Avoiding Controversy: a survival necessity?

What’s the connection?

1. Students, particularly (shockingly,) college students, do not learn, or learn well, critical thinking skills; (NYT)
2. High school teachers do not teach, or teach well, Evolution; (NYT)
3. College students are seldom invited to examine the assumptions on which their professor’s course material is based; particularly, not graduate students.

Exceptions are more likely found in religious colleges than in public ones. Why is this?

Here are some possible answers:

a. the teachers or professors don’t know their subject matter.
b. Students, who don’t know how to handle controversy, evaluate their professors for promotion and tenure.
c. Professors have not studied formal logic.
d. Neither students nor professors know how to reason well on their feet.

Let’s dismiss a and c as unlikely. This is not a matter of knowing something, but of being able to teach it, especially, if it provokes debate. Merely studying formal logic does not help here.

Option b is close to the matter. Evolution and other controversial items are perceived by students to threaten their “sacred values.” They strongly dislike the apparent threat. They get their revenge by giving their instructors low ratings. (I have noticed during my 17+ years as a college professor that the same person, teaching a basically “technical” course would get higher ratings from his or her students than in a course where controversial material was dealt with.)

Option d is crucial. Teaching, if it is a face-to-face encounter requires either suppressing questioning, or having argumentative (or debate) skills to use. Except in religious environments where boundaries are clear – you still risk skating on thin ice --, secular, pluralistic schools and universities have disregarded argumentative and debate skills so long that few now command them to the degree they can be used for teaching purposes.

More than once have I heard professors at professional conferences declare that “There are, without exception, no absolute truths.” When asked about the truth of that very statement, which if true, is false, they shrugged it off with the retort, “You’re just playing word games.”

To examine these issues further, and avoid intellectual lobotomy, see An Introduction to Models of Reasoning


Cordially
--- EGR

Critical Assessment: are educators trained to do it?

edited 5/25/20

Many of the parents who allow their children hours of TV and who read little, if anything, besides the newspapers, contribute nonetheless vociferously to that chorus that decries the schools for failing to turn out readers. This irony is seldom lost on educators.

But even among educators, “criticism” is generally taken to mean “rebuke,” or “expression of dislike” lined up along partisan, usually political, differences. The ancient honorable notion that criticism can be non-antagonistic critique, an objective comparison to some commonly recognized standard, is, more often than not, forgotten. (See The Art of Constructive Criticism)

The deepest, most pathetic irony in education is this: a conference of educational leaders will more often than not turn into a celebration of non-communication, a values-clarification workshop writ large, each person revealing his or her "philosophy," neither expecting nor offering criticism, incapable of even simple rebuttal or defense, respecting each other's right to his or her own opinion, indeed, respecting each other like crazy.

Exercises in civility and understanding "where everyone is coming from" complete the ritual; critical examination is foregone and people finally got down to political "brass tacks."

Are we surprised that our educational leaders, professed "change agents", uplifters and reclaimers, ultimately engage in but one perennial pursuit: bandwagoneering?

To examine these issues further, see CRITICAL ASSESSMENT AND VALUES IN EDUCATION


Cordially
--- EGR