All the same person? Sweet.

I applaud you; I had a science teacher in elementary school who told his classes that he believed the earth was flat on the first day, and insisted that we prove him wrong. This exercise is dissimilar in that policy arguments are (or should be) applications of competing value systems rather than arguments about facts. Many people of course disagree about the basic facts (and can therefore be proven wrong), which is presumably outside the scope of your argument. However, people also typically refuse to see that there are different interpretations of the facts that everyone acknowledges.

JS Mill covered this well, in his argument (I paraphrase) that suppressing error by means other than argument was also a crime against truth, because believers in the truth would lose a full knowledge of the source of their belief.

I keep meaning to read the counterargument to “On Liberty” in Stephen’s “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, as a tribute to this idea. Haven’t gotten around to it yet, though…

2. I teach first year writing and speaking. I agree with the post that suggests that contemporary undergraduates hold, in general, idiosyncratic mixes of views, without a consistent overarching political structure. They tend to adopt unreflecting relativism not because they’ve been indoctrinated with post-modernism, but because it saves the effort of disciplined argument.

3. Guess what, their professors are similarly complex in their attitudes. I would suggest that left wingers who lecture and hector their students with the aim of converting them to a particular world view are employing conservative pedagogies to left wing ends. (In the main, the ones I’ve seen doing this are the kind orthodox Marxists who critique post-modernism because it denies the reality of historical processes.)

4. Notice that no one has said that in addition to questioning people’s assumptions, if you teach critical thinking you have to get students to attend to the interests associated with people’s assumptions and beliefs. For example, white students largely attack affirmative action, but in-state students tend to think it’s okay to favour state residents in admission and tuition. Students over the age of 21 almost never give speeches advocating elimination of drinking ages. And so on… This can be a powerful tool for examining why employees of a (partially) state funded institution tend to be to the left of people who operate in the private sector.

5. What is the primary interest of most tenure-track faculty members? Tenure and promotion. The demands are so heavy, at least at my institution, that any proselytizing is largely unexamined, ad hoc and the result of sloppy teaching. I suspect that careerism (fertilized by the current economics of higher education) damages teaching more than ideologies of any kind.

When I was brought up, “liberal” meant challenging the status quo, questioning assumptions, seeing all points of view and coming to a reasoned conclusion. “Conservative” meant doing/thinking/agreeing with what you’re told by an authority figure. – generally a fat, old white guy.

Liberal dogma should be oxymoronic, as should a conservative trying to get “students to think these questions carefully out for themselves”.

-J

And what happens when both your ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing students share assumptions that are worth questioning?

Recently I sat in a class of ‘lefty, progressive, liberal’ students that had the literally conservative assumption that you will never get people to change their lifestyles to adjust to environmental problems until they have (for example) practically run down their catchment water supply. The implications of such a belief, even if these same students recognise the problem of water conversation, is that its not worth even trying to fix the problem. Thus a status quo enforcing, conservative outlook.

Comments?

I think the ideas behind this that I heard – to encourage a debate on the topic, and field some rarely heard (but valid) points – are very good ideas. I think they’re very valuable.

But I think that it’s important not to get too carried away (although I can’t say whether it is happening here or not). As has been said, there are important things to be discussed and decided with regards to educational standards, requirements, etc. But having a debate about those things is a little different from having a debate specifically about NCLB.

Yes, standardized testing has a place in our schools. Incentives and consequences need to be discussed. But when we talk about NCLB, we’re no longer talking about vague, yet-to-be-determined ideas. NCLB is terribly, critically flawed, and will have to be demolished or overhauled in the coming years. There is no other option, if only because it’s eventual required 100% rate is a dream among dreams.

I think that more attention to educational standards would a good thing, and that when people spend enough time to consider the condition things are in, they will be motivated to effect some improvements. Debate is an integral part of that. But NCLB in its CURRENT STATE is pure garbage, and any discussion about it should probably start with what parts to cut or change if it’s to be allowed to exist at all.

Well, and similarly, if the national political discourse has been moved far enough to the right, it’s easy to perceive moderates as left-wing and mainstream liberals as wild-eyed radicals.

For what it’s worth, I believe that bringing one’s beliefs into one’s teaching is on some level inevitable. Better to be up front about it and call for debate than to establish a classroom hegemony in which your views are reasonable and apolitical, and challenging them is unacceptable. This is true at every level, from grade school to grad school (and yes, these issues were very present in my life as a grade-schooler).

1) that position is relevant to the subject of the class,

2) the professor does not grade students down for not agreeing with him (for disagreeing for incoherent reasons is fine),

3) the professor discloses that this is what he’s doing,

4) ideally, the professor gives time for class discussion and for students to attempt to rebut him. This one is more subjective and less mandatory than the others.

This system will lead to certain opinions “losing” in a classroom setting. Oh well. Some political positions may lose continuously- for example, I don’t expect creationism to do so well in an environment like the one I’ve outlined. That’s ok- its losing on the merits. That’s the whole damn point of education.

Students may be unsettled, and may feel like their opinions are under attack. Again, don’t care. I think its fair to say that there should be a presumption of intellectual maturity that attaches to college attendance. Part of intellectual maturity is having your views not only questioned, but attacked. The better part is responding to those attacks, or, after a defeat, brushing yourself off and investigating your opponents positions for weaknesses. Or god forbid, if your opponents position is too strong for you to defeat, changing your opinion.

I am especially strong in this opinion as it regards my fellow law students. If you are the sort of person who can be “indoctrinated,” or worse, “brainwashed” by a professor’s lecture, you are intellectually weak and should drop out of law school poste haste. If you do not, the real world will devour you alive.

I want to see a full post on NCLB. I just spent an hour in a debate about testing, so I would love to read how you come out on all of this.

Of course it might be argued that a culture with a highly formal metrics was as much a challenge to our cultural world view as anything else….

You know, you live your life thinking that the kids speak the same language you did back in the day, and then all of a sudden you find out that every five-year-old in the country not sits “Criss Cross Applesauce” instead of “Indian Style.” It didn’t even occur to me that this would be offensive—I thought it was just description (and even if a wrong description, hardly an offensive wrong description).

Now, here I am saying “Criss cross applesauce” to five year olds. Sometimes I wonder who the first person was who came up with the phrase.