Tuesday 19 August 2008

Frank Furedi: Spell it like it is

As a self-styled pedagogue I found this article by Frank Furedi so refreshing and encouraging on so many levels. The quote is from a longer piece that anyone who cares about education and truth really should read

Contemporary cultural life has become estranged from the idea of Truth with a capital T. In academia, social scientists never tire of informing students that there are no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. Instead of the truth, people are exhorted to accept different perspectives as representing many truths.

The demotion of the status of truth calls into question the purpose of gaining knowledge. Celebrating variant truths, like variant spellings, is presented as a pluralistic gesture of tolerance. In fact it represents a reluctance to take education and its ideas seriously. And not surprisingly, those who do not take ideas seriously are also not very worried about how they are spelled.

Frank Furedi: Spell it like it is

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