Round 2: Relativism in Public Schools

A “project” I have undertaken recently as a teacher in a public high school is to attempt to thaw the dogmatism of relativistic thinking amongst the students I teach. Over the past few years I have created some lessons in a unit that are designed to accomplish that purpose.

Some people might balk at this. They might express caution that such a venture could “get me in trouble” with parents and administrators, since the lessons question cherished beliefs and smack of “church and state” violation (despite the fact that I don’t bring up religion at all in the unit).

However, while very few other teachers waltz into such territory, I have found that I have little to fear regarding repercussions. After all, the lessons I have made that are designed to guide students in questioning relativism are very much in line with state-adopted Language Arts standards. Many are quite apprehensive and “jumpy” when it comes to touching controversial subjects, but as I quip quite often, “you’d be surprised by what you can get away with…if you know what you’re doing.”

Therefore, the obstacle I have run into is not the administrative resistance. In fact, the last time I taught these lessons, a representative from my district was observing me. After the lesson she glowed with interest, saying, “I just did not want the discussion to end! It was so interesting and needed!” This was coming from someone whom I have every reason to believe is quite secular in her thinking.

The biggest obstacles, rather, have come from the minds of the students themselves. Relativistic thinking is incredibly popular amongst youth today, and because I am conversing with fallen human beings with free will, there will always be those whom I can’t convince, no matter how powerful my arguments are and no matter how effective my communication tactics may be; that much has always been clear to me. Still, my students’ resistance to worldview correction, even when gentle and indirect, has baffled me. Getting them to question relativism—heck, even to grasp what relativism is and what the basic moral categories are—has been akin to asking a fish what wet feels like.

The lessons have not been without fruit, mind you. The proverbial light bulb over the head sparks on for some students. But every time I teach these particular lessons, the gargantuan nature of the task becomes more and more clear. What could be at the bottom of this recalcitrance?

I have always been baffled at how utterly relativistic students are. When I discuss this with them, many doggedly maintain their moral nonchalance even when doing so forces them to affirm the most outlandish and inhuman practices. During one such discussion, one of my students expressed doubt about whether infanticide in China was morally wrong. “It’s their culture and they think it’s right,” she maintained. That was the only justification she needed in her own mind. She could not get any deeper than that.  This came from a very sweet girl, but she just couldn’t connect the dots.

Though I have always been dismayed at how hard many cling to their dogmatism, it began to trouble me much more a month ago, the last time I taught on the topic. After discussing a few hypothetical moral scenarios and whether it was ok to judge the actions in them (actions in which people behave in racist ways. This was an attempt to pit dearly held postmodern values against each other in students’ minds, for example, non-judgmentalism vs. condemnation of racism and imperial oppression. The aim is to get them to choose the latter over the former.), we read an essay from the Chronicle of Higher Education written by a university professor. In the essay, the professor expresses much frustration over what he calls “absolutophobia,” his students’ unwillingness to condemn even the most horrible moral atrocities. He then goes on to point out the logical contradictions in such a stance, and he argues that acknowledging that absolutes exist doesn’t mean we are committed to inflexibility in dialogue and hatred of other cultures. We also read Shirley Jackson’s famous story “The Lottery,” in which a fictional small town holds a lottery each year…the “winner” gets stoned.

 Next, we discussed both the essay and the story in a Socratic Dialogue. What was interesting was not that the students maintained their relativism; that much I expect by now. What surprised me is that many had difficulty in even grasping the basic moral categories under discussion. Simon, the “absolutophobia” professor, obviously and clearly believed in absolutes, yet many of the students failed to understand that. When I asked them to summarize various parts of his essay, they made him out to be a relativist!

They did the same thing to me when I commented. To them, I, too, did not believe in absolutes; every time I would make a moral objectivist statement or ask a question that implied the existence of objective moral values, they would interpret me as being a relativist! Part of this was due to them not reading close enough (quite a few students do not take much interest in the readings and therefore do not read close enough to “get it right.”), but much of it was because they had not thought in objective moral categories much before. Therefore, when they encounter a moral objectivist, some hefty cognitive dissonance happens.  Either their relativistic framework has to give way, or the moral objectivist in front of them.  More often than not in that discussion, the former won. 

They have had much experience thinking in sociological categories, and their statements reflected this. Rather than talking about reasons why an action is right/wrong, they instead frequently focused on the sociological factors that caused the beliefs. They could not evaluate the beliefs and practices themselves, but they easily gave sociological causal explanations as to how they were accepted and really had difficulty fathoming the notion that there was more to be discussed.   They are so used to refraining from judgment when studying other cultures that they assume that it is somehow always out of bounds to judge.

They also thought in personal taste categories when it came to morality. Morally condemning actions and beliefs made about as much sense to them as morally condemning ice cream flavors.

Lastly, because we are in such an entitlement-centered culture, we become easily offended when others critique us. Our collective skin has become thin. Many, especially the young, don’t want to cause offense, so they go to extremes to avoid appearing accepting of any and all beliefs and practices.

All this does not mean they lacked any moral scruples whatsoever. Their moral intuitions would come out at certain points in our discussions, but they would express relativistic sentiments the next moment. When I tried to point out gently how they were trying to have it both ways, they had difficulty seeing the problem.

In the end, I tried to suggest that everyone, including the students themselves, makes moral judgments, that it is unavoidable, and therefore we shouldn’t worry about it. They saw my point that they themselves make moral judgments all the time despite claiming to be non-judgmental. I thought I had made a connection, but their reaction to that was surprising: they thought they should try harder to avoid judging!  It was like the fable of the man who was convinced he was dead.  All the doctors in the world couldn’t sway him, but one doctor had an idea: I’ll convince him that dead men don’t bleed, then I’ll show him that he bleeds!  The doctor amassed all the evidence he could and convinced the man that dead men don’t bleed.  Next, the doctor pricked the man’s finger, at which the man exclaimed, “I guess dead men do bleed afterall!”

I can give all the causal explanations I want, but in the end this boils down to suppressing the truth and exchanging the truth of God for a lie. That explains it best. We humans want to maintain our autonomy and moral independence at all costs. The existence of absolutes or objective moral values would be an obstacle to that desire. Relativism gives us intellectual justification to do what we want and feel good about it. We do not have to bend our knee, so we think, to any moral law or Moral Lawgiver. No moral law means no moral obligation. Everyone wins! Even though my students might not be consciously thinking that way, they think that way at some level. That is the only thing that fully explains my students’ recalictrance: they simply want to believe what they want to believe. It is as simple as that.