James Chastek, Cultural value endoxes

A good piece regarding endoxa. When it comes to the discussion of morality in high schools and colleges, traditional values are questioned, but modern ones (especially modern rights) are not -- evidence that liberalism is just another tradition despite its pretense to the contrary? When I was in high school, I found that the students were the ones who were questioning received attitudes, while the teachers would act as "neutral" moderators, doing nothing to defend tradition or to lead the "liberated" students to question their own values. There is one classmate in particular who annoyed me greatly with his smart-ass attitude. To this day I have no inclination to talk to him. (Or friend him on Facebook.)

One can see this liberal bias against endoxa (or their rejection by those who desire license) clearly with respect to morality. It seems to happen less with respect to the speculative sciences. However, a similar critique can be made of professional educators. It may be part of the standard narrative that what was believed in the past has been rendered obsolete or false through new discoveries; but for what cannot be immediately be verified, even these supposed new "truths" are taken as assumptions, rather than proved. No attempt is usually made to show why someone reasonable might hold to those beliefs in the past.

People are critical of what they have rejected, but they do not undertake to examine their own beliefs in the same way. Is that close-mindedness? It is certainly proud ignorance to claim that one is "open-minded" or "critical" when one is not really so.