1/ Why the problem of today’s woke cancel culture starts in Kindergarten, using @jonhaidt’s book The Righteous Mind to illustrate.

2/ Haidt waits until 3/4 of the way through his book on morality to offer his definition of morality, saying that the foundational knowledge contained in the preceding chapters was necessary for the reader to be able to make sense of his definition.

3/ Take that idea and extend it to the education system as a whole. Its purpose, its reason for existence, is to provide the foundational knowledge necessary for citizens to understand and intelligently participate in liberal democracy.

4/ But it doesn’t do that. Instead, it provides the foundational knowledge necessary to be a cancel culture Wokeist. Allan Bloom identified this problem in 1987. He didn’t call it Wokeism. He called it the educational theory of Openness. But the problem in essence is the same.

5/ Natalie Wexler describes the deleterious long-term effects of the Openness Theory of Education in her book The Knowledge Gap.

6/ This is why, I suggest, that @jonhaidt’s take on why *universities* must choose between the Telos of Truth and the Telos of Social justice outlined in @HdxAcademy’s newest podcast is far too little, far too late. https://heterodoxacademy.org/podcast/why-universities-must-choose-one-telos-truth-or-social-justice/

7/ It’s *also* why i think engaging the wokeists who seek to implement the Telos of Social Justice in K-12 education on the merits of their arguments as @PamelaParesky does in this thread is a losing proposition before it even starts. https://twitter.com/pamelaparesky/status/1354519788547137538

8/ The reason it’s a losing proposition is because it plays the wokeists game by their rules on their playing field. recalling Hume, if we engage with their arguments under the misguided assumption that reason can overpower the passions then we’ve already lost.

9/ Instead, what we *SHOULD* be doing is developing curricula and syllabi for every year of K-12 education based on the Telos of Truth, rather than on the Telos of Social Justice as the wokeists do, and working to get them adopted by schools.

10/ Suggesting that universities need to choose between The Telos of Truth and The Telos of Social Justice is like suggesting that autopsies are health care. It addresses the problem long LONG after the damage has already been done.

No. The choice belongs in K-12 EDU.

11/ Jonathan Haidt is the professor of ethical systems at NYU. He has a website dedicated to improving the ethics of businesses. https://www.ethicalsystems.org/ 

12/ I suggest that one of the most *UN*Ethical systems in today’s world is the Education System, and it is toward that system that the work of Ethical Systems, and of Heterodox Academy as well, should focus the majority of their efforts.

People in glass houses...