5. Education

Strict Father morality comes with a principle of self-defense: it is the highest moral calling to defend the moral system itself from attack. The very first category of conservative moral action includes acts of promoting and defending conservative morality. Conservatives’ system of values under attack– from feminism, the gay rights movement, the ecological movement, the sexual revolution, multiculturalism, and many more manifestations of Nurturant Parent morality.

A great deal of government support for education is in the form of social programs to help disadvantaged students, and an important charge of the Department of Education. Since conservatives see social programs in general as immoral, a quick way to get rid of all social programs in education is simply to abolish the Department of Education and stop funding the programs.

Department of Education makes research on ecology, on the heritage of minority groups, on worthy but neglected minority and female figures in history, on the role of American corporations in the exploitation of third-world countries, on the history of unions, on unspeakable things done by the American government and by figures formerly considered heroes, on the value systems of other cultures, on the history of homosexuality, and much more that does not sit well with Strict Father morality and the politics that flows out of it.

Getting rid of the National Endowment for the Humanities will eliminate a major source of funding research that fits a conservative moral and political agenda and the conservative writing of history.

National educational standards are also set by the Department of Education. These standards include things that conservatives don’t want to be taught, especially national standards for the teaching of history.

The privatization of education means that conservatives can set up their own schools (private) in which their children will not have to learn about anything that might be inconsistent with conservative morality and politics. It would also mean a move away from the integration of schools, which means that the children of conservatives would not have to encounter students from different subcultures with different values. School vouchers (ваучеры, которые позволяют не платить налог за обучение государству, если твой ребенок ходит в приватную, а не в публичную) would make privatization that much easier.

From the persepctive of Nurturant Parent morality, the issue of education looks very different. Multiculturalism, feminism, gay rights, and the ecology movement are seen, like the civil rights movement, as being great advances – moral advances– in American culture and civilization. And doing so requires teaching the history of what made them advances, that is, the history of past abuses sanctioned and abetted by major forces in American society and by the government itself. That is not putting down America.

Much of the history of progress in America is the history of what has been made possible through the progressive extension of nurturant morality: progress in equal treatment, progress in opportunities for education and other forms of self-development, progress in health care, progress in humane working conditions, progress in the development of knowledge, and so on. But there is a dark side of American history from this perspective as well, and it too must be told: the mass murder of Native Americans and the near extinction of their culture, slavery, the brutalization of factory workers, and the discrimination against women, nonwhites, Jews, immigrants, and gays. So, advocates of Strict Father morality do not see all these changes as advances; they see many of them as immoral, backward steps.

Many elementary school teachers are women, often nurturant mothers, so nurturant they want to nurture other people's children. That is why conservatives are attacking the infrastructure of public education in the country. They are up against an infrastructure full of nurturers. Conservative Christians, concerned that public schools teach their children immoral ideas, have been involved in "home-schooling" for years. In addition, many parents who want to insulate their children from such ideas and can afford it have been setting up private schools. Such parents have fought for a school voucher system.

THE ISSUE OF STANDARDS

Conservatives argue that the social problems that afflict schools are the result of permissive parenting and liberal social policies and can be solved by adopting a Strict Father model of the family, conservative political policies, and using private enterprise and competition to produce high-quality schools.

Teach conservative morality and the conservative notion of character, starting with self-discipline; this is called traditional morality. Make students work hard. Use a system of rewards and punishments: grade seriously and rigorously and fail people who deserve to fail. If there is going to be an elite, it should be an elite of talent, hard work, and achievement. Let those factors determine success. If students fail, they have to take responsibility for their failure, and either do better next time or go through life as failures.

Nurturant Parent morality also carries with it the notion of standards. Discipline grows out of being raised in a responsibility to be empathetic and caring to those around you. Discipline is a no-nonsense matter: people you care about depend on you. Learning to cooperate and work with others and meet their standards is essential, and socialization is crucial to this. One of the goals of a nurturance-based moral system is the maximal self-development of each person, so that each individual can feel the deep satisfaction that comes from doing well something that is important to him.

In the Nurturant Parent approach to education, the ability to nurture successfully requires honest inquiry; we must know ourselves and our history, not only the bright side, but more importantly, we must know the dark side of America. We must learn the dark side partly so that we will not repeat it, partly so that we can appreciate progress and what is good about. But Strict Father morality is against teaching dark sides of America.

Art

For Strict Father morality art serves a moral purpose, it builds moral strength and character or displays moral modes of life. This is morally correct art.

In Strict Father morality, art can also be something beautiful, appreciated for its craftsmanship, or otherwise enjoyable or uplifting. From this perspective, art is a form of wholesome, uplifting entertainment, and many newspapers and magazines include reports of art in their entertainment sections. As entertainment, art is not in itself a serious enterprise of social importance – it doesn't go in the public affairs section of the newspaper or in the section with science or business.

Art, as a source of pleasure or entertainment, also makes sense as a commodity, something produced that plays a role in the economic system. We constantly see news stories about how much a work of art has been sold for( in Exhibitions, Auctions)

Moreover, good art, as a source of pleasure and/or inspiration as well as a solid investment, becomes a symbol of success. And as a good investment, it is a measure of your ability to make such an investment. That is why owning an original masterpiece is a symbol of success. The value of art, in Strict Father morality, lies either in its moral value, its entertainment value, its economic value, or its value as a success symbol – a sign of belonging to an elite.

The best known conservative art journal is the New Criterion, edited by Hilton Kramer, former art editor of the New York Times. The purpose of the journal is to impose and uphold standards for "worthwhile" art. It also has the purpose of criticizing what it sees as immoral, unbeautiful, unskillful, unentertaining, or of no lasting value. The best art is seen as moral, beautiful, uplifting, and lasting.

Nurturant Parent morality also motivates various views of art. As a moral system, it approves of art with a moral purpose, art that serves Nurturant Parent morality, art with the right kind of social message. In this way, it is like Strict Father morality, only the message is different.

The first is art with a liberal message. The second is art within a liberal artistic tradition. The liberal tradition in art promotes what is questioning and probing, that forces one to look at the dark side of life and won't allow denial, that forces one to face unpleasant truths and leads one to undergo self-exploration and reevaluation. Considerations of empathy, which are central to nurturance, lead to an art of exploring the other – other cultures, other subcultures, unusual people or places or events. Part of this impulse is multicultural art, which places us into another worldview. The application of nurturance to art also leads naturally to art as a form of healing, perhaps as a self-expressive therapy for the artist, perhaps as a form of healing for the culture.

Conservatives, not surprisingly, hate morally correct liberal art and prefer morally correct conservative art. That is, they hate art promoting feminism, gay rights, multiculturalism, government programs, and so on. Conservatives also hate art that probes the dark side of American life and American history and forces us to confront the not-very-nice facts about our country, as well as art concerning deep conflicts within our culture.

Art in America is seen from a moral perspective. It can be seen as serving a moral system, as in morally correct art, or it can be seen as serving some function within a moral system – a pleasurable reward, a commodity, a sign of success, a form of questioning, an exploration of perception, a mode of healing.