Amy Gutmann & I am a gemini

I went to the social justice reading group tonight. It was pretty cool; I think I'll be a regular in the future. We'd read a chapter on multicultural education by Amy Gutmann. She's kinda old-school. I don't really like her writing or the numerous assumptions that she seemed to like so much. The main point she was driving was that, [Alt + Shift] in a democratic society, the goal of education is to educate people such that they are capable of having and exercising civic equality.

This was pretty much her only standard. In fact, the whole chapter on multicultural education seemed completely superfluous; it wasn't treated any different than any other issue would be.

The goal of democratic education is to further civic equality.

If something furthers that goal, it is good; if something hinders progress towards that goal, it is bad. Supremely simple. Caryn even told us that Amy Gutmann is against (private/magnet/etc.) schools because they do not properly prepare people to be civic equals.

Her other big thing, although it didn't come up in our conversation is the importance of open debate. Here I agree with her wholeheartedly. Debate and argument and disagreement and expression of differing opinions rocks. It moves things along. And in that spirit, I will proceed to take some potshots at her way of thinking.

According to Gutmann, our democracy has a duty to attempt to educate it's residents in such a way that they can have and use civic equality.

Let's see... our democracy? I think not. We live in a republic. The system was originally designed such that electors would choose a president. This has since been perverted to a situation that gives us the illusion of living in a democracy. Despite this, there are many things that keep it from being a democracy. If we were democratic, our government would represent the people. Thus, we'd expect to have 2 or 3 senators from the green party and an analogous number of representatives in the house. This is not the case.

Our current system would theoretically allow for a 49% minority to be fully unrepresented if they were uniformly distributed. Our system of election relies on clumping of people with similar viewpoints; it's a fair bet, but kinda dumb.

As for educating students to be and act with civic equality, I don't think this is a good goal. My school for example, had a part of it's mission statement that says we are seeking to produce leaders. This is good insofar as I'm concerned. I like it. I don't want to have the ability to exercise civic power equal to everyone else's. I wan to have more. I think I should have a greater influence.

Everyone at Olin represents a large societal investment. We have, by and large, gone to good schools with good teachers. We are currently not paying tuition to learn. Why is this worth it? because society expects us to give a large return. If we only give back an equal amount, we wouldn't be worth suh a huge, sustained investment of time, money and effort. So yeah. We also talked about lots of other stuff... oh liberals (says the socialist).

One of the neatest things was when Caryn guessed that I was a Gemini. I said something along the lines of I really have two views on everything... Oh well. I guess astrology is true. By two views I mean that I like to have an ideal view and a pragmatic view. For example, I think socialism is ideal, but I think socialism would be a huge mistake in our current society. i think some socialist things can be incorporated, but we'll generally be better off working off of the strengths of our capitalist republic. Also, Caryn makes yummy food.