Consider the following propositions, all of which are ones that pupils in school are likely to encounter in their futures:
(1) Homeopathy is an effective treatment for a range of illnesses
(2) The number of people killed in the Holocaust has been vastly exaggerated
(3) There is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism
(4) Dinosaurs and humans co-existed in the past
Each of these statements is not true, and they can be shown not to be true through appropriate academic disciplines. Medical trials and hard stats shows us that (1) and (3) are not true, while sources available from the 1940s can show historians that (2) is not true (indeed this is one of the few matters of history to have passed a legal burden of proof!) Palaeontology, anthropology, geology and some radio-carbon dating can all show us that (4) is not true.
Now why does this matter?
For years now it has been popular and fashionable to challenge the very idea that something can be ‘true’. Philosophers have a long tradition of exploring what truth is, but a particular strand of this debate became popular in the later twentieth century under a broad banner that might be called ‘postmodernism’. This is hardly a coherent school of thought, but its adherents tend to start from the position that truth is relative and knowledge subjective. I simplify terribly, though, it must be said, many supporters of postmodernism in education (particularly the field of curriculum theory) tend not to get much further than ‘truth is relative’ and ‘knowledge is subjective’.
The consequences of this position for education are troubling. If truth is relative to context, then we have no grounds on which to base what we teach pupils in school. With no yardstick of truth, there is no reason for a pupil to accept anything that a teacher might say: it is all just a matter of opinion. There are no right or wrong answers on this line of argument: only subjective opinions.
But is it simply a matter of opinion whether or not the Holocaust happened or not? If a pupil comes to me, as a history teacher, am I supposed to say to that pupil ‘well, that’s one point of view’. What if a pupil goes to her science teacher and says ‘dinosaurs and humans coexisted in the past’: should the science teacher say ‘yes, that’s one possible conclusion’?
The answer in both cases, I hope, would be ‘no, that is not true’. I do not want pupils in my school entertaining Holocaust denial or human-dinosaur coexistence: these things are simply not true. We hear a great deal that we want pupils to be ‘critical thinkers’, but if we have pupils think that truth is relative and knowledge subjective, then we actually make it impossible for them to challenge propositions such as this in the future: all they can say is ‘well that’s one possible point of view’.
This is not to say that everything is simply ‘true’ or ‘false’. Statements (1) to (4) above are all clearly false, but consider the following:
(5) The First World War was caused by the internal political situation in Germany
Now this is an interpretation most famously advanced by Fischer: the so-called ‘Fischer Thesis’ on the primacy of domestic politics. The interpretation has some merit, but has also been extensively challenged. As a history teacher, I would expect pupils to consider such an interpretation, to weigh up its strengths and its weaknesses and to compare it with other possible interpretations.
But what is the basis on which they can do this? How do we identify whether an interpretation is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’. We can challenge it on its consistency: an interpretation that is contradictory is likely to be weak. It is, however, a notion of truth that we need to be operating with in order to decide whether or not an interpretation is strong or not. If I lose sight of my mission as a historian to say something ‘truthful’ about the past, then I am left in a position where pretty much any interpretation goes.
Truth is a complex philosophical idea: it is not easy, and if it were this very discussion would not exist. But the fact that the idea of truth presents problems does not mean that we should discard it: to do so leaves us with logical contradictions (see below) and an inability to progress our knowledge of the world further. For those at the cutting edge of research, it is perhaps right that the notion of truth is questioned. For children in school classrooms, who are being prepared to face a world in which they are bombarded with statements like (1) to (4), the notion of truth is indispensible.
The logical problem
Historians famously make bad philosophers, but here is my go at summarising the logical problem inherent in relativism.
Consider the proposition ‘truth is relative’. It follows from this that the truth of any particular proposition depends on context. If, as this proposition claims, truth is relative, then the proposition ‘truth is relative’ is itself not necessarily true. But if the proposition ‘truth is relative’ is itself not necessarily true, then we have no reason for thinking that truth is relative in the first place.
For a good summary, this is well worth a look: