Thanks for the guilt trip, Substance. I wanted to stop but you’ve made me feel like I have to soldier on miserably, just for your sake. I don’t know how you can live with yourself…

> So I would hesitate to say that “lily-white (northern European descent)” = not
> likely to resist authority.

Thank you for that amplification. I won’t claim that #129 and #130 are the most coherent posts I have ever written , and on re-reading I did not make it clear that I was referring to only one set of cultural examples. Albeit ones fairly common in the United States.

Cranky

What we end up with is a group of people who are aware of societal goals, but because they have no confidence in their ability to meet these goals, they intentionally shun them. In effect, they are failing on purpose, as opposed to trying and failing, because it allows them to take ownership of failure that they believe is imminent.

This is a classical problem. You’re defining “success” and “failure” on your own terms, and then expecting the student to accept those terms or invert them (in other words, success = failure). If you automatically assume a definition of success with which you are comfortable, you lose everyone who disagrees with you about what constitutes success.

Lots of teachers have lost their non-gray hairs over this.

Back of the envelope calculation, about 1.4% of the student population, but there are schools I’ve attended which probably exceeded ten percent. (I live in a state with some exceedingly problematic middle schools.)

Are you suggesting that a statistically significant number of people desire nothing but the pain of those around them?

Students, not persons. And no, not quite. I’m suggesting they enjoy causing pain to those outside their social circle and especially to those outside their larger community of acknowledged peers.

And if that’s true, are you suggesting that these people could never have been taught, at any point, the value of setting long term, non-destructive goals that can be achieved by working together with the people around them?

No no no no no. That’s where we are in complete agreement. The most common way one becomes (learns) to be cruel like this, frankly, is by receiving years of unmitigated abuse or neglect. That is obviously completely preventable: no out-of-the-ordinary pedagogy is even required, just a safe & supportive & healthy environment at home and school. Furthermore, for those currently cruel, it’s easy to point to scalable programs with solid track records of helping such persons regain a sense of compassion and kindness.

What we currently lack is the social machinery to process these individuals, to match individuals to programs. We also lack the funding for such programs.

In my state, we lack the political will to finance these programs, basically because lots of white people honestly do think what you mistakenly¹ believed I was thinking: that this problem is “inherent” and the black community (even though the problem is neither limited to this community nor predominant in this community) should deal with it itself (whatever that means).

¹Not faulting you for this. Just emphasizing I don’t share the viewpoint.

There are more people than we care to think of for whom a glass window is nothing but an invitation to throw a rock.
Many of my classmates from grades K-12 fit this description, even though I grew up in “lily-white (northern European descent)” small town in a “lily-white (northern European descent)” state.

So I would hesitate to say that “lily-white (northern European descent)” = not likely to resist authority.

That is a massively WASPy cultural assumption. There are several different cultures within the United States alone where toughness, fighting back, staying sharp, and not letting any insult go by unanswered are far more important than sharing or niceness.

My spouse is struggling with this right now in a new position at a school district that encompasses some of these cultures along with the lily-white (northern European descent) suburban majority; said spouse has never lived in or with such a culture and can’t figure out why the students aren’t simply too embarrassed to behave as they do. I point out that to these kids not fighting back against authority can be social, and in some cases literal, death, and I get looks of disbelief.

Cranky

You are headed directly for the nature/nurture debate, but at least 2-3%, perhaps 5 in some places times and societies. It is not (necessarily, directly) pain that they desire to inflict but embarrassment, discomfiture, humiliation, generalized abuse, leading to emotional, physical, and social submission. In the state of nature the tormentors would eventually kill any males they are tormenting, or shun them to the point that they starved to death, but that doesn’t usually happen in modern society.

If you seriously do not think that there are a substantial number of human beings with these impulses then you have never been part of a community organization in a decaying neighborhood, attended/taught in a slum high school, worked as a supervisor in a factory in heavy industry, etc. There are more people than we care to think of for whom a glass window is nothing but an invitation to throw a rock.

Cranky

Approximately what percentage of the population are you talking about here? Are you suggesting that a statistically significant number of people desire nothing but the pain of those around them? And if that’s true, are you suggesting that these people could never have been taught, at any point, the value of setting long term, non-destructive goals that can be achieved by working together with the people around them?

What I am trying say is that, while it’s true that there are people who behave and think in this manner, they reason they think this way is a function of failed socialization. It likely started before schooling, but that hardly means that it couldn’t have been corrected after the age of 5. Often it isn’t. What we end up with is a group of people who are aware of societal goals, but because they have no confidence in their ability to meet these goals, they intentionally shun them. In effect, they are failing on purpose, as opposed to trying and failing, because it allows them to take ownership of failure that they believe is imminent.

Regarding nice people, I strongly disagree that anyone is inherently nice or not nice. There are, however, inherent differences in people’s empathic abilities. People who are less capable of relating to those around them are more likely to come in conflict, and thus are more likely to develop antagonistic relationships with people, both specifically and in general. As their early relationships are turbulant and often unsatisfying (a poor work in/reward out ratio), they may see less value in interpersonal relationships, and thus are less inclined to make efforts to be kind to other.

Comparatively, people who are better at relating to those around them will have an easier time making friends, will get more out of their relationships for less, and thus will see positive interpersonal communication as beneficial and worth the effort. Not that people think these things when they make friends, or don’t. It’s unconscious. You don’t think “left foot, right foot” when you walk, but you learned how to do that, too.

