In his last book, The Fatal Conceit, Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek seemed too pessimistic on the future of civilization. But when one looks at the current project of a mandatory Ethnic Studies class for California high school and Cal State students (“Ethnic Studies May Soon Be Mandatory. Can California Get It Right,” August 13, 2019), some pessimism is warranted.
Hayek believed that traditional, evolved morality formed the basis of a civilized society. He was referring to rules of property, freedom, justice, exchange, privacy, and such. (He pointed out that some moral rules, such as those related to sexual mores, may need to change because they have outlived their usefulness: he was a classical liberal more than a conservative.) His pessimism came from the danger of social-engineering society with non-tested morals:
I do claim that, whether we like it or not, without the particular traditions I have mentioned, the extended order of civilization could not continue to exist … and that if we discard these traditions, out of ill-considered notions of what it is to be reasonable, we shall doom a large part of mankind to poverty and death.
The Los Angeles Times (“Cishereropatriarchy. Hxrstory. The Language of Ethnic Studies Explained,” August 13, 2019) reports a few definitions from the glossary of the State of California’s draft model curriculum of Ethnic Studies, including:
Capitalism — an economic and political system in which industry and trade are based on a “free market” and largely controlled by private companies instead of the government. Within Ethnic Studies, scholars are often very critical of the system of capitalism as research has shown that Native people and people of color are disproportionately exploited within the system. In a capitalist economy, surplus value (profit) is generated from human labor and everything is commodified.
Hxrstory — pronounced the same as “herstory,” hxrstory is used to describe history written from a more gender inclusive perspective. The “x” is used to disrupt the often rigid gender binarist approach to telling history.
That is not doubleplusgood, could we say in the Newspeak of Orwell’s 1984, a language modified to make sure that nobody has the words and the grammar to entertain critical thoughts.
The California project will be modified following public comments, perhaps into a horse designed by a committee, but it is in the spirit of the times. It reminds me of the serious academic who criticized rigor in engineering as “a thinly veiled assertion of white male (hetero) sexuality”; or the other academic authors who claimed that “ice is not just ice” and invoked “the feminist glaciology framework” against “those who dominate and frame the production of glaciological knowledge.” Add the problem of “the gendered discourses of science and knowledge, and the way in which colonial, military, and geopolitical domination co-constitute glaciological knowledge.” (See my post “‘Ice is not Ice’ and the Limits of Conversation“.)
Bill Evers of the Hoover Institution says:
Instead of an objective account of the history of ethnic groups and their current situation, this is a biased portrait emphasizing suffering and victimization, serving as a kind of road map to create ideological activists based on racial identity. Will you be graded on having the politically correct answers?
Paradoxically, it seems, teaching “ethnic studies” aims at making all students intellectually identical and equally miserable.
ERRATUM: As Mark Brady commented (see below), I (and, it appears, the Los Angeles Times) confused the proposed high-school curriculum and the different legislation regarding Cal State. My quote is from the former.
READER COMMENTS
Mark Z
Aug 17 2019 at 1:12pm
If there’s something wrong with publicly funded Protestant or Catholic indoctrination, then there’s certainly something wrong with publicly funded Marxist indoctrination (no hyperbole here: that definition of capitalism is thoroughly Marxist; e.g. the nonsensical claim that surplus is generated by labor and thus profit is ‘taken’ from labor).
The DoE should just stop giving money to California just as they would and should if a state formally implemented a militantly Christian curriculum that taught that other religious perspectives were dangerous and oppressive. But I guess it’s nice to have yet another reason not to move to California.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 17 2019 at 1:42pm
The kitsch reference to “surplus value” is indeed remarkable. The guy (it can’t be a woman or a transgender) who wrote this must have a Che Guevara poster in his room.
Phil H
Aug 17 2019 at 7:59pm
It seems like a bit of a histrionic, catastrophising claim. A school system has a bit of syllabus that you don’t agree with, and this constitutes “the danger of social-engineering society with non-tested morals”? You know crazy people make similar claims every time they change the maths syllabus, don’t you? And the English syllabus, and the history syllabus… If you pull out the big scary words for every fashionable change in teaching style, what will you have to use when actual social engineering happens, like banning abortion?
nobody.really
Aug 19 2019 at 1:20pm
When it comes to teaching history and social sciences, can this be avoided? For example, was not the American Revolution based on non-tested morals?
How does one establish an “objective account” of history? If we wanted to teach an “objective” semester-long class on history (“Big History”), arguably only the final few minutes would even involve humans.
The world is simply too complex for a teacher to teach everything. So, as far as I can tell, all history classes, and pretty much all social science classes, reflect someone’s subjective view about which things warrant teaching and which things don’t.
The California classes described here strike me as odd, and arguably propagandistic. But can we say identify a history/social science class that isn’t? And can we articulate an “objective” standard by which to judge?
Mark Brady
Aug 17 2019 at 10:35pm
“But when one looks at the current project of a mandatory Ethnic Studies class for California high school and Cal State students…”
Pierre, you are conflating two separate projects, one for schools and one for the California State University. I’m sure that we would agree that each has its own problems.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1460
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2019 at 12:58pm
Thanks, Mark. My mistake. And the fact that was relaying the apparent confusion of the Los Angeles Times does not absolve me.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2019 at 1:00pm
PS: Mark, I assume you will not be the one giving “Ethnic Studies” at San Jose State.
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