You, it sounds like, are consequentialist with respect to childhood innocence, because it leads to a stable home life.

Not I qua me; in #58 I was just hypothesizing. (I think anyone who goes on overmuch about preserving the “innocence” of children has disconnected from what being a child actually means, what kids say and do, etc. In any form beyond the self-evidently practical, “protecting the innocence of children” requires sustaining a notion of childhood that’s as naive as the pastoral ideal.)

It is also a kind of argument that hard-line right-wingers like Ann Coulter seem to consider “liberal” (by which they mean “social1st”)—though possibly because they automatically assume all college professors are liberals. So, in the US, to avoid the wrath of the Coulters et al., social conservatives need to continually bash that kind of argument.

It is also a kind of argument that hard-line right-wingers like Ann Coulter seem to consider “liberal” (by which they mean “socialist”)—though possibly because they automatically assume all college professors are liberals. So, in the US, to avoid the wrath of the Coulters et al., social conservatives need to continually bash that kind of argument.

Come to think of it, I guess “we should do/prohibit X, even though it results in problematic consequences, because it upholds a principle of What Ought To Be” is anti-consequentialist to the core. But social conservatives might dispute just how problematic the allegedly problematic consequences are.

Uy. The trouble is (I think), consequentialism is a methodology (a method for establishing what’s morally wrong) which could be employed by someone of any general political ideology (depending on what normative valuate one assignes to the consequences perceived as likely).

I’m not sure how to categorize Neil Postman’s politics. In particular, it seems to me most political agendas are silent on, say, “free play”—I’m having a hard time thinking of a political perspective which implies a strong stance on the issue. (Maybe libertarianism?) Likewise with the other characteristics for which Postman adamantly advocates.

I read Neil Postman for the same reason I enthusiastically read Thomas Geoghegan and half-grudgingly read Malcolm Gladwell and watch Michael Moore films—more interested in the personality who produced the work and shines through it than I am in the merit of the content (unconvincing) or the rigor of any supporting research and arguments (questionable/sloppy).

As with ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, ‘libertarian’, I think left and right have to be decomposed into (at least) two conceptually independent elements – the personal (confusingly also called social in some cases) and the economic. I know that’s not exactly insight of the year, but failure to do so probably gets the prize for biggest single cause of confusion/crosstalk in informal discussions of political philosophy. I don’t know about Postman in particular.

If, as Tom H. and Salient seem to suggest, Postman’s view seems to tend conservative, and yet he is, I think, considered left-wing or radical, and indeed as an early adopter of social constructionist theories would also seem to be left-leaning or radical—how could we explain this? Everybody is somewhat conservative in at least some aspects of their lives, that is one explanation.

Hm. I’d argue the exact opposite: that all social-conservative policy advocacy boils down to a form of consequentialism, something to the effect of (and this is going to be loose and botched in such a draft attempt) We should do X, because it will result in more stable safe family environments.

I may find the understanding of “stable safe family environment” envisioned and advocated by social conservatives disagreeable, but the italicized argument seems to me to be both consequentialist and reflective of their arguments.

Probably “the reason” is a bit strong; it doesn’t seem to me that Postman advocates a hard-line provision model.

The more radical view would be that childhood goods should be preserved for their own sakes, and at the expense of what at other times in life would be significant goods, even if forgoing those goods doesn’t have bad effects later on.

I’m not sure that’s all that radical. It sounds like the impartialist perspective in a nutshell, which I’ve seen deployed most often by social conservatives—e.g. “innocence” is the kind of childhood good that shouldn’t just be preserved for its own sake, but should be preserved even to the detriment of adult life. Thus, we should prohibit sex education in schools even if it would help children grow into healthy adults.

Maybe it’s more correct to say the impartialism is a convenient ideology to temporarily adopt when making social-conservative arguments against specific educational goals. I doubt social conservatives sustain impartialism comprehensively; it renders “spare the rod, spoil the child” nonsensical.

The related idea that children have rights that should be preserved, regardless of whether it matters to their adult well-being, is implicit in the UN Convention on children’s rights (see Article 31, Article 9).

For reasons independent to the topic of this post, Article 29 is particularly interesting. To date, the U.S. has not ratified that Convention, and it’s my understanding that Article 29 is the chief cause for controversy (which I learned to my chagrin & embarrassment when I made what I thought would be a game-set-match reference to Article 29 while doing some advocacy work; it’s a good thing I’m doing small-potatoes stuff).

Laura Purdy writes interesting things about these legal issues.
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A different question – does it make sense to mentally categorize Neil Postman in the same field of work as Malcolm Gladwell?

Maybe that’s the way most pursuits of (2) go, but it’s clear from the minimal description of (2) that they needn’t all go like that; not every metaphysical claim proceeds via a reduction to epistemology. (Or maybe they all do, but then this particular reduction is no worse off than those carried out elsewhere.) That this thing didn’t exist until we began thinking in such and such a way is, anyway, not obviously an epistemological claim.

But if Postman has the Freudian-type view you suggest, isn’t he back to treating the goods of childhood as means to adult goods, i.e. the reason you need to have goods like innocence in childhood is that they’re necessary for mature goods later on, like a healthy adult emotional life? The more radical view would be that childhood goods should be preserved for their own sakes, and at the expense of what at other times in life would be significant goods, even if forgoing those goods doesn’t have bad effects later on. But maybe this is the kind of thing it’s unrealistic to expect Postman to have clear views on.

One major relevant cultural shift since Victorian times has been the development of female sport. Gymnastics and athletics for women effectively did not exist before the twentieth century, tennis-playing was pretty unathletic, etc. Given that it seems to be female sports where adolescents are most successful, that in itself would make a big difference to numbers of parents who might consider training their children.