Killing the Messengers? Disregarding School Reform Critics

Ignorance is Bliss -- Thomas Gray (1742)

Wealth or celebrity, in our Land of the Free, provides those who enjoy it, special people, both broad opportunity and wide audience to promulgate shallow opinions no matter how deep their ignorance. Non-special people who dare venture critical comment against such self-indulgence risk being punished as proverbial messengers of bad news.

For example, whistle-blowers in government face weakening of the laws that protect them from retaliation. Also, AgGag laws are passed to strangle free speech criticism of selected industry practices.

We can imagine the following dialog in, say, a college lab coffee room:

Harry: Yum! This leftover chocolate pudding I found in the frig tastes pretty good!

Jack: I hate to tell you, but that’s not chocolate pudding you’re eating.

Harry: Dammit, Jack! You’ve ruined my whole day!

When it comes to reforming public schools, heavily endowed opinionators importune the many educators seemingly all too ready to swallow down celebrity offal at face value, if sauced over with sentiment invoking the welfare of children or national competitiveness.

Bullshit, -- oops! (Pardon my Anglo-Saxon.) -- chocolate pudding, abounds providing sustenance (brain-food, no doubt) for myriad “researchers” willing to ride their bandwagons to escape academic and occupational ennui. Even when these reform enthusiasts, failing to extirpate criticism, finally come around to begrudging opposing viewpoints, they can count on their celebrity to finesse any apologies of shame or regret.

As to school reform? No matter! So never mind. Wasted time, money and human resources are just so much past history. And real “pro-active” Go-Getters don’t lose sleep over past history! They stand ever ready with that Tool they wield so effectively, to promote the next social reform that distracts them from ennui.


For references and to examine that Tool further, see BS -- It Really Serves a Purpose


Cordially
--- EGR

Correcting Error? Or Manipulating Opinion?

Party Doctrine: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. -- G. Orwell, 1984

Andrew Butler, a post-doctoral researcher in Duke's Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, led a recent study (2012) of how students “correct” their opinions. In an article called ”New insights into how to correct false knowledge” he comments, "Errors that are deeply entrenched in memory are notoriously difficult to correct. Providing students with feedback is the first step because it enables them to identify the error and learn the correct information."

Actually, there are three prior steps Butler missed. Students should have been assessed on issues of Care, Trust and Power. Butler should have grouped them according to their responses to the follow questions:

For each item of information presented students should have been asked

a. Do you care whether this item is right or wrong?
b. Are you willing to accept what the experiment leader says is right or wrong?
c. Do you have the power to publicly disagree without fear of reprisal with what the experiment leader tells you.

Butler’s experiment is about the efficacy of techniques of persuasion. It offers no guarantees to the subjects of his experiment that what he is giving them is knowledge.

For references and to examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION


Cordially
--- EGR

What is Truth? Does It Matter to You?

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves. -- Buddha

You may have come across this somewhere: the truth shall set you free. How free are you? How free do you want to be?

A history professor once told me that she forbids her students from talking about “truth.” “It’s a pointless chase, a matter of opinion!” she exclaimed.

“Do you have your students do research in order to write a paper?” I asked. “Of course,” she replied. I continued, “If what you say about truth is true (!), then what does it matter? Why can’t they just make it up out of their heads?”

The professor asked that we continue our conversation at another time because she had just remembered an important meeting she had to attend. We never got to discuss it again. That was fifteen years ago. In the time since then, I have talked with many people in the Liberal Arts and Humanities who expressed similar disregard for what they called "a hegemonic conception of truth", invoking a condition called post-modernism, in which our society is putatively now existing.

Recently, much concern has been expressed about the withering of the Liberal Arts and Humanities at many universities, and warnings abound about the "corporatization" of the Academy. But what attraction does a discipline have if it holds out no hope for truth, even in approximation? Very few people treat their studies as some kind of game with which to while away their life and fortunes.

To examine these issues further, see Personal Liberation Through Education

Cordially,
-- EGR