Matthew Yglesias on “Critical Race Theory and Actual Education”

 Matthew Yglesias, of slowboring dot com, quotes a bad educational idea associated with the antiliberal left.

“Valuing “written communication over other forms,” [Glenn Singleton] told me, is “a hallmark of whiteness,” which leads to the denigration of Black children in school. Another “hallmark” is “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect.””

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1. Implying that something would be wrong with “blackness” would be racist. Singleton’s suggestion that “whiteness” is bad reveals a common double standard of those with his political outlook.

2. Opposing “written communication” is anti-intellectual.

3. The reason skyscrapers don’t fall down; and the wings didn’t break off your airliner during turbulence, is that those who designed them engaged in “linear thinking.” (Anyway, science is much more than linear thinking: It’s Discovery and Demonstration. Newton’s apple: Discovery. Newton’s phenomenal conceptual analysis, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica: Demonstration via linear thinking.) I was pissed off when the hippies whined about linear thinking, and am flat out offended that Singleton carries their stupidity into the 21st century.

A hallmark of those who, unlike Singleton, are not delusional, is that they get “cause and effect.”

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Yglesias concludes: “If we stigmatize tests because they tell us bad news about racial gaps in academic achievement and then flood the zone with questionable initiatives whose efficacy we refuse to even try to measure, bad things are going to happen to the country.”

On growing up in a parsonage and coming to think that all the theologies seem to be stuck in the Bronze Age

Before modern democratic societies, rulership was the model of a head of state, and this influenced the concept of God:

“Truth stands independently of social opinion.” - Robert Pirsig

The person who realizes this will march to the sound of a different drummer.

In Matthew 19, Mark 10, and also in Luke, the rich young ruler appears, wanting to join Jesus’ movement: “And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do … ?” The young ruler says he has kept the commandments: “All these I have kept from my youth up.”

“Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich.”

This should be understood in context. This is not against wealth as such. But for the “very rich” man, more than keeping the commandments, more than assuring agreement with “the community,” was needed. He had to give up what mattered so much that it got in the way.

And he couldn’t. The man got personally tailored advice from Jesus of Nazareth himself, and rejected it, because he valued something else more.

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Rulership was considered legitimate in the time of Jesus of Nazareth, but not in ours:

I’m a PK. Church twice on Sunday and once in the middle of the week. Wonderful KJV quotes pop up as I go about life.

Bill Gates lives in my area. Pursuing his interest in software development, he became a multimillionaire in his twenties. ”I have essentially infinite money,” he marveled.

In the first three, “synoptic,” gospels there is a man Protestants call the rich young ruler, a person of lands and estates and many servants. The rich young ruler shows up when he comes to barefoot Jesus of Nazareth and says he wants to join the movement.

But it struck me, Bill Gates, the equivalent in our society, would not be called a rich young ruler.

We don’t do that.

The mayor is not our ruler, the county executive is not our ruler, the governor is not our ruler, the president is not our ruler.

When the flying saucer lands, the creature inside doesn’t say, Take me to your ruler. It says, Take me to your leader.

Something became apparent that I’ve never seen written down: Rulership is illegitimate in our society. In a democracy, no one is subject to the will of another. We are governed, not ruled.

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The founder of Christianity used “father” to refer to God in the way the scriptures he read did not, except in the Psalms:

Quoting from memory, “If an earthly father’s child asks for bread, will he give him a stone? How much more will your Heavenly Father reward you?”

I once asked a religious person why so many worshippers are attracted to the idea of a Jealous God, a God of Wrath. They answered that God is so great he gets to do whatever he wants to do.

But Jesus, above, implied that divine greatness required greater kindness. I, Preacher’s Kid that I am, hold that the Father God of Jesus, above, is kind, generous, loving, and good.

After all, a father is a parent, just as many of us are parents. We know that normally parents don’t want their children to worship them; so God, being ego-secure, does not want to be worshipped (although what he stands for should be worshipped). We know that when parents rule their children or impose their will on them they are using them; much less will God’s greatness, or his love, allow him to do this.

But, you say, Jealous God and God of Wrath are scriptural. So are the passages in early Leviticus which say how to treat women when they are unclean, or which say the Israelites may enslave Philistines but not each other. “Rightly dividing the word of truth” (Second Timothy 2:15) tells us that the scriptures were a work in progress: “Whatsoever things are true … honest … just … if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:6-9)

The truest passages of scripture are those which celebrate lovingkindness. Which constitute the preamble to democratic society.

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These out of date theologies lead worshippers astray:

At a national faith gathering, the last leader of this nation, following a prayer for love, kindness, and turning the other cheek, said he didn’t particularly go along with that. That was acceptable to many millions of people of faith who, under the Bronze Age theologies of rulership, do not remotely follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

We live in a democracy which, as I understand it, grew out of Jesus of Nazareth’s teaching of love, cooperation, and altruism. The world cries out for the theologies to come into the age of Jesus’ Peaceable Kingdom.