“Each successive generation since the mid-60s has read less, mastered a smaller body of knowledge, and possessed a more meager vocabulary than its predecessors. What makes the members of the current generation different is that they appear unembarrassed by their ignorance. The products of a school system devised and maintained by the processed-oriented professors of the education schools, they are all, in effect, postmodernists: for them, everything is a matter of opinion, and no one’s opinion is better that anyone else’s.”
– Fred Siegel, reviewing Troublemaker, Chester Finn’s history of modern school reform, in the June issue of Commentary.
I heard that postmodernism was going out of style.
Part of the reason, as I understand it, was that the Pomo crowd came to the blindingly obvious realization that if truth is all a matter of perspective then they were left with no response to their political enemies. Everything came down to “well that’s your truth but it’s not my truth”.
If anyone knows why it took them so long to figure this out I am all ears.
I would also like to know (1) Is Pomo truly dying out? (2) What’s replacing it?
Even if Pomo is going away, we will hear its echoes for many decades to come.