Feb 7, 2022 01:45 AM
(This post was last modified: Feb 7, 2022 01:51 AM by C C.)
RELATED (scivillage): Defending liberal neutrality
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At public schools, should students be taught 'tolerance as non-disapproval' or 'tolerance as forbearance'?
https://psyche.co/ideas/teaching-toleran...ontroversy
EXCERPTS: . . . Underlying the objections raised by the Birmingham protestors is a sense that teaching values ought to fall outside the scope of state education, at least where these values are controversial. Can philosophical meat be put on the bones of this thought? The American philosopher John Rawls asked how religiously diverse societies might accommodate the disagreements that exist over values. Out of his work comes the idea that state policy ought to be neutral, in the sense that the reasons for a policy should not be the subject of disagreement among reasonable citizens...
[...] Applying this to education, state schools ought to avoid teaching beliefs and values that are controversial – they should not teach children that Jesus is the Son of God, or that they ought to be vegan. These thoughts seem to partially justify Fatima Shah’s comment. Schools can teach maths because mathematical truths are not subject to dispute. But since gay relationships are regarded as sinful by some citizens – including those belonging to the most significant world religions – then, according to this argument, state schools should keep a distance from this topic.
Does the Rawlsian idea really imply this? Perhaps introducing students to issues regarded by some as controversial is a necessary step towards respect and tolerance – something that people from many different worldviews agree is important. [...] To encourage respect and tolerance in the next generation of citizens, children should be taught that all people, including those who act in ways you object to, ought to be respected, and are the rightful recipients of equal moral, political and legal rights. ... This sort of motivation for teaching about LGBT is consistent with how Andrew Moffat, the British teacher behind ‘No Outsiders’...
One problem with this sort of defence is that context is everything. It is hard, in practice, to read And Tango Makes Three without slipping over the Rawlsian line. Any contextual discussion that even implicitly paints Tango’s family as ‘completely OK’ or ‘as good as other families’ steps away from the neutrality that some think state schools ought to adopt. In reality, the contextual discussion surrounding the book probably implied that we ought not to disapprove of LGBT relationships in the first place, rather than that we should show tolerance if we do hold disapproving attitudes.
Another practical problem with teaching tolerance of LGBT relationships is that tolerance is a very tricky concept to understand – even for adults. Children are usually taught that, if something is wrong, they ought to avoid that thing, or take action to stop it. [...] The idea that sometimes they should not only stand back and allow some behaviour, but should also behave in a welcoming manner towards the person responsible for that behaviour, is hard to understand. After all, if you believe something is morally wrong, why wouldn’t you intervene to stop it?
The usual justifications that crop up to answer this question – pragmatic justifications about social cohesion, epistemological justifications based on the difficulty of answering certain types of questions, or (most powerful, in my view) moral justifications based on the need to respect people’s autonomously arrived-at decisions – need to be carefully explained and discussed if we are to avoid children moving, forgivably, from tolerance to relativism (the view that there is no right or wrong when it comes to moral questions).
These complexities suggest that, in practice, state schools might need to depart from neutrality, and instead engage their students in questions of right and wrong...
[...] This we might call tolerance as non-disapproval. Here the tolerant person is a non-judgmental person, disinclined to disapprove of ways of life that differ from their own, and even appreciating their value and worth. This understanding of tolerance as more of a positive, ‘open-minded’ attitude often features in ordinary discourse, as well as in some educational resources and policy documents.
Whereas tolerance as forbearance implies that a racist who refrains from acting on their racist beliefs is being tolerant, tolerance as non-disapproval implies that the tolerant person wouldn’t hold racist beliefs in the first place.
Thinking about this back in our context of state school teaching, there seem to be several examples where teaching tolerance as non-disapproval is preferable to focusing on tolerance as forbearance...
Such teaching would depart from the Rawlsian commitment to neutrality discussed earlier. However, that doesn’t mean it’s at the same level as state schools preaching particular religious doctrines...
What, you might wonder, about the rights, wellbeing and equality of those conservative religious individuals who object to children being discouraged from negative attitudes towards LGBT? Whatever decision is made for such a case, one group will end up feeling disrespected – this is unavoidable.
Resolving the disputes that inevitably arise in pluralist societies is never easy, and is rarely done to all parties’ satisfaction. However, there are some things that can be said to lessen (although far from eliminate) the blow... (MORE - missing details)
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Inner Cynic: Not sure I get it. The distinction between two brands of "tolerance" and acting on such simply seems to return us to the situation as it currently exists, albeit arguably minus being framed by this particular description of it.
