This blog popped up on my twitter feed a week or so ago. People praised it for its analysis of how to present partisan political content in schools. Political bias in education is something I've been interested in for a while. I share the sentiment that teachers should remain as politically neutral as possible - but am also of the field of thought that understands ideology to be all consuming, and sometimes difficult to recognise in oneself. So I took a look at the blog and I have some thoughts.
Whilst the blog is nominally about teacher neutrality, its primary focus is - what the blogger describes as - 'postmodern theory'. It identifies postmodern theory as something which many teachers do not understand, especially in terms of its political analysis and bias, a sentiment I largely agree with, though maybe not in the same way as the author.
The blogger lays out some useful guidance they were given whilst preparing to teach university undergraduates:
1) Questions should be valid in the field of study and not be worded so that they lead towards a particular answer.
2) The best arguments and counter-arguments should be presented. To present weak arguments is to indirectly lead towards one argument. Also it should not be the case that the partisan political view of the teacher is presented with less critique and the one they don't prefer with more – e.g. one weak argument against an interpretation vs five strong ones against the counter-argument.
3) The views should receive equal weighting and necessary time both for study and critique. It isn't always the case that the exact time given is the same so long as the views have been explained fully. What should not occur is a truncated version of one argument should be presented in twenty minutes while a full argument of another is given forty minutes.
4) Students should have the skills and ability to critique arguments. This should be modelled for students. The evidence of the arguments should be established using disciplinary knowledge and tools first.
5) Do not give your own partisan political opinion on the matter if it can possibly be avoided as this can and does sway students towards what they believe is the 'correct' argument. This also means that students do not bother to grapple with the issue themselves which is the purpose of studying the arguments in the first place.
I think this is some interesting and useful advice. I do not think the blogger takes this on board when discussing what they describe as postmodernism (or 'woke' ideology). The blog lumps many ideas together with no evidence, references or explanation as to where they took these interpretations from. Much like a blog I looked at a few weeks ago it builds up strawmen versions of an argument and then argues against them. It seems to contradict the advice of point 2 by presenting a poor argument in order to undermine it.
The blogger shares some tables, showing to us the 'right-left continuum'. I find these kind of presentations of politics very shallow, they tell us little about the nuance of people's economic, structural, social or cultural beliefs. It means that when the blogger lumps 'Postmodernist Social Justice Theories' on the 'Hard Left' of their ideology continuum we don't really know what that means. Is it rooted in communist economic policy? Does it espouse left-libertarian approaches to social freedom? How is it 'hard-left' and how does the blogger define this when they define marxism and anarchism as 'far-left'.
'Postmodernist Social Justice Theories' which the blogger tells us are 'informally known as woke' are 'political and quasi-religious'. They 'fuse political ideas and moral values so there is no difference between them':
'Postmodernists believe we are born unequal due to historic injustices that have occurred as a result of our immutable characteristics – e.g. race, gender. They look at the world through an identity lens, focusing only on some parts of our identity e.g. race and not others e.g. class.'... 'They use their lived experiences as a reference point but will not accept that of anyone who disagrees with their ideology or beliefs. They assume that we all rank order our identities in the same way they do. They assume that if the person does not admit to this then they are lying or false about their beliefs. They think everyone is interested in gaining power in the same way and wants to do this for the same reasons e.g. advancement for their own identity group. They reject societal concepts and generally held definitions of race, gender, sexuality and transgender and have their own (see reference section at the end of this document). They believe that all these identities intersect in us as people.'
The blogger gives a bizarre contrast between what conservative and marxist historians would accept, and 'postmodern fields such as Critical Race theory'. Critical Race theorists, we are told, would not accept that 1066 happened. Which I think is what the kids call a stretch.
The blogger tells us that 'I would teach pupils that the postmodern theorists have not agreed on standard definitions and terminology yet and these are subject to change from what they have been taught'. This is a presentation of 'postmodernism' - which I have a look at with specific relation to racism/antiracism - which claims that postmodernists have redefined 'common definitions and meanings' The blogger tells us they would teach young people this this '[i]n order to remain politically neutral as possible.' However without any evidence of these changed or changing definitions it's difficult to understand how the blogger has come to any conclusion without political bias. Especially having previously told us how postmodernism was a 'hard-left' ideology without any analysis of how they came to that conclusion.
These changing definitions, we are told, are stipulative: given a new meaning for the purpose of the argument. The blogger then gives us a nice example of a strawman argument.
Definition: White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people.
This is a classic misrepresentation of the concept of privilege. It's the presentation of race or class, gender or sexuality as single, individual characteristics rather than factors which can alter our experiences. It presents them as an immutable hierarchy.
Counter: Indian and Chinese people succeed better than white people in the education system.
This counter then easily presents evidence that undermines the hierarchy. It does not take into account that there is a
Definition: White privilege does not just refer to skin colour, those who attain educationally also have white privilege.
I would like to see an example of this argument used. I've never seen anyone claim that Indian and Chinese people have white privilege because they 'attain educationally'.
