the apodosis being some variant of “why teach it?” While the sentiment may serve as a useful rallying cry against teaching that would have been out of date twenty years ago, no less today, it is nonetheless annoying–perhaps because it’s simplistic, perhaps because it’s prima facie rhetorical rather than reflective, and perhaps just because (when addressed by a speaker to an auditorium) the implication is that we’ve all bought into the mindset it challenges.
However, I’ll briefly adopt my frequent tactic of answering rhetorical questions (which is why I suggest my English students not use them in their writing) in response to this putative query.
So, in no particular order except the order in which they occur to me:
- because context is important
- because, as in Borges’ Library, you can find every sentiment as well as its contradiction on the web
- because flat-earthers, Holocaust-deniers, and white supremacists also have Googlable web sites
There are other points to make, but these three seem to sum up the triviality of the new rallying cry…