Which part of "copying homework assignments is wrong" don't you understand?

Are the following true?

— Copying homework assignments is wrong.
— Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.
— All men are created equal.

You are perhaps thinking, "of course these are true.  Is there a catch?"

Don't overthink this.  Are those three statements true?

I think they are true. I believe them to be true.

What if I were told that those are merely my opinions?  I will get pissed off.  Don't tell me that copying homework is ok.  And, dammit, to curse in school is one f*ing bad behavior!  Ok, I will grant you this much--the third sentence suggests gender issues, which we can then modify to "all humans are created equal."

Happy now?

Don't be.

In each case, the worksheets categorize these claims as opinions. The explanation on offer is that each of these claims is a value claim and value claims are not facts. This is repeated ad nauseum: any claim with good, right, wrong, etc. is not a fact.
In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.

Yes, join me in yelling out "WTF!"

All that was from this NY Times piece, in which the author--a philosophy professor--writes:

When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:
Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.
Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Finally, it all makes sense.  Now I am beginning to understand why some students over the years have responded with "well, that's your opinion."  Some of these students think that there are no absolutes and everything is relative and everything is merely a personal opinion.  And that's even before they get indoctrinated into the postmodernism/post-structuralism bullshit, right Professor Camille Paglia?

Post-structuralism is a system of literary and social analysis that flared up and vanished in France in the 1960s but that became anachronistically entrenched in British and American academe from the 1970s on. Based on the outmoded linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and promoted by the idolized Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault, it absurdly asserts that we experience or process reality only through language and that, because language is inherently unstable, nothing can be known. By undermining meaning, history and personal will, post-structuralism has done incalculable damage to education and contemporary thought. It is a laborious, circuitously self-referential gimmick that always ends up with the same monotonous result. ... Post-structuralism has destroyed two generations of graduate students, who were forced to mouth its ugly jargon and empty platitudes for their foolish faculty elders. And the end result is that humanities departments everywhere, having abandoned their proper mission of defending and celebrating art, have become humiliatingly marginalized in both reputation and impact.

Because, that's what the K-12 system tells them?  Back to the philosopher:

 If it’s not true that it’s wrong to murder a cartoonist with whom one disagrees, then how can we be outraged? If there are no truths about what is good or valuable or right, how can we prosecute people for crimes against humanity? If it’s not true that all humans are created equal, then why vote for any political system that doesn’t benefit you over others?

Exactly!

 Facts are things that are true. Opinions are things we believe. Some of our beliefs are true. Others are not. Some of our beliefs are backed by evidence. Others are not. Value claims are like any other claims: either true or false, evidenced or not. The hard work lies not in recognizing that at least some moral claims are true but in carefully thinking through our evidence for which of the many competing moral claims is correct. That’s a hard thing to do. But we can’t sidestep the responsibilities that come with being human just because it’s hard.
That would be wrong.

In my opinion, that is so true!  

Making a difference clearly lies in the bag

For The Register-Guard
Published: August 4, 2008 12:00AM

Recently, I have pre-empted the “paper or plastic” question at our neighborhood Market of Choice grocery because of the reusable shopping bag I bring with me.

I suppose I am resuming this practice after suspending it for quite a few years. When I was growing up in India, buying groceries and produce meant that we walked to the nearby shop. We had a bag or two at home that were referred to as the “grocery bag” — not too big, not too small, just the right size to carry vegetables and groceries. Vegetables and fruits would get mixed up because there were no plastic bags to keep them separate, and we would sort them out at home.

After coming to the United States, I saved the bags given away as mementos at conferences and took them to India, because my parents thought they were just the right size for their shopping.

India was very different then. It had not become the outsourcing and tech-support capital of the world. In a way, the shopping bag captures that change. Beginning in the early 1990s, as India eased government restrictions on economic activities, the seemingly pedestrian activity of taking a bag from home to the store changed almost instantaneously.

I noticed during my visits to India that even the mango seller on the sidewalk had thin plastic bags for his wonderfully juicy mangoes. The vegetable lady bagged potatoes separately from the tomatoes, and these small bags were then dropped into larger plastic bags.

And on more recent trips I was blown away by the American-style grocery stores, where I could walk down the aisles and pick up what I wanted. And yes, at the checkout counter all these purchases are dropped into convenient plastic bags. No more designated “grocery bags” at homes.

On the other side of the world, here in the United States, we are slowly beginning to understand that our way of life, which includes bags and bags of stuff, might not be compatible with a sustainable planet. The plastic bag itself is more than an environmental nuisance. In a way that is more than symbolic, the use of plastic bags represents the global environmental challenge.

For many decades, we in the United States provided the yardsticks for measuring what it meant to be a developed and rich country. Going to mega-stores where there are umpteen varieties of everything, carting off the purchased goods in the trunk of a car, and then coming home and unloading the plastic shopping bags are scenes we all know too well. It is no surprise that people in India, too, want to enjoy the material life that we have considered as an inalienable right in the pursuit of happiness.

It is easy to forget that it has barely been a generation since India’s economy took off. Yet there is enormous pressure — externally, in particular — to change course and care for the environment.

It’s no wonder, then, that even the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, R.K. Pachauri, has asked developed countries to “get off the backs of India and China.” He went on to say that the rich countries should assist countries such as India move to a path of sustainable development that will have lesser impacts on the environment.

Yet even many people in India beat me in getting (back) into taking reusable grocery bags to the store. A few states in India actively are discouraging the use of plastic shopping bags. The city of Mumbai attempted a complete ban on these bags, but it apparently failed because of pressure from the plastics industry.

While many in India protest being unfairly blamed for the global environmental crisis, their constructive responses, given their level of economic development, is impressive.

Well, I am returning to my old ways of taking my own reusable bag to the grocery store. Of course, the carbon footprint from my next trip to India will wipe out the small gains that result from taking my geographers’ conference bag to the store.

But, hey, one guilt trip at a time, please!

Copyright © 2008 — The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA