Truth on Trial: Relativism in the Classroom
As Steven Wilson argues in his new book, The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, “central to a liberal education is the pursuit of truth, however elusive.” Indeed, the quest for truth, and knowledge of it, is enshrined in the slogans of most universities, including my own—the University of Chicago—as a reminder of our purpose.
For scientists, that purpose is scientific truth, knowledge of the natural world. For historians, it’s historical truth, an accurate account of history. By definition, every academic discipline, and every scholar and student, presupposes the existence of some objective truth worth pursuing. It seems absurd to suggest otherwise, to propose educating students in anything but rationality, logic, and ultimately, truth—at least to Wilson.
But absurdity has taken hold in education. The now infamous A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, funded by the Gates Foundation, declares that deeming math “purely objective is unequivocally false” and the “focus on getting the right answer” amounts to “white-supremacy culture.” Far from being novel, this increasingly mainstream belief of social reformers is but a perverse new take on an old, and genuine, tradition.
I am pursuing a degree in philosophy and agree that epistemology—the study of knowledge, its conditions, and, crucially, its limits—is worthwhile. But it is evident that these revisionists are not publishing thoughtful, peer-reviewed arguments on epistemology, nor are they reading them.
Indeed, the social justice crusade against truth and objectivity does not find its start in reputed journals or the classics of radical skepticism, but in a rejection of this very tradition. Sandra Harding, a pioneer of the movement, derides the scientific method in Isaac Newton’s Principia, calling it discriminatory. In her paradigm, all is subjective—any claim to objectivity is an arbitrary claim to “domination”. “The belief that there is such a thing as objective” and “objective, rational linear thinking” were dubbed “white supremacy” and “whiteness”, by Tema Okun’s popular “White Supremacy Culture” and the Smithsonian respectively. These thinkers, often unknowingly, reference 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault and his claim that “power produces reality…and rituals of truth”: that the powerful impose the “objective” cannon of truth.
In the academic world especially—a world whose explicit purpose is to seek truth—intellectualism is under siege. This is particularly apparent on college campuses, where, as Wilson observes, “feelings and personal stories are valued over truth seeking and independent mindedness.” Student-protestors at Pomona College, for instance, in a letter to their president, justified their questionable conduct and unsubstantiated views by alleging that “the idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search…is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples.”
K-12 education has not been spared this anti-intellectualism. At one school, faculty expressed that the racialization of “objectivity” was impeding their teaching; the principal replied that they had incurred “neurological disturbances in students’ being and systems” just by mentioning objectivity. Consider also how many highschoolers, myself included, now read Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project. Jones, when pressed on her work’s historical inaccuracies, declared that “The 1619 Project explicitly denies objectivity” and that “What drives me is rage…I’m not going to pretend to be objective about it.” In short, the academy is experiencing a shift in purpose—from objectivism to subjectivism and relativism, from the truth to the viral “my truth”.
The Defense Rests with Reason
The idea that the word “truth” can have a possessive pronoun appears ridiculous—but how can I mount a rational, objective argument against this position, when this is precisely what is at stake? Those who make these arguments are charged with attempting to impose their subjective truth and are routinely ostracized. Paradoxically though, the Manhattan Institute reports that, in high schools, students are taught that there is not one “respectable counterargument” to DEI, and that its contents are “facts”, not “opinions.” Paradoxical, because it is self-contradictory to objectively claim that everything is subjective—and even more so to impose your doctrine on others as indisputable. As Paul Boghossian observed in his aptly titled Fear of Knowledge, “these relativist theories of knowledge tear themselves to shreds.”
As a result, these theories are, inherently, quasi-religious. This is evident in their conduct—averse to debate, impervious to facts, eager to purge “heretics”—as well as their creed. Harding’s oft-cited, “all knowledge attempts are socially situated”, entails that academic study—from the social to the physical sciences—is socially-relative, not an objective affair. She continues, “modern science serves primarily regressive social tendencies”, because, by maintaining the lie of objectivity, it is “culturally coercive.” But, Harding, Foucault, and modern subjectivism ultimately confuse the context of discovery, which is always socially situated, with the context of justification, which is not. Isaac Newton’s discoveries were made via social factors, even influenced by his Christian background, but were justified by the likes of Calculus and the Laws of Motion. The former is subjective, the latter is not.
This is not just bad, abstract philosophy; it jeopardizes American college campus culture and, more subtly, K-12 classrooms. Indeed, the idea that marginalized students are oppressed, not empowered, by instruction in science, math, and literature is educationally ruinous. The early 19th-century founding father of American public education Horace Mann put it best when he quipped that a good education is society’s “great equalizer”. University of Virginia Professor emeritus, E.D. Hirsch, who appeared on Pioneer Institute’s Learning Curve, corroborates, “the achievement gap is chiefly a knowledge gap,” and “knowledge is equity.” The data agrees. Students at Hirsch’s Core Knowledge pilot schools gained 16 percentile points in reading and 10 points in science—gains large enough to offset half the gap between U.S. readers and top-scorers like Finland. Crucially, Hirsch stresses that a rigorous education in objective concepts and knowledge—in mathematical, scientific, and historical truths—makes all the difference at the K-12 level.
Academia and educators, who are increasingly abandoning these knowledge-intensive curricula and standards, would benefit from a rereading of their own mantras—as Johns Hopkins’ motto quotes scripture, “The truth will set you free.”
Sam Davis is a Roger Perry Education Intern with the Pioneer Institute. He is a rising sophomore at the University of Chicago, with a double major in Political Science and Philosophy.
