Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Berger, an English teacher at Weathersfield School, who writes “Poor Elijah’s Almanack.” The column appears in several publications, including the Times Argus, the Rutland Herald and the Stowe Reporter.
A few months ago I wrote about Winston Smith. Winston is the main character in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” He works in the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite history so it conforms to Big Brother’s current version of the past and the facts.My point was that education experts also tend to rewrite the past. They do this so they can ignore their past failures even as they recycle those failures and reintroduce them in schools.
This point is just as valid today as it was then. But “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has acquired a new relevance over the past few weeks. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I’m talking about our newly inaugurated president and his administration.
In my classroom I’ve always remained strictly nonpartisan. My students frequently ask about my political views, especially at election time, but I’ve always disappointed them. I tell them that teachers can have a disproportionate influence on their students, and that when it comes to politics, I don’t want to exercise that influence. When they’ve asked about particular issues, I’ve done my best to express both sides’ positions in terms of relevant history, the Constitution, and right reason.
My resolve is sorely tested these days.
In “Nineteen Eighty-Four” the Ministry of Truth trades in propaganda, the Ministry of Peace conducts perpetual war, and the Ministry of Love metes out torture. It’s a world in thrall to “the intoxication of power.” The official language, Newspeak, diminishes words and grammar in the cause of diminishing thought and free expression. Doublethink means “claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.” Beyond the “willingness to say that black is white,” it means the “ability to believe that black is white,” and the even more pernicious capacity “to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
Uncanny, isn’t it.
This is not a challenge to Mr. Trump’s legal claim to the presidency. He is the duly elected president of the United States.
My concern here isn’t his prolonged, narcissistic insistence that his inaugural crowd was bigger than it visibly was, or his priority call to the National Park Service for friendlier photographic evidence.
My concern here isn’t the insupportable assertion of his press secretary in the face of overwhelming evidence that Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd was the biggest ever, “period.”
My concern here isn’t his chief strategist’s characterization of the free press as the “opposition,” or his prescription that the free press should “keep its mouth shut.” It isn’t that the president, having sworn on Jan. 20 to preserve, protect, and defend the first amendment, by Jan. 21 had declared himself “at war” with the free press enshrined there.
“Media” sounds like a sideshow. “Press” sounds constitutional because it is. Every time someone damns the media, we need to remember that they’re damning the free press, the press that’s explicitly and deliberately protected by the First Amendment. That press in the 18th century was far from objective, and the founders knew it. They nonetheless concluded that a free press was essential for the preservation of our liberty.
But that’s not my concern here.
My concern here is the doctrine of “alternative facts,” the malignant justification his counselor offered for all the wishful thinking, all the misrepresentations, and all the patent lies. We’re not talking about opinions, or even facts that are reasonably in dispute. We’re talking about the “willingness to say that black is white.”
We’re not talking about opinions, or even facts that are reasonably in dispute. We’re talking about the “willingness to say that black is white.”
We’re talking about doublethink.
Unlike the standard disputes between liberals and conservatives, that’s something that directly threatens my students, something about which I can’t remain impartial.
Schools aren’t responsible for the machinations of the president’s mind. And many decent people voted for him with hope last November. I know and respect more than a few. I also know that people like you and me are sometimes predisposed to believe what we want to believe, regardless of the facts and where reason should lead us.
When it comes to dealing with facts, schools do bear some responsibility for the present state of the union. For decades experts and the schools they’ve “transformed” have sneered at facts. Content and knowledge have been exiled from classrooms in the name of “critical thinking skills.”
The immediate result in the world of politics and government is a broad, perilous ignorance of civics and even the rudiments of how the republic works, among voters first and even among those we choose to govern us.
The damage, however, runs broader and deeper than that. Because at the same time that we’ve banished facts and content, we’ve encouraged students to express their opinions. I’m interested in what my students think, but I’m not interested in listening to them run their mouths when they don’t know what they’re talking about. That’s why we prepare in class and at home for our debates and discussions. You can’t think in any meaningful way without something to think about. When it rests on false information, or no information, the best reasoning can’t lead to a valid, just conclusion.
A few years back, I attended a series of workshops where we discussed scoring student writing. Students were required to choose, research and describe a simple procedure as one of their mandatory statewide assignments. One student sample we reviewed explained how to change a spark plug. It won a high score and rave reviews around the table for its creativity, organization and voice. Unfortunately, if you followed the directions the student provided, the car would never start, as his procedure was factually wrong at several points.
When I pointed these errors out and suggested they should affect our evaluation of his procedure, many of my colleagues were confused, even outraged. In their minds, the spark plug procedure’s accuracy and whether it was based on actual spark plug facts was irrelevant.
This devaluation and denial of objective truth is what too many schools have been teaching and preaching for the past 40 years. Multiply the cumulative impact of this point of view on decades of graduating classes. You’re left with a nation for whom facts are either irrelevant or a minor inconvenience.
Orwell called it doublethink. You can read about it in his book or listen to pronouncements from the White House.
Facts, however, are reality.
We can deny reality for a time.
But in the end we can’t escape it.
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