Palli: Educational policy wrongly emphasizes subjective experience over facts

In looking at recent Republican decisions, one may be led to believe that Republican Party members categorically hate knowledge. Economist Paul Krugman certainly thinks so: He labeled them “The Ignorance Caucus” in a recent New York Times column.

Krugman points out the most outrageous recent stories of apparent Republican anti-factualism. These include stories about Eric Cantor calling for an end to social science research funding and Texas Republicans calling for an end to the teaching of critical thinking in schools. There are stories about House Republicans refusing to fund comparative effectiveness research on pharmaceuticals, government officials cutting off research into the effects of guns on violence, and stories about congressional Republicans attempting to hide data suggesting that tax breaks to higher-income people don’t actually help the economy.

Another example is a Tennessee state law stating that “the teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning, can cause controversy,” and that teachers have the right to encourage questioning and skepticism of these subjects.

Essentially, Tennessee has declared that if you don’t think science is right (well-established science, in the case of biological evolution and global warming) then you should feel free to sow the seeds of unfounded skepticism in your impressionable classmates. Scientists and other “lovers of knowledge” have disavowed this and other transgressions by “The Ignorance Caucus.”

But their criticism must be off base. The Tennessee law does not say “thou shalt ensure that no students believe evolution.” The moderate would think that it merely allows questioning and dialogue among students. Surely these policies are in the best interests of the truth and, thereby, the student. This well-meaning moderate, however, doesn’t get it.

This standpoint misconstrues the mission of the Grand Old Party. The upstanding individuals that constitute this group of great Americans are merely following in the noble footsteps of Rene Descartes and Soren Kierkegaard. Republicans aren’t the party of ignorance; they are the party of subjectivity.

When a scientist asserts that evolution has worked to create life as we know it, the subjective Republican asks “What is life? Why do scientists think they know what defines it? What do you mean it was created by evolution? Why should we care?”

When faced with even the question of the existence of evolution by natural selection, the subjectivist says, “What is truth? Who can purport to know the truth?”

When faced with mounds of evidence in support of global warming, the subjectivist says, “It’s been a cold winter; I don’t feel the globe warming. Away with your objectivism, it is simply my subjective perspective that matters. The rest of the world matters not; the earth is no collective enterprise.”

When they are told social science research indicates that people are better off when they are not starving, the great subjectivists of our age say, “Who says a man is better off when satisfied? Food is precisely what experience you make of it! I need only experience my own universe. Who cares about the rest?”

In the end, these brave individuals do not fight against knowledge. They fight against our misconceptions of it. They do not believe in a one-size-fits-all truth — something that is inconceivable in today’s world of fast food and supercomputers.

They want us to find our own subjective questions and answers to the universe. Followers of Kierkegaard, they understand that, “As soon as one takes subjectivity away … and with it subjectivity’s passion — and with passion the infinite concern … it becomes impossible to make a decision … either with regard to this problem [whether or not Christianity is true, in Kierkegaard’s case] or any other; for every decision, every genuine decision, is a subjective action.”

And, critically, they don’t want us pushing our subjective decisions on each other. For example, research might show that proliferation of guns causes violence, but who is to say that violence is a bad thing? Restricting gun sales in any way would be tantamount to imposing the subjective frame of the lawmakers upon anyone who wishes to buy a gun.

This mission of ensuring that there is no inquisition into subjective frames is embodied in the Texans’ fight against critical thinking in schools. Critical thinking enables children to get at such vague concepts as “truth” and “knowledge” independently. But what truth is there outside of the human experience? The Texan lawmakers understand that “truth is subjectivity” and that since removing subjectivity is impossible, it is best to leave children in their natural, uncritical state.

This will allow them to adopt the subjective views of their parents and experience the full force of their faith and subjective experience without abstruse interjections of the objective. This should be the goal of all education.

To make America great again will take far more than budget cuts and tax restructuring — we must move together away from the altar of the objective science and reasoning to the subjective social, religious, and self-gratifying experience.

Write Rohith at rop33@pitt.edu.