Matt Micciche, Head of School
Friends School of Baltimore
The world needs what our children can do.

Monday, May 16, 2016

The Dangers of Liberal Intolerance

Nicholas Kristoff's op-ed article, "A Confession of Liberal Intolerance" from Sunday, May 8, was surprising in its source (Kristoff is a proud liberal) and its message (that intolerance - seemingly the antithesis of all that progressives stand for - is a powerful presence in liberal spheres).  He takes particular aim in his column at the delegitimization of conservative views, and those who hold them, on college campuses.  If we are honest with ourselves, we must acknowledge that a similar ostracization has come to predominate in secondary schools, a tendency that we here at Friends have hardly been immune to.  In describing the threat that the writing off of any group of people poses to society as a whole, Kristoff states that,
The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren’t at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.

I've always thought that Walt Whitman's words from Song of Myself capture the ultimate goals of a first-class education - “You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, you shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.”  For all who aspire to this outcome for their students, Kristoff's warning is an important and a timely one.  It has been much-noted in recent years that the proliferation of media has allowed and encouraged people of all political stripes to surround themselves by news and analysis that merely affirms their pre-existing views.  In such an environment, it becomes all the more important that our schools be one of the places where divergent viewpoints are shared, honored, and threshed.  

In his article, Kristoff quotes Jonathan Haidt, a New York University professor who advocates for better ideological balance on college campuses.
'Universities are unlike other institutions in that they absolutely require that people challenge each other so that the truth can emerge from limited, biased, flawed individuals,' he says. 'If they lose intellectual diversity, or if they develop norms of ‘safety’ that trump challenge, they die. And this is what has been happening since the 1990s.'
If we want to provide the kind of education that will prepare our students to be informed and engaged citizens, we must take the threat of homogenous thought seriously, and commit ourselves to cultivating an environment where intellectual diversity is given the same weight as the other aspects of diversity that we have so rightly and passionately sought to nurture.