Multiculturalism

What does Strict Father morality say about other moral and cultural systems? It says they are immoral. If they do not give primacy to moral strength, they promote moral weakness, which is a form of immorality. They are also immoral if they blur the strict moral boundaries of Strict Father morality, or challenge the moral authority of Strict Father morality, or challenge the Moral Order of our society.

For this reason, conservatives tend to be against multiculturalism, which seeks tolerance for cultural diversity and many other forms of morality. To conservatives, forms of morality other than their own are not moral and therefore not to be tolerated.

Nurturant Parent morality, on the other hand, has a very different view of diversity. Since a nurturant parent gives equal priority to all his or her children, and since children necessarily have differences among them, all those differences have to be respected and toleration is required. Moreover, each child has something different to contribute to the family. Applying the Nation As Family metaphor, diversity in a nation is positive and toleration is required.

Education

Strict Father morality comes with a principle of self-defense: it is the highest moral calling to defend the moral system itself from attack. The very first category of conservative moral action includes acts of promoting and defending conservative morality. The word "war" in "the cultural war" is not incidental. Conservatives have, at least since the 60s, seen their system of values under attack – from feminism, the gay rights movement, the ecological movement, the sexual revolution, multiculturalism, and many more manifestations of Nurturant Parent morality. Conservatives have seen the values of these movements taught in the schools. They are appalled that what they see as the only system of real morality is being undermined. Conservatives believe that all of the major ills of our present society come from a failure to abide by their moral system. Moreover, they believe that their moral system is the only true American moral system, as well as the only moral system behind Western civilization. They see both of these beliefs challenged in contemporary historical research, which is being taught in our universities. This gives them a sense of moral outrage. They are fighting back.

Why are conservatives in favor of the elimination of the Department of Education, the destruction of the National Endowment for the Humanities, school vouchers, and the privatization of education? Why are liberals opposed to these measures?

A great deal of government support for education is in the form of social programs to help disadvantaged students, and an important charge of the Department of Education has been to develop such programs. Since conservatives see social programs in general as immoral, a quick way to get rid of all social programs in education is simply to abolish the Department of Education and stop funding the programs.

The best research in the humanities these days is not by any means governed by the moral agenda of conservative politics. Indeed, much of it concerns topics that explicitly collide with Strict Father morality and the politics that comes out of it. There is research on ecology, on the heritage of minority groups, on worthy but neglected minority and female figures in history, on the role of American corporations in the exploitation of third-world countries, on the history of unions, on unspeakable things done by the American government and by figures formerly considered heroes, on the value systems of other cultures, on the history of homosexuality, on spousal abuse, and much much more that does not sit well with Strict Father morality and the politics that flows out of it. Getting rid of the National Endowment for the Humanities will eliminate a major source of funding for research by the nation's leading scholars, research that is uncomfortable to conservatives. Meanwhile, private conservative think tanks are funding research that fits a conservative moral and political agenda and the conservative writing of history.

National educational standards are also set by the Department of Education. These standards include things that conservatives would rather not have taught and do not include things that conservatives do want to have taught, such as the recently developed new history curriculum which sets national standards for the teaching of history. Because conservatives have been most effective in changing education at the local level, the elimination of national standards and the leaving of content to local school boards would make it much easier for conservatives to change the curricula in the direction of conservative morality and politics. In other words, the issue seems to be not whether the standards are national or local, but whether they accord with Strict Father morality. Since the promotion of Strict Father morality itself has the highest of values in that moral system, it should follow that conservatives would be happy to have national standards that upheld Strict Father morality.

The privatization of education means that conservatives can set up their own schools in which their children will not have to learn about anything that might be inconsistent with conservative morality and politics. It would also mean a move away from the integration of schools, which means that the children of conservatives would not have to encounter students from different subcultures with different values. School vouchers would make privatization that much easier. In short, the conservative educational agenda is very much in support of a conservative moral agenda and the politics that it leads to.

From the perspective of Nurturant Parent morality, the issue of education looks very different. Multiculturalism, feminism, gay rights, and the ecology movement are seen, like the civil rights movement, as being great advances – moral advances – in American culture and civilization. Like the civil rights movement, they should be taught as advances. And doing so requires teaching the history of what made them advances, that is, the history of past abuses sanctioned and abetted by major forces in American society and by the government itself. That is not putting down America. On the contrary, it is part of the glory of America that the truth of past abuses by our government and our society at large can be told and the abuses corrected for future generations. Indeed, from the perspective of Nurturant Parent morality. America is a place that has nurtured generations of immigrants. Much of the history of progress in America is the history of what has been made possible through the progressive extension of nurturant morality: progress in equal treatment, progress in opportunities for education and other forms of self-development, progress in health care, progress in humane working conditions, progress in the development of knowledge, and so on. There is a dark side of American history from this perspective as well, and it too must be told: the mass murder of Native Americans and the near extinction of their culture, slavery, the brutalization of factory workers, and the discrimination against women, nonwhites, Jews, immigrants, and gays.

But advocates of Strict Father morality do not see all these changes as advances; they see many of them as immoral, backward steps. And they see the history of some of these changes, which is written from the perspective of correcting abuses, as an attack on their most fundamental moral beliefs. Conservatives are furious at the entire institutional structure of American education. Who runs it? Who gets into education as a profession? Not surprisingly, a great many educators are nurturers. And nurturers often have a Nurturant Parent morality.

After all, teaching small children is not a profession where you make a lot of money. Teachers, with rare exceptions, are not entrepreneurs. Those people who are entrepreneurs and want to live their lives seeking their self-interest through unrestricted free enterprise tend not to choose to teach third grade. Many elementary school teachers are women, often nurturant mothers, so nurturant they want to nurture other people's children.

That is why conservatives are attacking the infrastructure of public education in the country. They have no choice. They are up against an infrastructure full of nurturers, and they don't like it one bit – and they shouldn't like it one bit. They do, however, have allies and apian of action. Conservative Christians, concerned that public schools teach their children immoral ideas, have been involved in "home-schooling" for years. In addition, many parents who want to insulate their children from such ideas and can afford it have been setting up private schools. But they feel they should not have to pay for public education they don't use – and can't, if they are to control what their children are taught and who they associate with. Such parents have fought for a school voucher system, where government funds for education are distributed to parents in the form of vouchers, which can be used either for private or public schooling. Such a system, if put together cleverly, could destroy much of public education in America. Conservatives would not shed a tear.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 871