(Guest post by Greg Forster)
EdChoice has published Part 4 of my series on The Next Accountability, in which I argue that an understanding of human nature and the American experiment in freedom and diversity is needed to ground a new approach to education in a pluralistic society:
The whole beauty and glory of America is that it seeks to respect differences and protect people’s freedoms and rights without giving up this shared life. Any idiot could have created a plan for a pluralistic society in which people with different views were kept in separate cultural compartments that didn’t share a common civic identity, marketplace and justice system. In fact, such systems are not uncommon in global history. What took a world-historical level of genius (and audacity!) was to construct a social order in which diverse people would share all these things, while remaining diverse.
To create new accountability systems, we must figure out how schools fit into this tapestry of pluralistic community. Schools are educating students who come from this unique social environment, and who will, upon graduation, go out into it to live the lives schools are preparing them for.
At a time when our choice seems to be globalist technocracy or tribalistic nationalism, a recovery of this vision is more needed than ever.
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