From ptrourke@mediaone.net Sun Oct 31 05:50:01 1999 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id FAA32054 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 05:50:01 -0800 Received: from chmls06.mediaone.net (chmls06.mediaone.net [24.128.1.71]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id FAA25859 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 05:50:00 -0800 Received: from patricktrourke (h00500480cb85.ne.mediaone.net [24.218.107.166]) by chmls06.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id IAA08039 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:49:59 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <000d01bf23a6$b930f540$a66bda18@ne.mediaone.net> From: "Patrick T. Rourke" To: "Classics List" Subject: A "Balanced" View Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 08:49:16 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 >> Then, as we were leaving, their commander handed Antonio a sheaf >> of xeroxes, saying, "Here, son, read this. This is information about the >> Southern Cause they won't be teaching you in school." We promptly >> "skeedaddled" to a Union regiment.) > That being said, I have to admit you've hit one of my > hot-button issues. When postitivist academic historians completely > withdrew from the field of moral thought and interpretation, I think > they left a vacuum -- one that has mostly been filled by hack > axe-grinders, most of whom see the whole spectrum as shades of a > single color. I still believe it should be possible to write history > that does not reduce everything to polar issues. Regrettably, that > seems to be the only way a lot of people manage to think about > history these days -- and eventually it seeps out into any other > sphere of human evaluation and interaction. >Surely the whole point in homeschooling is to teach things "they won't be >teaching you in school." Are there some topics on which a balanced view is >impolitic? Sorry, JW, but the phrase "a balanced view" is nonsense. There is no such thing. The ideal we seem to have imposed in our culture that objectivity is only realizable by presenting two polar opposites has nothing to do with reality. BMcM was right on the ball. It is only because our political, "intellectual," and economic discourse has abandoned empiricism and lacks any ability to establish standards of proof and disproof that we have fallen back upon "balance" as our sole means of evaluation. Notice, too, that in public discourse, it is in matters of fact that balance is imposed, while in matters of opinion no such balance is deemed necessary, as "every opinion is valid." Hogwash! If it is my opinion that all blue-eyed persons are actually aliens from the planet Hiccough who have come to feed on indigenous Earthlings, and that Masonic rituals are actually dinner parties where the anthopophagy takes place, is that a valid opinion? Is balance the best remedy? Ultimately, the point of homeschooling is not merely to teach things "they won't be teaching you in school" but to "teach things they *should be* teaching you in school, but won't be" and to do so in an environment that is an improvement over the public (or private) school environment (as BMcM suggests). Just because an opinion is rejected does not mean that it is suppressed. There is also a peculiar idea that knowledge is either accepted or suppressed, never merely rejected or neglected. Unfortunately our culture has suddenly developed the conviction that all suppressed interpretation is true, via the specious argument that there must be something dangerous to the establishment that has incited the surpression, and that the thing most dangerous to the establishment is the truth that will set you free, ipso facto all interpretations that are rejected are true. >As a father whose children attended public school in the Land of Lincoln >(Illinois) I would have to answer affirmatively. --This strikes me as a >relevant topic also in the Classics classroom. You should probably make more clear what the "relevant" topic is: slavery? States' rights? Certainly the recent claim that Jefferson Davis Was Right (in the Kennedy brother's books, "The South Was Right" and "Was JD Right?") needs to be severely examined - whether Davis could be justified in the secession through the arguments the founding fathers used to justify their revolt from George III is one question; whether the ultimate (rather than immediate) reason he decided to lead the secession was to preserve the peculiar institution is another. And I would hope that the attitude toward slavery has progressed to the point that no one could conceive of defending it. Ultimately, it should be the right of a people to decide that the contract with another people is broken and severe the relationship. But means cannot justify the ends. P. T. Rourke ptrourke@mediaone.net .