Fine essay by E D Hirsch, A Sense of Belonging - Our schools are producing all manner of over-achievers. What they’re not producing anymore are citizens. And it’s liberalism that pays the price.
It is difficult to pick out just one quote:
This hyperindividualism of “teach the child, not the subject” came into American schooling only gradually in the early twentieth century, taking over completely only in the 1950s and ’60s. It was a fundamental shift. Current political correctness in education is an updated variation on the theme of individualism. The social version of “teach the child, not the subject” became “respect the home ethnicity of the child; don’t impose an Anglo culture that is alien to his or her background and personality.” And the psychological version of individualism became: “Adjust the subject matters to the child’s interests and abilities.” Both multiculturalism and multiple-intelligence theory caught on like wildfire in recent decades. More recently, one’s individuality has become conceived through “intersectionality.” A child is to be understood as an intersection of multiple essential groups and tribes—“Hispanic and gay,” for example—not as an “American,” which is assumed to be a nonessential trait...
Please read his essay,
