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I'm not totally unsympathetic to that vision of education, but I think the cultural divisions in the US have gotten so bad that there's no way to structure universal K-12 education in this way that will satisfy a large majority of the population. People understandably don't want their ideological enemies trying to mold their children in these ways. They barely tolerate it when it comes to the putatively value-neutral core curriculum.
I think the only solution in the US for an education system the way you envision it is in the form of separate school systems.
The trouble is that once you leave pure science and math, neutrality is impossible. The events covered in history and how you cover them are not neutral by nature.
If you take the American Revolution, there are all kinds of culture-war issues. Founders were slave holders, and even bringing this up is a culture war issue. Then there’s the fact that we fought against our own government at the time, the issues of the stamp act and the tea tax and the involvement of France. How do you “neutrally” discuss a war like that? At every turn, you’re bringing politics into the classroom.
And in literature, it’s much the same. Every piece you pick and the subjects covered are saturated in culture war issues. Even the nationality and race and gender of the authors are political issues. If I assign Brave New World or The Raven or The Martian, those books have a viewpoint and themes that someone might well not like. Some will certainly be offended that there are no minorities or women on the story list.
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A secular education is such a no-brainer for successful civic outcomes. I'm not sure on some of your other points - I'm not sure it's 'been always thus' as you seem to imply at the end, because indoctrination has varied in kind and degree quite a lot.
America, through people like John Dewey have articulated clear visions of education, and have presumably had their influence. Now, I think we face a deeper issue with regard to post-modern ideas, break down in research academia, new technologies impacting etc. I think the conditions are for indoctrination to be unusually bad currently, over an arc say to the beginning of the 20th century.
If the rebuttal is that we've always taught propagandising myths around national identity, history etc, I'd entirely agree with you. But I think it's a different kind of situation because the basics of pedagogy/child development were still prioritised. With the postmodern morass we are losing our actual orientation to learning.
This isn't actually true- Catholic schools are of generally excellent quality,
Oh right, I wasn't really meaning not having religious schools, I was thinking for public schools, public funds to have an expectation of secularity. I'm also in favour of charter schools with different perspectives etc.
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Yes, definitely agree with the need for the mythic element in society and something shared. I think we have to take on the insights of post-modernism around grand narratives, post colonial critiques etc but have to bring back/integrate with 'greatness'.
I've always been partial to liberal and cosmopolitan values to celebrate within a national spirit of democracy. But we are all beyond the naive stage with people now somewhat aware of the propaganda that has underlied previous national narratives and therefore sensitive to it. Also, it's hard to inspire if we all suspect things have gone awry with plutocracy, inequity, ie the disappearing American dream is no longer a central national myth.
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