Before teaching about 'postmodern social justice theories' we are told that teachers should take into consideration:
a) These theories view 'through the lens of..' and contain theorists from many different fields including history, geography and sociology.
b) They consider the the system of the countries they live in to be racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic. They consider the disciplinary knowledge and tools used by established fields of study such as history as part of the system and reject them.
c) They do not have alternative disciplinary tools and therefore have no means to establish if their evidence is 'true' – e.g. in History a photograph can only be used as evidence if it is undoctored and can be verified in a reliable way.
d) Instead they appear to use the rule of thumb that evidence that supports their ideas is 'true' and evidence against it is the product of the system and false.
I honestly have no idea what a) means. The claims in b), c) and d) that Critical Race Theory doesn't have disciplinary tools to establish truth and so picks and chooses arbitrarily is simply not true. One of the pioneering essays of Critical Race Theory and which coined the term intersectionality was in a law journal examining the various ways in which American antidiscrimination laws in the late '80s did not account for more than one form of employment discrimination.
These are some big and noticeably uncited claims. So the question is...
In short: no. Postmodernism is a wide and sprawling philosophical tradition. It is contentious. Many people who are or were described as postmodern reject the title. I am by no means an expert but this blog is a very good and useful exploration of the history of postmodernism in relation to critical theory and a counter to some of the broad-stroke, bad-faith presentations of 'postmodernism'.
Once again, here is what the blog claims 'postmodernists' believe:
Postmodernists believe we are born unequal due to historic injustices that have occurred as a result of our immutable characteristics – e.g. race, gender.
They look at the world through an identity lens, focusing only on some parts of our identity e.g. race and not others e.g. class.'...
'They use their lived experiences as a reference point but will not accept that of anyone who disagrees with their ideology or beliefs.
They assume that we all rank order our identities in the same way they do. They assume that if the person does not admit to this then they are lying or false about their beliefs.
They think everyone is interested in gaining power in the same way and wants to do this for the same reasons e.g. advancement for their own identity group.
They reject societal concepts and generally held definitions of race, gender, sexuality and transgender and have their own (see reference section at the end of this document).
They believe that all these identities intersect in us as people.
None of these claims are linked to any evidence. We have no authors or thinkers who are tied to these positions so that they can be analysed. I'm going to have a go at breaking them down, but because the blog doesn't actually give us much to analyse it's very difficult to accurately critique these claims.
Postmodernists believe we are born unequal due to historic injustices that have occurred as a result of our immutable characteristics – e.g. race, gender.
Do they? If we're talking about Critical Race Theory then this is not true. Critical Race Theoristss believe that the arbitrary societal categories (such as race and gender) are imposed upon people and are used to divide people and maintain social hierarchies (see the Krenshaw article linked above). They use the socially constructed categories of race, class, gender (which if you've been following the argument over trans rights many people I assume (but may be wrong) the blogger would describe as 'postmodernists' do not believe that gender is immutable, but fluid) to explore and explain the way that different people are treated differently.
They look at the world through an identity lens, focusing only on some parts of our identity e.g. race and not others e.g. class.
Again, I would like to know which 'postmodernists'. I agree with the blogger that any attempt to try and understand 'identity' without looking at class is deeply flawed, but as far as I know, Critical Race Theorists use class as an important factor in understanding people's relationship to one another.
'They use their lived experiences as a reference point but will not accept that of anyone who disagrees with their ideology or beliefs.
I don't recognise this as a trope of postmodernism - again happy to be proved wrong - but this is a good critique of 'lived experience'
They assume that we all rank order our identities in the same way they do. They assume that if the person does not admit to this then they are lying or false about their beliefs.
This is a key misunderstanding of what intersectionality is. It's not a way to 'rank' each other (some people grimly call this 'oppression olympics'), but a way to understand the various ways which social classes and categories impact on our day to day existence.
They think everyone is interested in gaining power in the same way and wants to do this for the same reasons e.g. advancement for their own identity group.
Again this seems like a mischaracterisation. Are Critical Race Theorists trying to advance their own identity group (implying at the expense of other 'groups')? This characterisation doesn't account for the fact that people are not made up of one fixed identity, that identity can fluctuate depending on the society one is part of or functioning within.
They reject societal concepts and generally held definitions of race, gender, sexuality and transgender and have their own (see reference section at the end of this document).
This is contentious at best. The definitions at the bottom don't really offer an adequate analysis of the words or give a history of how the words developed so it's pretty bold to claim that they've been redefined.
They believe that all these identities intersect in us as people.
Yes, I'd agree that Critical Race Theorists largely believe this.
In a blog which seeks to encourage us to neutrally teach about (the amorphous) 'postmodern social justice theories', we are told these beliefs are hard left, that the academic field has no disciplinary tools to find evidence, and the evidence they do use is arbitrary and baseless. We are told all of this without a citation. It is true, we need to evaluate ideologies - and the concept of ideology, and its all consuming nature - but we need to do this understanding our own biases, and the texts and authors we're arguing against. Otherwise we will end up shadow-boxing against strawmen.