- - - - - -
At public schools, should students be taught 'tolerance as non-disapproval' or 'tolerance as forbearance'?
https://psyche.co/ideas/teaching-toleran...ontroversy
EXCERPTS: . . . Underlying the objections raised by the Birmingham protestors is a sense that teaching values ought to fall outside the scope of state education, at least where these values are controversial. Can philosophical meat be put on the bones of this thought? The American philosopher John Rawls asked how religiously diverse societies might accommodate the disagreements that exist over values. Out of his work comes the idea that state policy ought to be neutral, in the sense that the reasons for a policy should not be the subject of disagreement among reasonable citizens...
[...] Applying this to education, state schools ought to avoid teaching beliefs and values that are controversial – they should not teach children that Jesus is the Son of God, or that they ought to be vegan. These thoughts seem to partially justify Fatima Shah’s comment. Schools can teach maths because mathematical truths are not subject to dispute. But since gay relationships are regarded as sinful by some citizens – including those belonging to the most significant world religions – then, according to this argument, state schools should keep a distance from this topic.
Does the Rawlsian idea really imply this? Perhaps introducing students to issues regarded by some as controversial is a necessary step towards respect and tolerance – something that people from many different worldviews agree is important. [...] To encourage respect and tolerance in the next generation of citizens, children should be taught that all people, including those who act in ways you object to, ought to be respected, and are the rightful recipients of equal moral, political and legal rights. ... This sort of motivation for teaching about LGBT is consistent with how Andrew Moffat, the British teacher behind ‘No Outsiders’...
One problem with this sort of defence is that context is everything. It is hard, in practice, to read And Tango Makes Three without slipping over the Rawlsian line. Any contextual discussion that even implicitly paints Tango’s family as ‘completely OK’ or ‘as good as other families’ steps away from the neutrality that some think state schools ought to adopt. In reality, the contextual discussion surrounding the book probably implied that we ought not to disapprove of LGBT relationships in the first place, rather than that we should show tolerance if we do hold disapproving attitudes.
Another practical problem with teaching tolerance of LGBT relationships is that tolerance is a very tricky concept to understand – even for adults. Children are usually taught that, if something is wrong, they ought to avoid that thing, or take action to stop it. [...] The idea that sometimes they should not only stand back and allow some behaviour, but should also behave in a welcoming manner towards the person responsible for that behaviour, is hard to understand. After all, if you believe something is morally wrong, why wouldn’t you intervene to stop it?
The usual justifications that crop up to answer this question – pragmatic justifications about social cohesion, epistemological justifications based on the difficulty of answering certain types of questions, or (most powerful, in my view) moral justifications based on the need to respect people’s autonomously arrived-at decisions – need to be carefully explained and discussed if we are to avoid children moving, forgivably, from tolerance to relativism (the view that there is no right or wrong when it comes to moral questions).
These complexities suggest that, in practice, state schools might need to depart from neutrality, and instead engage their students in questions of right and wrong...
[...] This we might call tolerance as non-disapproval. Here the tolerant person is a non-judgmental person, disinclined to disapprove of ways of life that differ from their own, and even appreciating their value and worth. This understanding of tolerance as more of a positive, ‘open-minded’ attitude often features in ordinary discourse, as well as in some educational resources and policy documents.
Whereas tolerance as forbearance implies that a racist who refrains from acting on their racist beliefs is being tolerant, tolerance as non-disapproval implies that the tolerant person wouldn’t hold racist beliefs in the first place.
Thinking about this back in our context of state school teaching, there seem to be several examples where teaching tolerance as non-disapproval is preferable to focusing on tolerance as forbearance...
Such teaching would depart from the Rawlsian commitment to neutrality discussed earlier. However, that doesn’t mean it’s at the same level as state schools preaching particular religious doctrines...
What, you might wonder, about the rights, wellbeing and equality of those conservative religious individuals who object to children being discouraged from negative attitudes towards LGBT? Whatever decision is made for such a case, one group will end up feeling disrespected – this is unavoidable.
Resolving the disputes that inevitably arise in pluralist societies is never easy, and is rarely done to all parties’ satisfaction. However, there are some things that can be said to lessen (although far from eliminate) the blow... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - -
Inner Cynic: Not sure I get it. The distinction between two brands of "tolerance" and acting on such simply seems to return us to the situation as it currently exists, albeit arguably minus being framed by this particular description of it.
