the problem with...

Right leaning people want to claim that university students are being indoctrinated with 'woke' ideology, but I think sometimes they are misunderstanding what's actually happening in education. When you study English for example, you learn about literary theory, which encompasses a whole range of approaches, including those that conservatives find objectionable. You learn about post-modernism, post-colonial theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminist theory, the Marxist approach, etc. 

For me, it was really fascinating and liberating. I learnt that there were a lot of different ways of understanding literature, which was really refreshing because it was different from High School. English was my worst subject in High School. I realize now that we were taught a certain approach as if it was the only approach - that's just how you do English. Then, at uni, I learnt about all of these different approaches which showed me that I can take my own approach. 

It's about ideas not ideology. Learning about post-structuralism is not going to make me a nihilist or a moral relativist. Learning about Marxist theory is not going to convince me to be a Marxist. Learning about post-colonial theory did not make me want to be an activist and dismantle the empire. It just made me think about language and literature and read more, research more and write essays. 

The problem that I have with books like, Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice and generally books that delineate the Christian approach to things like post-modernism, is that they want to tell me what to think, and they want to insist on it. They make it into a moral question. They don't invite me to actually think. They say that if I am a Christian, I can't agree with anything about post-modernism. The problem is that they are boring and post-modernism is fascinating. And their representation of post-modernism or any other theoretical framework that they don't like is made up of caricatures, generalizations and unwarranted assumptions. 

But it works both ways, also. There are real problems that conservatives are identifying. I think the left is as misguided and wrong headed as the right is at times, but they also both have a worthwhile contribution to make. One side demonizes the other side all the time, about everything. The other side are liars and purveyors of hate. Both sides say that about the other, and I think that extreme polarization is one of the main problems we have to deal with.