Justin McBrayer is upset because kids are being taught the differences between the following:
Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.
Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.
His objections seem to be based in two areas. The first is a semantic quibble — one can "believe" a fact (e.g., I believe George Washington was the first president of the United States). This strikes me as nitpicking, as it's using two different forms of the word "believe" — in the Washington case, accepting the historical record as conveyed to you. All "proven facts" can be considered in this light, unless one has done the testing oneself — and even then issues of memory and other quibbles come in.
His more serious objection is that this removes the possibility of a "moral fact," a moral or ethical truth that is anything other than mere "opinion." In other words, it makes all morals relative, and therefore we'll end up with a society of hooligans who cheat, steal, and kill because, hey, why listen to all those old-fashioned opinions about why those actions are right or wrong.
This is related to the idea that one cannot be a virtuous atheist because, if you don't believe in God, then there is no basis for one's morality. Thus we see atheists cheating, stealing, and killing on a constant basis, while religious believers never do any such thing.
The problem would come, of course, in deciding which "moral facts" are in fact facts, universally accepted truths, and which are not. Is theft wrong? The "moral fact" (and, in fact, a Judeo-Christian Commandment) is, of course, yes. But we can easily hypothesize any number of cases where theft is morally defensible — stealing a loaf of bread to feed a family, stealing the secret plans from an enemy who is going to attack you, and so forth.
That gets into much more difficult moral calculus, weighing wrongs against each other, whether justification makes things "right" or merely "allowable" (or even "allowable morally but not legally"), but the deeper we descend into such discussion, the more we get into, yes, opinion and belief, not fact.
McBrayer also ignores the strength of consensual and cultural beliefs — both the need to accept them as practical (even idealistic) realities but also recognize them as something other than "facts." "Slavery is wrong" might be considered a moral fact by most, but roll the clock back a thousand years and most would likely disagree in some fashion. Heck, there are places in the world today where that "moral fact" is not considered a fact at all. That doesn't mean that
This applies to other fundamentals, such as "Killing is wrong" (which often boils down to definitions of what kind of killing we're talking about, what the circumstances are), let alone broader assertions of moral fact such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Opinions and beliefs are not trivial, and can be the result of a lot of cogitation and consideration, not to be dismissed out of hand, let alone without consequence. But that doesn't make them facts, and that confusion has led to pain, blood, and death for a lot of people over the centuries. That may be moral relativism, but that doesn't make it any less of a fact.
Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts
On a visit to my son’s second grade classroom, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board.
Bloke’s an idiot.
Drinking age in UK is 18. That is a fact. However from his tone to drink under 21 is terrible and also a fact.