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Un-Teaching Personal Responsibility

2 pointsby PredictorYalmost 7 years ago

1 comment

bmpafaalmost 7 years ago
I find this &quot;personal responsibility&quot; narrative interesting (and, full disclosure: also bullshit), since it reminds me of sports discussions--everyone has a strong opinions, they&#x27;re nearly all un-falsifiable, and they almost always appeal to notions that no one disagrees with.<p>i.e., no one actually thinks that actions ought not have consequences. Arne Duncan et al weren&#x27;t trying to &#x27;un-teach discipline&#x27; or whatever, they were trying to address secondary problems around discipline.<p>I love Google&#x27;s ngram viewer for context here. Use of the phrase &quot;personal responsibility&quot; _skyrocketed_ around the late 80s[1], more or less matching the rise of the right-wing &quot;bootstraps&quot; narrative.<p>During the period covered in the ngram viewer (late 80s to 2000), the number of people in American prisons more than doubled[2]. In fact, it continued to rise precipitously until--you guessed it--circa 2008, where it finally plateaued (after more than tripling since 1988).<p>So, I dunno, maybe this is my bleeding heart talking, but if &quot;unteaching personal responsibility&quot; means &quot;putting fewer people in prison,&quot; sign me up for the next lesson.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;ngrams&#x2F;graph?content=%22personal+responsibility%22&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2000&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20personal%20responsibility%20%22%3B%2Cc0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;books.google.com&#x2F;ngrams&#x2F;graph?content=%22personal+re...</a><p>2: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sentencingproject.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;01&#x2F;Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sentencingproject.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;01&#x2F;Tre...</a>