Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Failure Of The Schools

Failure Of The Schools

Of course, the lack of moral education is a failure of the schools….

But who controls the schools?

And why did we give the government agency over the schools anyway?

Honestly, it's the failure of all of us – sacrificing freedom for security.

Their attitude marked, Buller believed, a failure of political and moral education, and the blame for that failure goes to the schools as well as or even more than the churches. (This argument rhymes with the statements of Mortimer Adler to which Sidney Hook so vociferously objected.) So the need for a spiritual and moral renewal of the British educational system was the third point on which the Moot agreed.

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

Democracy Superior

Democracy Superior

Yeah, without ethics, how is democracy superior to totalitarianism?

Positivism/pragmatism will only give you the is – never the should.

It’s true tho…

And it is worth noting that, on this account, positivism produces pragmatism; pragmatism is what is left over once positivism claims its territory. But neither positivism nor pragmatism can explain why democracy is superior to totalitarianism. In fact, Hutchins continues, by splitting the human lifeworld in the way they do, positivism and pragmatism leave us with “a colossal confusion of means and ends. Wealth and power become the ends of life,” because the realm of value is the realm of opinion, in which I seek nothing more than easy justifications for my desires. “Men become merely means. Justice is the interest of the stronger.”

-Alan Jacobs, The Year Of Our Lord 1943 (Amazon)

Sterling Terrell