On a dark desert highway

Cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of blogwatches

Rising up through the air…

Not much blogging today–maybe more tomorrow–but I figure I dumped a whole bucketload of blog on here Saturday, so hey. For now, here’s a blogwatch.

Agenda Bender: If you didn’t click on the InstaPundit link, maybe you’ll click now. AB is a funny, rambly blog about “Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Slomoleftbanality, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay].” Lurches from subject to subject and from witty dismissal to quickie rebuttal. Much fun. Kind of reminds me of the character in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (movie; haven’t read book)–“You know what’s gonna happen to you? I am gonna march you over to the zoo and feed you to the yak…”

Cacciaguida: Courtly love. He’s right that de Rougemont’s take on Romeo and Juliet (in an otherwise very awesome book, at least so far) is simplistic. De R. doesn’t really do anything with the fact that R&J; get hitched, which would seem to invalidate the point he’s trying to make; but the real omission, of course, is that De R. ignores the coolest character in the play, Mercutio. What’s up with that? Mercutio is one in a line of Shakespearean characters that, you could argue, ultimately bifurcates into Hamlet and Falstaff. (Others in this sequence would be Faulconbridge the Bastard, maybe Thersites, Macbeth’s Porter, and possibly Lear’s Fool–although he should probably be considered an alternative end-point to H. and F. I wrote a paper on this forever ago called “The Tragic Sidekick.” Maybe I’ll dig it up tonight and see if it still makes any sense.)

Uncertain Principles: Responds to my post on vouchers. I see where he’s coming from (and no, I wasn’t pushing for “God in the public schools” [although how’re you planning to keep Him out?–sorry, lame omnipresence joke]), but I don’t think his “strict separation of school and ethics” really makes that much sense. A Jewish respondent said one of the things I wanted to say, in UP’s comments section–lots of religions (and ethical systems, for that matter) have so much content that you really do need to be formally taught or you won’t get it. (There’s a great scene in Brideshead Revisited contrasting different takes on Catholicism within the Marchmain family; I can’t remember the whole thing, but one stance was characterized as, “You don’t know what you believe, but you believe it anyway.” With a religion as complex and all-pervasive as Catholicism, that’s a real danger. I also note that if you don’t know what you believe you can’t do the kind of engaging with other beliefs that UP recommends.)

But also, I’m just not sure how UP would work this separation of “values” and schooling, for a number of reasons. One is the basic practical reason that you’ve gotta corral the kids somehow; you’ve gotta keep them from biting one another, lying, carping, etc. In order to teach math, you’ve got to start by building a rough-and-ready, low-level ethical platform, just so they’ll listen to the math stuff. This is similar to Alasdair MacIntyre’s point about the virtues required by certain practices–chess requires virtues like honesty, for example (you can cheat at chess, but that ignores the point of playing the game).

Then there’s the cognitive dissonance produced in kids when behaviors are moral/immoral in the eyes of one set of teachers (parents) but neutral, or reversed in ethical valuation, in the eyes of their schoolteachers.

Then there’s the kid’s natural tendency to play Socrates, forever asking, “Why?” A schoolteacher forbidden from discussing the ethical, and ultimately religious, underpinnings of the classroom rules will generally be forced back on the super-unsatisfying (and false, since this isn’t usually the real reason), “Because I said so.”

And finally, I simply disagree with UP’s judgment that virtues and moral rules are not part of “a basic grounding in the knowledge [children] will need to function as productive members of society.” I’d say the virtues are a lot more important than, say, algebra, or (even) US geography. Similarly, any account of American history will necessarily be imbued with moral judgments, and so it should be, since knowing what we value is more important than knowing the events that led up to the War of 1812. (I also dispute the identification of “productivity” as the goal of an education. That strikes me as way too functionalist and market-value-oriented. But that’s something of a side point.)

A couple quick final points: UP writes, “Now we want to pay to shuffle the kids off into religious schools, to free parents from the hassle of providing moral and religious instruction as well? Are parents not supposed to play any role beyond paying for clothes and video games?” Wait now hey now. How does this follow? If I send my children to a school that will reinforce the beliefs I’m trying to inculcate in and model to my children, why does that relegate me to a parental ATM? Thus far, I have not found anything remotely resembling a correlation between sending your kids to religious schools and hands-off or amoral parenting–in fact, unsurprisingly, parents who send kids to religious schools, in my experience, are also more likely to teach religious beliefs at home.

And: “But then, I’ve never entirely understood the motivation behind sending kids to religious schools in the first place, particularly when the goal seems to be the kind of moral indoctrination mentioned above. If you really and truly believe in the truth of your faith, and instruct your children in the faith, shouldn’t that faith be strong enough to withstand contact with the real world? …Religious instruction that’s never challenged is simply brainwashing.” Again, I think this is a false dichotomy. Why can’t I both give my kids a good grounding in (say) the Catholic faith, and send them out into the world prepared to take counter-claims seriously? In fact, I submit that a good grounding in one’s own beliefs (the kind of well-thought-out grounding that requires study) is a lot more likely to lead to genuine engagement with other beliefs. If you don’t really understand your own tradition, you either won’t be able to discuss it at all, and will just retreat into, “Well, you have your opinion and I have mine,” or you’ll let your family’s teachings be knocked down by lame arguments that misconstrue your faith. (For example, Catholics who leave the faith because they don’t want to worship Mary anymore. What?? You never should have been worshipping her!) Neither of these responses are productive of actual religious questioning and deepening. Also, as I’m sure Amy Welborn or Anthony Marquis will tell UP, religion teachers in religious schools get challenged and questioned all the time. Kids, fortunately, are challenging critters. Religious schools, at least most of ’em, aren’t like Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time, where all the children bounce their balls in unison. (Oh!–and why is religious indoctrination more objectionable–if it is–than the kind of non-religious indoctrination into safe sex, or the Seven Kwanzaa Principles, practiced at many public and secular private schools? UP probably dislikes both, which is fair; it’s not like religious indoctrination [i.e. teaching…] is somehow scarier or more conformity-making than any other kind of indoctrination.)

Obviously, homeschooling is a nifty way to resolve these problems, but I don’t think that strategy will ever be best for all children or all parents.

Anyway, sorry to go on so long about that. UP’s post is well-written and definitely worth a read.

Unqualified Offerings: Civil liberties right and left; why no one can complain about social-welfare programs; spontaneous order in NYC; and something that, in my opinion, pretty much defines foreign-policy craptitude. Arrrrggghhh.