ABSTRACT
A popular refrain today in the social sciences is that humans are strongly predisposed to in-group thinking at the expense of understanding and cooperation across difference. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, has received a lot of press for his new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics (2012). Haidt argues that our political disagreements are constructed within the very life narratives that construct our understandings of who we are, and what constitutes right and wrong behavior or action. “Morality binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people.” 1 This thesis has gotten much media play, in part because it fits so well with popular refrains that contemporary political discourse is hopelessly divisive and lacking in true substantive dialogue across party lines. Pew polls show hardening partisanship in the American populace, at levels higher than at any other point measured in the past twenty-five years. 2 If the public is hopelessly gridlocked, originating even at a psychological level, then why should we bother with trying to engage the public in public education? If politics is somehow predestined to be unproductive, why should local educational and community leaders attempt to involve local groups and marginalized voices into the governance of schooling?
