scared, though, when they included this statement as an opinion:  "All men are created equal."  That is, literally, premise A of the United States governmental philosophy.  Thomas Jefferson said that that was "self-evident." Meaning, that is the non-contestable statement upon which all American political philosophy is based. If that phrase is false, then all of US government collapses.  Logically.  I see that as a cosmic truth.  It's absolute.  But even if you don't believe in absolute truth, as a partaker of the US Social Compact, you have acknowledged that as a fundamental fact--for you. 

That was what scared me. Because you have to believe in that.  You just do.  Because that is the one philosophy that we have decided is not up for debate.  Because societies need at least one of those.  That is how logic works.  In fact, that's how my religious faith works--I found four beliefs that I know are true (by spiritual affirmation, which is considered valid in epistemology, by the way), and the rest logically follows.  The four beliefs are 1) God is real. 2) Christ is my Savior.  3) Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  4) The priesthood lineage from Joseph Smith to Thomas S. Monson has remained intact.  All of the rest of Mormonism must logically be true from that.  In the United States, every law we have, every truth we hold, every moral we defend stems from "All men are created equal."  Without that, we have no legitimacy as a government, no structure as a nation, and nothing to protect.  And nothing worth protecting.  And nothing to protect us.  Societies, according to Rousseau and Locke, were made to protect us.  Whether or not it is to protect right over wrong (natural rights), or order over chaos (the interests of man), societies are necessary.  That is what we have decided.  So, in order to have functional citizens in the future...what are we doing?