Maggie's Farm

RE Why I am leaving a great career in public education

“I knew that many of my colleagues were liberal Democrats and that was not a problem for me. In 1998, despite our political differences, my colleagues and I had some shared values. In particular, these values included a respect for school authority, including our school resource officers (police officers assigned to the high school building I work at), a strong belief in free speech, an insistence on academic freedom, teaching students critical thinking skills, and most importantly -- our shared belief in a colorblind society.”

It's difficult to find the solution to a problem when you misdiagnose the problem. I believe the author has misdiagnosed the problem when he states that he and his colleagues had “some shared values”.

I suggest that many people don’t hold any values dear. Perhaps most people hold no values, at least in some circles. What they value is to be accepted by their in-group. When their group changes direction, so do they.

In my view, most of the authors colleagues likely never held any values and so never changed their values. In 1998 they presented themselves as holding the values that were popular to their in-group in 1998. And in 2021, they do the same. Their actual underlying values either don’t exist or are unknowable to the author. And if some coworkers do in fact hold similar values, they will never be expresses as they are now unpopular.

I believe this is an important reason why productive conversation is so rare when it involves values.

When people hold no values, they can’t provide a reasoned argument in support of those values. They can communicate only in talking points. And such people can’t be persuaded via evidence and argument into changing their views or values, again because they hold no values. They view themselves as a part of some group and so accept as values the views presented by that group. If that group reverses direction overnight, then so do they.