Common Core and Common Values
For several years, schools across the U.S. -- with significant help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- have been putting in place something called the Common Core, a set of standards on what students from kindergarten through 12th grade should learn on topics including English, mathematics, science and history. Along the way, they’ve faced ample criticism, some of it reasonable. Teachers, in particular, think they haven't had adequate preparation.
One strain of criticism in particular, though, sounds more like an assault on learning itself. Consider the argument of philosopher Justin McBrayer, of Fort Lewis College in Colorado: He complains that Common Core undermines moral education by teaching that some questions -- Who was the first president of the United States? -- have factual answers, while others -- Is it wrong to eat meat? -- don't. Specifically, it requires that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text."
In a thoughtful and philosophically careful way, McBrayer suggests such an approach will actually confuse kids into thinking that rights and wrongs are nothing but opinion. “If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees,” McBrayer writes, “then how can we be outraged?” He notes that many students today don't think cheating is wrong, and he attributes this to their being taught that “moral facts do not exist.”
It's a powerful point, but made in a somewhat deceptive way. Do we really need absolute and metaphysically founded moral facts to be outraged at murder, or to see cheating as bad? I don't think so. History, evolution and anthropology explain perfectly well why certain values – against people killing for fun, for example -- have been etched deep into most of our emotional natures: These values influence and channel behavior in a way that is hugely conducive to human well-being in groups. We've evolved to have these values because they work pretty well, as tested by countless societies in the past.
Indeed, modern science has gone a long way toward understandinghow social norms of behavior and institutions emerge to support cooperation. It also suggests that we shouldn't be surprised to find a diverse range of beliefs and values among distinct societies and Common Core and Common Values - Bloomberg View:
