The coddling of the American mind

[Anomaly]

It's sad that people don't take the time to read and re-read that article.  The article is much more than the coddling of the adolescent mind.  The discussion is more about the cognitive dissonance in the internalized comprehension of the normal struggles in life.

There is not such societal failure or disintegration, but more of an growing belief that these normal struggles are a personal affront and perceived as much worse than they really are.   It's corporatized victimization.   It's politics of dissatisfaction and offense identification.   

Click a button to Like or Dislike.   There is little room for actual tolerance, agreement to respectfully disagree.   We must be perceived to be for something 100% or we're on the other team.  The masses are constantly bombarded with the search for polarization while simultaneously trying to avoid divisiveness.   It's driving everyone crazy thinking they have to find problems and fix them. 

[Gabriela]

I mean this as a serious question: does it take 12 years to teach someone how to make a reasoned argument? I don't think so...which is to say, I don't think the problem is a failure in pedagogy. When I was a kid wrestling was a big thing...we'd recap it in the lunchroom, argue about matches, etc. Kids know how to argue, reason, compete, debate, etc. I don't think the educational process really adds anything to that...building a "reasoned argument" in an essay is about learning a code for speaking in an academic setting, not about one's intelligence, creativity, interest, etc. Same with proper grammar...it doesn't enliven any kid's life in any real way. A kid who speaks like a country bumpkin is speaking from his nature...to "clean him up" is just to make him more presentable for the job market, which may be necessary, but it doesn't enrich his life or make proper grammar or reasoned argument anything he should take any particular interest in as a kid...what does he know about the job market? That's for adults to mold him into over 12 years...but in the process, they probably knock his natural, common sense out more than they instill format and process. Would "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" be worth reading if Huck talked in proper grammar? And yet, in "teaching" the novel in school, there's this bizarre irony where Huck Finn is being taught in order to civilize these kids for the job market. How should a young kid from the ghetto feel when the main business of his life is to clean himself up so that he can be presentable for an adult world that has no presence or basis in his real life community and experience? This is a bit different from the context of the OP, but I think it's the same process in universities...young people are being instilled with format and process...which, even if it's in the name of noble ideals like equality and diversity, still amounts to artificial programming for society.

And just to add, RE: your reference to sex ed, that's a great point...because if there is anything more absurd in life, it's the idea that sex can be taught. But you can't teach sex anymore than you can teach reasoned argument and good speech, because when you teach them, they turn into empty code and process. They are things that have to spring from our natures, but schools are meant to mold us into a mass or common nature.

I can assure you that most of my students can NOT make a reasoned argument. Inference-making is like rocket science to them. They do not get it. (Actually, some of them understand rocket science better than they understand sound inference-making!)

Until you teach it to them—explicitly. If we don't teach it explicitly, they'll insist that the existence of aliens follows from the fact of airplanes flying through the sky.

And you can teach sex. Just not in the classroom.  

The rest of what you say I agree with!

Edited November 17, 2015 by Gabriela

[truthfinder]

I can assure you that most of my students can NOT make a reasoned argument. Inference-making is like rocket science to them. They do not get it. (Actually, some of them understand rocket science better than they understand sound inference-making!)

Until you teach it to them—explicitly. If we don't teach it explicitly, they'll insist that the existence of aliens follows from the fact of airplanes flying through the sky.

And you can teach sex. Just not in the classroom.  

The rest of what you say I agree with!

It's like when the prof assigns "analyse document x" and then you've got to remember that's a skill that actually has to be taught in the way particular to the field. And it's remarkable the amount of half-truths, myths, and urban legends they've picked up along with their politically-correct and emotion-based reasoning. 

[Era Might]

I can assure you that most of my students can NOT make a reasoned argument. Inference-making is like rocket science to them. They do not get it. (Actually, some of them understand rocket science better than they understand sound inference-making!)

Until you teach it to them—explicitly. If we don't teach it explicitly, they'll insist that the existence of aliens follows from the fact of airplanes flying through the sky.

And you can teach sex. Just not in the classroom.  

The rest of what you say I agree with!

lol...we'll have to disagree about the sex education...nobody can teach you who you are, and that's what sex ultimately is, once you unlearn what you've been taught. But I apply the same idea to everything about how we express ourselves...how we dress, how we speak, etc. Particularly with speech, I'm fond of the idea that speech is not merely communicative...it not only reveals what you are experiencing, but how you speak IS the experience itself. Unless you've been shaped by empty code, then speech becomes meaningless communication, which is the goal of academic writing, copywriting, etc. It's technical writing, not human speech. The purpose is to communicate clearly and convincingly, but in real life, there would be no human relationship if our goal was to be clear and convincing with each other. We speak (ideally) to be honest and open. A person who has learned romance from a teacher might say something like, "I value you as a person and want to have a meaningful relationship." What a meaningless thing to say to another person...you can't communicate meaning with a meaningless word like "meaningful." That person has no actual bodily existence, their communication is meaningless, even if it is perfectly clear, grammatically correct, and entirely proper. But that's what we train students for. The culture wars over rap music in the 90s was a great illustration of the social danger of people daring to speak from their existence...it threatened civil society where we speak and say nothing. But I'm off on a tangent...

I'm curious what you teach? And what you see as your goal or role in teaching students how to make arguments? As I see it, they may believe in aliens, but as long as their airplanes get them from Point A to Point B, they're happy. In other words, I tend to be a philosophical pragmatist in the sense that I think people believe in ideas that are useful to them...if a certain god protects a certain city, you're gonna cultivate your sacrifices and temples to that god. Philosophers may be the exception (maybe not), but hardly anyone in society wants to be a philosopher. As long as a student learns how to design airplanes or take apart a car or build a marketing plan, what they believe about aliens has no bearing on their success in society or as a professional, anymore than what they believe about God does. But I've never been a teacher so my perspective on this is mostly from the student perspective, that's why I'm interested in your philosophy of teaching.

[Luigi]

Convincing people to believe in aliens or not is rather pointless. If aliens are out there, evidence will be available sooner or later.

Constructing a convincing argument about public policy is much more pertinent, though. Who should be the next president, whether refugees from Syria should (not) be accepted in any given country, whether taxes should be increased to support a local school district - those are the kinds of arguments/discussion that society needs to conduct in public debate, and educated people should develop effective methods or building arguments in support of or opposition to them. Which means that educated people have to learn the way society has built effective arguments since the Greeks invented rhetoric.

A very clear example happened recently at Dartmouth University. Activists from Black Lives Matter marched through the library chanting "Black lives matter." According to some reports, they also yelled insults and curses at some white students. Members claimed that was an intentional tactic to make white people understand the Black American experience. While that might be true, I think it was a very unproductive way for them to make their point, to win supporters, or to change the way white people treat Black people. It may have been emotionally satisfying for the activists, and it certainly drew a lot of media attention, but I don't think it was effective in changing the hearts of minds of their target audience.

[Gabriela]

I'm curious what you teach? And what you see as your goal or role in teaching students how to make arguments? As I see it, they may believe in aliens, but as long as their airplanes get them from Point A to Point B, they're happy. In other words, I tend to be a philosophical pragmatist in the sense that I think people believe in ideas that are useful to them...if a certain god protects a certain city, you're gonna cultivate your sacrifices and temples to that god. Philosophers may be the exception (maybe not), but hardly anyone in society wants to be a philosopher. As long as a student learns how to design airplanes or take apart a car or build a marketing plan, what they believe about aliens has no bearing on their success in society or as a professional, anymore than what they believe about God does. But I've never been a teacher so my perspective on this is mostly from the student perspective, that's why I'm interested in your philosophy of teaching.

I teach communication.  

My goal/role in teaching students to make arguments is twofold:

1. For them to be able to critically analyze their own opinions and assumptions, to see if they need changing (in their own estimation—I do not ever attempt to indoctrinate or brainwash or otherwise influence my students unethically).

2. For them to be able to defend their views intelligently in public discourse.

The first, I hope, contributes to their better development of their own belief system. It makes them question what they've always accepted, or think they're accepting on their own initiative when really they've just been brainwashed by someone (parents, the media, science, etc.).

The second, I hope, contributes to an improvement in American political and other civil discourse. Right now it's a freaking circus, where reason is banned and showmanship is all.

I am also a philosophical pragmatist, but "what works" depends on how wide you set your lens. If all you care about is financial success, then I suppose you can be an inferential moron and do just fine (in some jobs). But if being a thinking person and an informed citizen matters at all to you—or to society, and particularly to the maintenance of real democracy, which is founded on rational public discourse—then you will not do just fine, because eventually you'll be a slave either to your own idiocy or to an authoritarian state, or both.

There is also something to simply developing the human person. Although the state university system clearly doesn't prioritize this anymore, Catholicism does. So again, just teaching enough to get people jobs is insufficient. You must teach them enough for them to be fulfilled human beings. And that takes a lifetime.  

My philosophy of teaching is basically Parker Palmer's. He's my greatest influence. I find it impossible to do what he did in the R1 system, but I dream of a day that I can actually rally my students around some topic we're all passionate about. Where I'm at now, the only things most students are passionate about are getting an 'A' at any cost and doing it with the least amount of learning and effort possible. That "works" in this system—but only if you see getting the piece of paper and the job as the only goals. (Surely, once you get into the job, someone's going to notice you're an idiot. In fact, someone already has: http://www.wsj.com/articles/test-finds-many-students-ill-prepared-to-enter-work-force-1421432744)

BTW: In my experience, a whole lot more people want to be philosophers than society is willing to create jobs for. That in and of itself is a shame, because philosophers are—potentially—the very best people to teach the skills that today's students most lack. That's a whole different topic, though.

Edited November 18, 2015 by Gabriela

[Era Might]

I teach communication.  

My goal/role in teaching students to make arguments is twofold:

1. For them to be able to critically analyze their own opinions and assumptions, to see if they need changing (in their own estimation—I do not ever attempt to indoctrinate or brainwash or otherwise influence my students unethically).

2. For them to be able to defend their views intelligently in public discourse.

The first, I hope, contributes to their better development of their own belief system. It makes them question what they've always accepted, or think they're accepting on their own initiative when really they've just been brainwashed by someone (parents, the media, science, etc.).

The second, I hope, contributes to an improvement in American political and other civil discourse. Right now it's a freaking circus, where reason is banned and showmanship is all.

I am also a philosophical pragmatist, but "what works" depends on how wide you set your lens. If all you care about is financial success, then I suppose you can be an inferential moron and do just fine (in some jobs). But if being a thinking person and an informed citizen matters at all to you—or to society, and particularly to the maintenance of real democracy, which is founded on rational public discourse—then you will not do just fine, because eventually you'll be a slave either to your own idiocy or to an authoritarian state, or both.

There is also something to simply developing the human person. Although the state university system clearly doesn't prioritize this anymore, Catholicism does. So again, just teaching enough to get people jobs is insufficient. You must teach them enough for them to be fulfilled human beings. And that takes a lifetime.  

My philosophy of teaching is basically Parker Palmer's. He's my greatest influence. I find it impossible to do what he did in the R1 system, but I dream of a day that I can actually rally my students around some topic we're all passionate about. Where I'm at now, the only things most students are passionate about are getting an 'A' at any cost and doing it with the least amount of learning and effort possible. That "works" in this system—but only if you see getting the piece of paper and the job as the only goals. (Surely, once you get into the job, someone's going to notice you're an idiot. In fact, someone already has: http://www.wsj.com/articles/test-finds-many-students-ill-prepared-to-enter-work-force-1421432744)

BTW: In my experience, a whole lot more people want to be philosophers than society is willing to create jobs for. That in and of itself is a shame, because philosophers are—potentially—the very best people to teach the skills that today's students most lack. That's a whole different topic, though.

Wow, fascinating, thanks. And I hadn't heard of Parker Palmer, he sounds interesting from what I just read on Wikipedia.

Your direct aim, I imagine, is to deal with whatever the class is about, but you're really trying to accomplish something that is essentially miraculous: to open up people's minds to themselves and help them come into their human capacities and use them consciously and creatively. Your point about Catholicism shows why: it's essentially a religious mission, to reveal people to themselves. And I think you're absolutely right in your vision, but on the flip side, I think what you're aspiring toward is bound to be frustrated, because true religion, like true education, cannot be institutionalized. I'm interested in reading more of Parker Palmer, because I see he's a Quaker, part of that antinomian strain in 19th century American reform.

My thinking on this was mainly influenced by a Catholic priest named Ivan Illich whose theme was the institutionalization of the good...his most famous book was "Deschooling Society" in the 70s, but after those "development" years (which he criticized fiercely) he focused more on history and theology and looked at the roots of Western institutions, which he saw in the institutionalization of the Gospel, the basis of modern institutions like schools, hospitals, etc. In the church's historical attempts to control and institutionalize grace and sin, he saw "the corruption of the best which becomes the worst" (an old Latin phrase he liked to quote). With hospitals, for example, he writes:

 

To believe in sin, therefore, is to celebrate, as a gift beyond full understanding, the fact that one is being forgiven. Contrition is the sweet glorification of the new relationship for which the Samaritan stands, a relationship which is free, and therefore vulnerable and fragile, but was always capable of healing, just as nature was then conceived as always in the process of healing. But this new relationship, as I have said, was also subject to institutionalization, and that was what began as the Church achieved official status within the Roman Empire. In the early years of Christianity, it was customary in a Christian household to have an extra mattress, a bit of a candle, and some dry bread in case, in case the Lord Jesus should knock at the door in the form of a stranger without a roof--a form of behavior that was utterly foreign to any of the cultures of the Roman Empire. You took in your own but not someone lost in the street. Then the Emperor Constantine recognized the Church, and Christian bishops acquired the same position in the imperial administration as magistrates, so that when Augustine [354-430] wrote to a Roman judge about a legal issue, he wrote as a social equal. They also gained the power to establish social organizations. And the first corporations they started were Samaritan corporations which designated certain categories of people as preferred neighbors. For example, the bishops created special houses, financed by the community, that were charged with taking care of people without a home. Such care was no longer the free choice of the householder; it was the task of an institution. Father John Chrysostom [347?-407] railed. He was called golden-tongued because of his beautiful rhetoric, and, in one of his sermons, he warned against creating one of these "xenodocheia," literally "houses for foreigners." By assigning the duty to behave in this way to an institution, he said, Christians would lose the habit of reserving a bed and having a piece of bread ready in every home, and their houses would cease to be Christian homes.

Let me tell you a story I heard from the late Jean Danielou, when he was already an old man. Danielou was a Jesuit and a very learned scriptural and Patristic scholar, who had lived in China and baptized people there. One of these converts was so happy that he had been accepted into the Church that he promised to make a pilgrimage from Peking to Rome on foot. This was just before the Second World War. And that pilgrim, when he met Danielou again in Rome, told him the story of his journey. At first, it was quite easy, he said. In China he only had to identify himself as a pilgrim, someone whose walk was oriented to a sacred place, and he was given food, a handout, and a place to sleep. This changed a little bit when he entered the territory of Orthodox Christianity. There they told him to go to the parish house, where a place was free, or to the priest's house. Then he got to Poland, the first Catholic country, and he found that the Polish Catholics generously gave him money to put himself up in a cheap hotel. It is the glorious Christian and Western idea that there should be institutions, preferably not just hotels but special flophouses, available for people who need a place to sleep. In this way the attempt to be open to all who are in need results in a degradation of hospitality and its replacement by caregiving institution.

Anyway, I give all this background because I was struck by your point about Catholicism, which I think is absolutely right, but I would suggest that the modern school and the institutional church are not opposite examples, but are shadows of each other. And I say this not to make a cheap point against either of them, only to point out why I think your vision for teaching is completely admirable but also completely doomed. The students you teach may be functionally ignorant of higher thought, but it's not because our institutions are degraded. We have the finest universities in the history of the world, doing all kinds of unbelievable research, but that's because institutions are narrowly focused. They are geared to focus, specialize, and assign one some specific task or question or problem. I recently read Walker Percy's novel "The Moviegoer," and one of his themes is the difference between "research" and what he calls "the search." People involved in research are focused on all kinds of specific questions and answers, and it's precisely that which makes "the search" impossible, because the search is like being lost, completely unaware of who or where you are, that's the only way to find anything.

I think critical thinking is great, we could use more of it, but I don't think that is solves our "brainwashing" or just our general ignorance. Institutions are created to create a fixed process...in the case of universities, the fixed process is the scientific method and other technical training, in whatever field. Being a good citizen is a worthy aspiration, but the university is hardly the place to learn how to be a good citizen. Which is not to say the university is useless, just that the noble vision of teaching that you have, which I do really think is noble, is not really "teaching" in the strict sense. You are involved in the work of consciousness, which takes place in prisons just as well as it does in schools...because the institution is irrelevant, really, in that work. And maybe I'm just a little more pessimistic than you lol, because I don't think the maintenance of our democracy depends, really, on a nation of critical thinkers...it runs just fine with a nation of National Enquirer readers, a nation of Republicans, a nation of Democrats, etc. So I'd say I'm pessimistic, but not cynical...which is why I think your aspiration if noble, even if it's bound to be frustrated, because that's the nature of religion...it's an enterprise for fools, like the Good Samaritan, the greatest fool in history.

Edited November 19, 2015 by Era Might

[NadaTeTurbe]

Thank you, Era and Gabriela for this discussion. It's very interesting  

[Luigi]

Here's a link to an interview by Dominic Bouck, OP with Dr. Jonathan Haidt, who co-wrote (with Greg Lukianoff) the article "The Coddling of the American Mind," which was published in The Atlantic. Interestingly, the interview took place before the demonstrations at the University of Missouri, Yale, Dartmouth, and Claremont-McKenna. The article mentions other titles (articles and books) on the same topic, for those interested in reading further.

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/11/the-revenge-of-the-coddled-an-interview-with-jonathan-haidt

[Gabriela]

On 11/19/2015, 2:26:56, Era Might said:

 

Wow, fascinating, thanks. And I hadn't heard of Parker Palmer, he sounds interesting from what I just read on Wikipedia.

Your direct aim, I imagine, is to deal with whatever the class is about, but you're really trying to accomplish something that is essentially miraculous: to open up people's minds to themselves and help them come into their human capacities and use them consciously and creatively. Your point about Catholicism shows why: it's essentially a religious mission, to reveal people to themselves. And I think you're absolutely right in your vision, but on the flip side, I think what you're aspiring toward is bound to be frustrated, because true religion, like true education, cannot be institutionalized. I'm interested in reading more of Parker Palmer, because I see he's a Quaker, part of that antinomian strain in 19th century American reform.

My thinking on this was mainly influenced by a Catholic priest named Ivan Illich whose theme was the institutionalization of the good...his most famous book was "Deschooling Society" in the 70s, but after those "development" years (which he criticized fiercely) he focused more on history and theology and looked at the roots of Western institutions, which he saw in the institutionalization of the Gospel, the basis of modern institutions like schools, hospitals, etc. In the church's historical attempts to control and institutionalize grace and sin, he saw "the corruption of the best which becomes the worst" (an old Latin phrase he liked to quote). With hospitals, for example, he writes:

 

Anyway, I give all this background because I was struck by your point about Catholicism, which I think is absolutely right, but I would suggest that the modern school and the institutional church are not opposite examples, but are shadows of each other. And I say this not to make a cheap point against either of them, only to point out why I think your vision for teaching is completely admirable but also completely doomed. The students you teach may be functionally ignorant of higher thought, but it's not because our institutions are degraded. We have the finest universities in the history of the world, doing all kinds of unbelievable research, but that's because institutions are narrowly focused. They are geared to focus, specialize, and assign one some specific task or question or problem. I recently read Walker Percy's novel "The Moviegoer," and one of his themes is the difference between "research" and what he calls "the search." People involved in research are focused on all kinds of specific questions and answers, and it's precisely that which makes "the search" impossible, because the search is like being lost, completely unaware of who or where you are, that's the only way to find anything.

I think critical thinking is great, we could use more of it, but I don't think that is solves our "brainwashing" or just our general ignorance. Institutions are created to create a fixed process...in the case of universities, the fixed process is the scientific method and other technical training, in whatever field. Being a good citizen is a worthy aspiration, but the university is hardly the place to learn how to be a good citizen. Which is not to say the university is useless, just that the noble vision of teaching that you have, which I do really think is noble, is not really "teaching" in the strict sense. You are involved in the work of consciousness, which takes place in prisons just as well as it does in schools...because the institution is irrelevant, really, in that work. And maybe I'm just a little more pessimistic than you lol, because I don't think the maintenance of our democracy depends, really, on a nation of critical thinkers...it runs just fine with a nation of National Enquirer readers, a nation of Republicans, a nation of Democrats, etc. So I'd say I'm pessimistic, but not cynical...which is why I think your aspiration if noble, even if it's bound to be frustrated, because that's the nature of religion...it's an enterprise for fools.

I absolutely agree with you. Our institutions are "over-institutionalized". I'm a strong proponent of homeschooling and autodidacticism. Your comment also reminded me strongly of a feeling that I've had for years, that a welfare state reduces people's sense of obligation to help others. When I was in Germany, I had some American roommates who used to chide me for giving to beggars. "They're supposed to go to the social services office!" Okay, fine, but that doesn't reduce my obligation.

I also think I can get on board with Catholicism being over-institutionalized, to the point that people feel that "the Church" is supposed to do things, not the people who ARE the Church. I wouldn't say that religion is an enterprise for fools, though, because I don't think of religion as necessarily institutionalized or un-institutionalized. It is what we make it. And I agree that we ought to make it more personal, as we ought to make education.

Back when we had status updates, did you never see my endless stream of frustrated teacher comments? Of course what I'm trying to do is doomed. Both my students and the system itself resist it. But it's what I think real education is, and so I try, frustrating as that is. What I do is essentially a religious mission: I try to free something that's already inside of my students, that's been trapped and is being suffocated there by the way they think and live. And of course, I have heard of Ivan Illich, though never read him at length. You should look also into Neil Postman. He wrote a book with Seth Godin that's available online in PDF format, called "Stop Stealing Dreams". I think you'd enjoy that.

Research is exactly as you say. And I do think there's value in research, from a macro-perspective, i.e., at the level of society. But at the level of the individual, research can smell of elderberries your life away, or as you say, can smell of elderberries you away from "the search". We (researchers) have to keep constantly in mind that research is NOT life, and that there are other ways of experiencing and knowing that we ought to seek out, other questions we ought to consider aside from the ones we can empirically verify. But I don't think many researchers do this (although certainly many more in the liberal arts than in the sciences), and I admit it's often hard for me. That's what comes of being in a system.

The one place I disagree is in the idea that our democracy is running just fine as it is. I can't agree with that!

Edited November 24, 2015 by Gabriela

[Not The Philosopher]

Late to this party, but here's another worthwhile article: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/

 

 

[Gabriela]

17 minutes ago, Not The Philosopher said:

Late to this party, but here's another worthwhile article: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/11/24/the-yale-problem-begins-in-high-school/

This is a good article. My favorite parts:

"all students at Centerville High learn to engage with books, ideas, and people using the twin habits of defensive self-censorship and vindictive protectiveness.

....

As long as many of our elite prep schools are turning out students who have only known eggshells and anger, whose social cognition is limited to a single dimension of victims and victimizers, and who demand safe spaces and trigger warnings, it’s hard to imagine how any university can open their minds and prepare them to converse respectfully with people who don’t share their values."

Thanks for sharing, NTP!

Edited November 25, 2015 by Gabriela