laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (11/08/83)
Now we are onto the next issue. Teaching Morals. Paul brought up the American Civil War. It is a rather good illustration of what I am talking about. Remember, I think that imposing your beliefs upon others is a bad thing. And I think that slavery is an example *par excellance* of how one group of people can impose their beliefs upon others. I believe that Paul is arguing from the position that Slavery is Wrong, therefore the Civil War was a good thing. I should like to take this opportunity to remind people that 2 wrongs do not make a right, and that the good guys do not always wear white hats. It is still very debatable whether *ANY* wars are justifiable, and the Civil War is an example of a war that many contemporary historians feel may have done more harm than good. No matter how many good intentions went into it. But enough for a bit... <Paul> I don't think that moral guidelines should be taught specifically concerning ... certain ... extremely controversial things, either. <me> Well, now you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. ... How would you avoid teaching such issues if they keep coming up. <Paul> The reason not to teach certain controversial moral guidelines is that it would create too much hostility. Now this is highly debatable. if you believe this, how are you going to determine what is or what is not controversial? How are you going to avoid it? Can you go around saying "Look, I can't teach you anything about abortion because it will cause too much hostility?" Ignorance breeds hostility as well! The people who ask for your opinion will be getting their information somewhere! What if they get nothing but bad information because nobody knowledgable will talk about controversial things! is it not possible to teach guidelines without teaching hostility? Where do you think the hostility comes from? Does it not come from enforcing your beliefs upon others? Guess what moral guideline i would like to have taught first! <Paul> People would overreact. It's not worth the trouble. IT"S NOT WORTH THE TROUBLE!! My goodness, you are talking about the most serious crisis that can happen in peoples' lives, and you say that they are not worth the trouble! What, pray tell, IS worth the trouble!! Let us say that you could train a generation to disagree without overreacting. Can you think of anything that would be more worthwhile? Let's try something less ambitious. Say you were able to help one student cope with his parent's divorce, or his sister's abortion, or his brother's decision to raise the child his ex-girlfriend and he had out of wedlock? What is it that you think that you should be doing that is more important than that? What sort of people are you teaching? Don't tell me that Toronto is the only place full of the walking wounded! <Paul> Teachers should explain that the issue is controversial, and be honest about it and tell them the school doesn't teach a position on the issue for fear of the backlash. And there's another reason to avoid those issues: the goal is to teach basic principles, and use applications to specific cases only for illustration. In illustrative cases the facts should be clear (unlike abortion, which heavily involves scientific and other non-ethical controversies as well as ethical ones). But what good is it? Do you live in such a neat and tidy world? My world is full or moral problems and messy decisions. What good are teaching basic principles unless they can be used in the real world? If all it takes is facts, then why do we need teachers at all? All we need are libraries and a good reference system! <Paul> On the other hand, some controversial moral principles are important enough, and the backlash manageable enough, to be worth it. But who gets to decide which ones? I gather, that you think abortion should not be taught but racial equality should be? Why? how can you decide that the rights of Black people are more important than the rights of the unborn, or the rights of the women involved? you have made that decision -- HOW? Racial equality, for instance (yes, it IS still controversial in some places). You mentioned Canadian history; I think I'd like to bring up some U.S. history. Six generations ago, the northern part of my country decided to impose its beliefs -- its morality -- on the South. Should that history be taught in a morally neutral manner? Should teachers say "the abolitionists believed that blacks are people not property, but it's up to you what you want to believe"? yes, i think that is about right. If you cannot do a good enough job of demonstrating that Blacks are people, not property; if it is only the dogma that is being spoken in classrooms that keeps people from considering Blacks as property, then what have you actually done? On the other hand, if you wanted to talk about whether "horses are property, or people" you would have to get into the nitty-gritty of what determines "personess". Which is a difficult issue, but one we ought to be thinking about in this age where chimps can learn ASL and there *may* be intelligent machines. Somebody is going to have to determine whether intelligent machines are persons, after all! If you can only say that Blacks are people "because I was told that by my American history teacher" then what sort of a person are you? H*** NO! The North's moral viewpoint was BETTER than the South's, and the North was right to impose its morality, and it should be taught that way. this does not