It’s no secret that America’s students are struggling. The latest Nation’s Report Cards have not been flattering, with average scores in both math and reading declining over recent years.

It’s also no secret that pandemic restrictions have only exacerbated the learning decline in the U.S. However, scores have been falling since before the pandemic, signaling that there are more systemic problems holding back young people. In fact, this educational decline comes from a deeper philosophical brokenness about the notion of truth itself.

This rejection of objective truth came first in the upper reaches of academia. Cultural critics like psychologist Jordan Peterson highlight how postmodernism is running through our institutions. Peterson sees the governing philosophy of our times as a toxic brew of postmodernism and Marxism.

Postmodernism adopts the idea that, since people can interpret the world in innumerable ways, there is no correct, orthodox manner of interpretation. Compare this to the traditional Judeo-Christian West, which has maintained belief in one orthodox truth—a truth that shows other interpretations of the world to be wrong. Jesus, for instance, explicitly said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

Marxism expands on postmodernism’s rejection of truth by politicizing it. Marxism judges interpretations of reality as limiting frameworks imposed by the ruling class on marginalized people, and it demands the dissolution of hegemonic structures that justify the status quo.

The combination of postmodernism and Marxism emerges in the trinity of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity asserts that no one’s interpretation of reality is correct. Equity seeks to dissolve dominant interpretations of truth that (reportedly) marginalize certain groups, so as to redistribute benefits in society. Inclusion demands the recognition of perspectives opposite our own, as they allegedly have an equal claim to truth.

Yet once truth has become a set of equally viable interpretations, with no exclusive claim from any one system, genuine education cannot take place. Any attempt to seek truth—an enterprise surely central to education—is doomed to failure from the beginning because the “truth” it seeks is only perspectival. Claiming one has “truth” displays power that “marginalizes” different perspectives.

One of the major philosophical salvos that led to this postmodern understanding of truth is the notion of a language game (Sprachspiel) developed by Ludgwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein denied that words have a simple one-to-one correspondence to things in reality. Rather, he said, words are ambiguous, holding meanings that depend on a given context. Language is not some disembodied mirror reflecting reality; instead, it is like a toolbox with many different purposes (for example, we can make an assertion, raise a question, or issue a command). Given the variable uses of language, we cannot establish any simple correspondence between words and things.

The idea of a language game, within which a word has a certain meaning unique to a context, is a precursor to the postmodern critique of objective truth. Instead of one reality being bound to an orthodox interpretation that is uniquely true, postmodernism gives us an ambiguous reality yielding an infinite array of equally viable narratives. These narratives, like words, are true only within a certain context. Objective truth is gone.

This idea is devastating to a traditional educational structure: If education is supposed to lead a pupil to truth, denying the boundaries between truth and falsehood strips learning of any meaningful purpose. Yet the necessary idea of a single, absolute truth—a transcendent perspective—contradicts DEI. Respecting diversity means validating the interpretation of another group, not upholding one’s own as absolute.

The trinity of DEI undermines the traditional quest of classical education to find the essences of things. For the great thinkers of ancient Greece, the central questions about reality were not postmodern or inclusivist (such as, “How do you interpret reality?” or “What does this mean to you?”). Instead, they dealt with the essence of the thing (the to ti esti, or a thing’s “what it is”). The essence of thing is intrinsic and definitive, and it supports traditional conceptions of truth.

However, there cannot be essences in the DEI regime because to claim an objective essence would be to marginalize those who do not recognize that essence. And so the project of education—the seeking of essences—never begins.

—

Image credit: Pexels