Reply to Deep Racism Problems at NCS and STA: Questions/Answers we can't get through admissions

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]awesome attitude. keep at it everywhere, make sure your kids have it too. [/quote]

PP to whom I believe you're responding: If my kids grow up believing that difficult, important discourse in a civil manner about important issues is best approached by calling other people who report facts liars, by denying factual premises, and by crying "fake news" every time they are confronted with something uncomfortable, then I will have failed as a parent, a citizen, and a human.

You can have robust, intelligent, difficult, and multi-sided debates about how and to what extent schools should respond to verified incidents of racism, what the school's role should and should be with regard to these issues, what partnerships (or not) with parents should be made on these issues, and on and on and on and on. I welcome those conversations. I welcome those debates. Everyone, on all sides, should welcome those conversations and debates. We should welcome the ability to talk to each other about HARD questions that don't have easy answers.

As for my kids--whom you felt the need to bring into this, here's what I'll say: My children better welcome those conversations and debates, and they better learn how to engage in them in ways that confront, rather than ignore, facts.

Because you CANNOT have what are so many much-needed hard conversations and debates if, for various stakeholders in those debates, facts do not exist. Facts are only "facts" when they support their ultimate positions. THAT is weak-minded, and my kids better not be weak-minded. True, strong-minded engagement, conversation, and debate about hard topics isn't intimidated by "facts," whichever way they cut. Facts are starting premises that one must accept--for good or ill--before one can begin to have an intelligent and civil discussion about hard issues. There are a lot of "facts" that are inconvenient to my positions on certain issues, and the same holds true for my children. The willingness to accept and the commitment to confront those inconvenient facts makes one a stronger advocate for the ultimate position, not a weaker one. Heck, sometimes those facts even change one's intransigent mind (mine included).  A strong-minded advocate is not one who screams "liar!" in the face of facts, but one who has the intellect and thoughtfulness and rigor to defend and explain why their positions hold even in the face of those facts. More than that, a strong-minded person is not someone who allows their firmly held positions on debatable issues to completely close their mind to the possibility that certain facts might soften or change that position.

This epistemological crisis--whereby millions of Americans refuse to accept and confront facts as a way of shutting down much-needed discourse--is a cancer on the minds of every American who falls into it.  [/quote]

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