
Un-Teaching Personal Responsibility - PredictorY
https://americanconsequences.com/un-teaching-personal-responsibility/
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bmpafa
I find this "personal responsibility" narrative interesting (and, full
disclosure: also bullshit), since it reminds me of sports discussions--
everyone has a strong opinions, they're nearly all un-falsifiable, and they
almost always appeal to notions that no one disagrees with.

i.e., no one actually thinks that actions ought not have consequences. Arne
Duncan et al weren't trying to 'un-teach discipline' or whatever, they were
trying to address secondary problems around discipline.

I love Google's ngram viewer for context here. Use of the phrase "personal
responsibility" _skyrocketed_ around the late 80s[1], more or less matching
the rise of the right-wing "bootstraps" narrative.

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).

So, I dunno, maybe this is my bleeding heart talking, but if "unteaching
personal responsibility" means "putting fewer people in prison," sign me up
for the next lesson.

1:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22personal+re...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22personal+responsibility%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20personal%20responsibility%20%22%3B%2Cc0)

2: [https://sentencingproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/Tre...](https://sentencingproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/Trends-in-US-Corrections.pdf)

