By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
W.W. writes to make the observation that a central problem in modern education is the need to “reclaim our language.” He notes, that many modern students “have no background in how to think clearly or discern truth” because of the distortion of “the meaning of many terms used today. As one example, why are people with the highest suicide rate called ‘gay’? Why can’t we discuss this without being labeled ‘homophobes,’ which is a word devised to eliminate serious discussion, rather than encourage it?
“This is a common tactic in the media these days: They accept reductio ad absurdum as a legitimate form of criticism when addressing those who hold to politically incorrect ideas. They use labels such as ‘racist,’ ‘sexist,’ and ‘xenophobe’ to close the debate.”
W.W. suggests that we deal with students who repeat these politically correct labels by asking them to “explain their reasoning. But insist they really explain, not just repeat slogans. Nothing is as persuasive in an argument as compelling your opponents to make their case by talking gibberish, forcing them to hear how illogical they sound.
“Of course, we also need to agree if and when they actually make a good point. We gain respect by showing respect.”
W.W. suggests that an intelligent discussion of liberal social programs, for example, needs to move beyond well-meaning slogans about helping the poor and disadvantaged and into an analysis of changes in the poverty rates and family structure that have resulted from “over 60 years of government programs and social engineering by the federal government. Curious isn’t it? If there were any numbers to demonstrate the benefits of over a half-century of liberal social programs, we would be hearing nothing else in the media. But we don’t.”
W.W. also thinks our young people would profit from a discussion of “why it is that so many people have always and to this day still risk their lives to break into the United States, when its capitalist system is portrayed by liberals in the academic world as so unjust and oppressive.”
Another reader, J.M. of Arizona, writes to ask us to focus on the “scarred landscape of education in the United States, on the drugs, gangs, single-parent households, crime, children out of wedlock, the debasement of welfare, the secularization of the community, lack of extended family, and lack of employability,” which he argues have led to “a more general decline in the well-being of a portion of the population of our country.
“Pundits and politicians who talk about energy independence, industrial revitalization, infrastructure rehabilitation, rebuilding the military, etc., are rightly worried about the survivability of the U.S. in an increasingly competitive and dangerous world. None of those great objectives can be achieved without an educated or trained workforce that has self-discipline and a semblance of shared morality.”
J.M. points out, “The U.S. scores somewhere around 27th in international rating of educational performance and training. If that’s not crisis proportions, we’re at least on the cusp of things going rapidly downhill!”
He places the blame on the “pervasive influence of secularization that removes a moral horizon and puts all activity at the level of personal gratification. The young people who don’t have the guidance of family or extended family are at a much higher risk of falling into violence, promiscuity, drugs, and indifference to their studies.” J. M. argues that a key mistake of modern liberalism is the belief that government can replace the family in building character.
“Teachers aren’t equipped by training, time, resources, or, in many instances, inclination to take on the job. We’re in the second generation of family breakdown: the first started with divorce, the second with out-of-wedlock births. Many parents today don’t have the skills, knowledge, inclination, resources (both physical and emotional), or ambition to guide their children to becoming responsible and moral adults. You can’t take the recalcitrant teenager down to the Marine Corps recruiting office and expect them to do the job for us. More prisons and jails are certainly not the answer.”
J.M.’s answer is a return to the Christian inner disciplines that once permitted our free society to remain a virtuous society. To that end, he proposes as a starting point that readers of First Teachers begin a discussion about suggested readings for “for young people ages 14, 18, and 22, roughly grade school, high school, and college graduates. What books at each of these three levels would prove to be effective to help in the formation of cultured young Christian men and women?” J.M. observes that “many of the books that influenced young people in my era, works by William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, and C.S. Lewis, for example, seem unknown to the present generation. What would such a book list look like today?”
J.M. makes an important point. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, there was no reason for young Catholics with conservative political leanings to feel as if they were “anti-intellectual” or “yahoos.” I fear that many young Catholics might feel that way today. People like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity do yeoman work for the conservative cause, but they do not offer the kind of urbane and cultivated model for young people that William F. Buckley and his colleagues at National Review once did.
There was nothing stodgy or boorish about Buckley, William Rusher, Willmoore Kendall, and L. Brent Bozell, just to name a few of the conservative intellectual leaders of the past. A young conservative in the 1960s could watch Buckley debate the leading liberal intellectuals of the time week after week on his television program Firing Line. It was obvious even to fair-minded leftists, no matter how deep their disagreement with Buckley, that Buckley usually won the exchanges or fought the liberals to a draw. No one charged Buckley with being uninformed.
Young conservatives at that time were able to maintain an aura of intellectual seriousness when they reiterated to their liberal friends things they heard Buckley say on television or things they read in his magazine National Review. I don’t know if young Catholic conservatives feel that way today. Perhaps if we came up with the kind of book list that J.M. suggests, it would be of some help in that regard.
We welcome our readers’ input. Give us your lists.
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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