College Didn’t Create Today’s Social Justice Warriors; Middle and High School Did.
And it’s because schools teach skills instead of content.
In a nutshell, 30 years ago we started focusing on skills in primary and secondary schools. Which left a void, because you can’t teach any skill without content. Hammering nails is a skill. Building a house is content. So is making cabinets and chairs. Hammering nails is something everyone can learn; the same can’t be said of making a decent chair.
But you can’t just teach people how to hammer nails any more than you can simply teach kids how to read and count. They’ve got to read and count something. Which isn’t to say we haven’t tried. The attempt to teach counting as a skill is the driving force behind every kid needing to take academic math courses like calculus in order to graduate. Trying to teach reading only as a skill has produced generations of Social Justice Warriors.
Prioritizing skills began reasonably enough as education reform, because most problems stem from content. How does an education system leave ‘no child behind’ if aspects of education related to content guarantee leaving some behind? How does a nation create accountability in its entire curriculum if every kid is unique? How do we test reading and math if every kid reads something…