But other of these tendencies, and the patterns that follow, can be subverted and reversed with proper (or improper) socialization. Children who lack social skills can still be taught the value of friendship. Children who struggle with learning can still be taught the value of education. It’s my view that the people whom you deem “sociopaths”, unless you’re talking about an incredibly small number of people, are really just poorly socialized, and schooling is an important part of socialization (to bring it back to the original topic).

Neither do I, but I do think people feel different degrees of guilt if they discover they have hurt someone. Some folks tend to feel elation instead of guilt when they discover that their behavior has resulted in lasting or deep pain.

Quite plainly, they don’t understand why it might not be good for them, in the long run, to antagonize the people around them.

To be clear: It is good for them. They frankly stand to gain absolutely nothing they would want by being less antagonistic, and they enjoy the pleasure of antagonism. There is, I emphasize, categorically nothing desirable they could or would gain from being less antagonistic. They do not desire that which could or would be gained from benevolence. This is not a question of these individuals’ ignorance: it’s a question of what these individuals value and desire. I’ve learned the hard way that telling such students “you could get X if you did Y” is ineffective when they have no desire for Y and there exists no reason for them to desire Y.

“Good” people, on the other hand, are nice to other people because they understand that if they ever need anything from these people in the future, whether it be a tangible service or just companionship, being nice is the best way to accomplish it.

No, I disagree. Perhaps sometimes, but not always, not even predominantly.

Nice people, in the main, are nice because it feels natural to them; they find being nice feels pleasant. (That is learned, yes.) Obconreversely, not nice people, in the main, are not nice because it feels natural to them.

Not to be too cynical, but for the vast majority of human beings, conformity (without going stupidly far) is exactly what is likely to make them economically and socially successful, and thus give them the greatest chance at happiness.

Absolutely. The question is what counts as ‘conformity’, and ‘rebellion’ and ‘free thinking’. Rebelling for the sake of rebelling aka Brando(“What are you rebelling against?” “Whatta ya got?”) is just idiotic. And let’s face it, while there’s a long row to hoe still when it comes tolerance, culturally speaking, there is less and less to plausibly rebel against in the U.S. as time goes on.

Now, in my particular sphere, sorry to say, but good practice does require, well, practice, repetition. We require lots of homework simply because we have found that those who do a lot of it perform better and have a better understanding of the subject. That may be different for different subjects, of course, but the only way people seem to get good at integrating by substitutions, say, or with trig functions is to do a lot of them.

Just about anybody, in their lesser moments, takes pleasure in showing their ability to put down others. For most people, it involves using a particular skill or area of knowlege that they’ve honed to a higher level than most people (fashion sense, musical accumen, ability to memorize the words to every movie they’ve ever seen). However, when children aren’t taught the value of their own abilities, and thus don’t develop them, they can only exert their natural human desire to put other people down in the most basic ways, like getting in the way.

Also, the way I interpret this statement implies that 1. these impulses can’t be mitigated and 2. “good” people are nice to others because they have innate instincts to treat people around them nicely. I don’t agree with either statement. My personal belief is that everyone behaves the way they do because it is what contributes best to accomplishing their personal goals, and upholding their sense of self. People with poorly conceived goals and personal identities tend to act in an illogical and unpredictable because they either don’t know what they’re trying to do, or don’t know how to do it. Quite plainly, they don’t understand why it might not be good for them, in the long run, to antagonize the people around them.

“Good” people, on the other hand, are nice to other people because they understand that if they ever need anything from these people in the future, whether it be a tangiable service or just companionship, being nice is the best way to accomplish it. This is why all babies need to learn how to share. If being “good” wasn’t learned, wouldn’t “good” babies already know how to do that?

Eh, it’s easier to understand if you take the form “liking X better” and substitute in “attractive persons” for “girls”—treat the statements as independent. Those who are better liked (for whatever reason) get better grades.

I make no apologies for preferring female students. And this is why:

Adopting policies that favor one gender of students over another, regardless of sign, is something that you just shouldn’t do. And, yes, there is the matter of homework vs. testing, as well as the elephant in the room (diagnosis of ~15% of school-aged boys in the USA as having a personality disorder requiring medication, e.g. attention deficit/hyperactivity etc.)

Along with my other duties, I usually end up teaching two sections of remedial math in the fall semester to incoming freshmen. And it is my overwhelming experience that the girls are simply better students than the boys. They are more likely to do the assigned homework, more likely to attempt more problems, less likely to be absent, and more likely to actually use the resources – such as office hours – available to them. Iow, trying to even up the playing field as it were, is discriminating against the qualities that make a good student, the qualities that classes like mine are intended to inculcate along with maybe a little knowledge. Sorry, that’s just the way things fall out at this age. In my other math classes, say differential equations, the boys seem be as motivated and perform as well as the girls. It’s not just a selection effect, imho, but also the fact that someone taking diff eq is on average two years older than an incoming freshman, and for boys of that age that’s a huge difference in their level of maturity.

Oddly enough, it was my mother who goaded me to get out there and play with the rough kids, and my father who encouraged me to be a snotty academic know-all who didn’t care what anyone else thought. Cheers, Dad.