Schools and the Responsibilities of Citizenship

Mike Dwyer

Mike Dwyer is a former writer and contributor at Ordinary Times.

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6 Responses

  1. InMD says:

    Interesting article. I think she’s right in a way but the piece left me scratching my head because she didn’t really lay out her assumptions. It would be more interesting if she really established a definition of what she means by ‘PC’. If PC means something like generalized live and let live tolerance of other races, religions, sexual orientations, etc., while making the case for eliminating de jure discrimination and minimizing social prejudice based on those kinds of characteristics then I think shes right, and that schools should teach those values. The US works best as something like a creed state, where a civic religion serves as a unifying force.

    However, I don’t think that’s really what most people mean when they talk about PCism. What both the identitarian/intersectionality left in academia and the populist right teach is Balkanization. The last thing we should be teaching children is that all that matters is identity and power. If that’s the case then there is no way to make the American experiment work, which is why I think these ideas are so dangerous.Report

    • Mike Dwyer in reply to InMD says:

      My reading was that she is talking about PC in the civic religion sense.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to InMD says:

      I think she’s right (civic religion type PC), but there is also a lot of history with regard to government services, including public schools, forcing assimilation, rather than just encouraging it.Report

      • InMD in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Agreed. You have to fine tune the machine. Don’t push at all and you might threaten social cohesion. Push too hard and you can end up reinforcing prejudices and/or creating a backlash.Report

      • With regards to voluntary immigrants, like the Jewish immigrants she uses as an example, they WANTED to assimilate. So in that sense, if the schools were helping their kids do that, they were thrilled. I don’t know that much has changed on that front. Generally speaking, immigrants are some of the most pro America folks we have.Report

  2. atomickristin says:

    Interesting article in what appears to be an interesting blog. I hadn’t heard of Penelope Trunk before (Google informs me I probably should have). Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Mike.Report