follow. the Northern moral viewpoint, is in my opinion better than the South's true, but it does not automatically follow that the North's attempt to impose its morality on the South was a good idea. In particular, the particular way in which the North chose to attempt to impose its morality on the South (a War) may have been a mistake. You go on at great length about teaching morals, but the bottom line is this: WHEN I AM RIGHT I HAVE THE RIGHT TO IMPOSE MY BELIEFS ON OTHERS, AND WHEN I AM NOT I DON'T. Also you have some strange notion of "basic facts" which you think the school should be teaching. Look, all history and all past events are lies. They are not terrible lies in most cases, and not deliberate ones, but anything that is past is seen through the light of time -- which distorts things. You mention the Civil War. Look, it was fought for other reasons than slavery. if you ignore the economic considerations of the South which was committed to an agrarian economy, which needed cheap labour, and which had terrible transportation problems, and which could not industrialise to keep up with the West, then you will miss out on a lot of the other reasons that existed at the time of the war. If you go out and teach that the Yankees are wonderful, and that all the Southerners were cruel and inhumane, you should not be surprised if many Southerners to this day harbour resentment over the whole Issue. And you have served to glorify war. Let us assume that slavery persisted and instead of fighting a war, the Northern States instead built heavy industry in the South and brought it to an economic level that Slavery was no longer economically feasible. Would that have been a better solution? I don't know. It is impossible to tell. But I got to read some Buffalo high school text books one year which made all Southerners out to be cruel, inhuman, sadistic monsters. I do not know how widespread this belief is, but it is not going to help you get along with my relatives in North Carolina! There are several other things which arose out of the war. Federal power increased dramatically. I know lots and lots of people who think think that this is the worst thing that ever happened to the USA. They find it more objectionable than slavery. Indeed, they refer to it as a slavery that we all share. Also, there is the question that personal injustices of the same sort as Slavery exist in parts of the world now. Does the Civil War mean that the US should interfere in the affairs of other nations because they do not respect civil liberties? Now you *know* how knotty that problem is! Actually, the whole issue of Slavery and the Civil War illustrates the problem quite nicely. Do you feel that slavery is wrong because it in itself is an objectionable thing, or because it is wrong for you to force someone to do an action that conflicts with their beliefs? If the slaves were happy, would that change your decision? (Remember that many people talk about being slaves of their God and seem perfectly happy about their condition. And some people work longer hours than slaves did every day.) If we are going to avoid making similar disasterous mistakes, we are going to understand what was wrong with slavery. And if you come up with any other reason than "because it is wrong to enforce your beliefs upon another unwilling person" then I would be very interested in hearing it. Now, having come to the conclusion that slavery is wrong, you are next faced with the decision of what to do without it. Some people have argued that it would have been better for the North to do nothing, and that only the slaves should have freed themselves. At best, the North could have provided economic reasons to end slavery (we will build you a railroad, if and only if you forbid slavery within your state). perhaps they could have pulled it off -- you guys have that ridiculous 55mph speed limit to get government funded roads, don't you? the argument that a national slave strike wouldn't work because they would just kill slaves may not be a good one. You have to remember that a lot of Northerners and a lot of slaves were killed in the Civil War. I read a rather bloodthirsty theory that this was worth it because it "killed a lot of Southerners as well". It sounds horrible to me. I do not know whether more people would have been killed in a slave rebellion or not, but one must remember that wars always kill. The next question of the Civil War is what has happened to the Blacks as a result of it? Again, you get many theories. One of them is that the Blacks were the real long-term losers of the Civil War. A Black history teacher told me that it was the *worst* thing that could have happened. He thinks that the North was *too harsh* on the Southerners who were not very cruel to their slaves (and indeed behaved like the feudal lords that get glorified in other history classes) which caused them to resent the Blacks *afterwards* which was a bad thing. The Northerners, on the other hand, retain a belief that Blacks are imbecile children that only great Northern wisdom can save. In both cases, Blacks lose. Now it is too hard to see if this is a very good interpretation of what happened. Remember, history lies. However, if you persist in the notion that "it was a good war because the NORTH were RIGHT" (and of course, the North won. Suppose the South had -- would that have made them right?) and that good guys always wear white hats, you will make the same mistakes again, and again, and again.... Laura Creighton utcsstat!laura