I always loved teaching students about the Oedipus Complex and watching them stare at me in stunned disbelief. Some guy made this up, and other people BELIEVED it? Yes, boys and girls; this is why you should stay out of the hands of any therapist who describes themselves as a strict Freudian. :-)
I'm glad to hear you're teaching your students that the right and appropriate response to mistakes, especially in the sciences, is to hold them up for ridicule and publicly mock whoever advanced the wrong idea. That's a particularly vital lesson that they learn, and it's best they learn it by example from an authority figure who is responsible for grading their intellectual work and correcting them in the classroom.
There are so many fine flowers of this lesson! Where would we be if our students didn't learn that getting one's jollies by laughing at people for being stupid is a totally reasonable and appropriate way of interacting with our fellow humans - as they can tell because it's completely sanctioned by their instructors? And, heavens, what might it do to the sciences if our students weren't brought up to understand that authority figures will tell them which theorists are socially acceptible to take seriously? Or if they weren't trained that face validity is all the validity they need in evaluating a scientific claim? It's important they learn that if a scientific claim sounds strange or absurd to them as lay people without any real basis to evaluate it, then it is entirely reasonable for them to dismiss it out of hand because really science never says anything surprising, counterintuitive, or at odds with common sense.
Make no mistake: this valuable lesson you are teaching has profound roots. Arguably the whole of Western civilization rests on it. How can our students understand the elevated and elect place European thought has had on the world stage, if they do not grasp the idea of Progress, and its concommitant idea that all scholarship and study prior to our present paradigms is risibly ignorant and primative? If they are not socialized to understand that we now are much superior to our predecessors and the proper relations to have with them are contempt and dismissal, how will they understand how to relate to other races?
And speaking as someone in the social sciences, I truly look forward to encountering students such as yours when they move in professional circles, already coached to anxiously look to authority figures to tell them which theories are acceptably fashionable; to sneer with joyful abandon at their colleagues and coworkers; to revel in publicly humiliating their own grad students, lab techs, and interns; and to treat every challenge or correction to their own work as a death threat. No doubt it will be a rare pleasure to work with them.
P.S. I trust you enjoy being served the dish you brought.
My, aren't you quick to rush to judgement, all based on a short, tongue-in-cheek post on a social networking site. You might want to spend some time thinking about that...
(no subject)
It's been a week and I'm still thinking about your comment
There are so many fine flowers of this lesson! Where would we be if our students didn't learn that getting one's jollies by laughing at people for being stupid is a totally reasonable and appropriate way of interacting with our fellow humans - as they can tell because it's completely sanctioned by their instructors? And, heavens, what might it do to the sciences if our students weren't brought up to understand that authority figures will tell them which theorists are socially acceptible to take seriously? Or if they weren't trained that face validity is all the validity they need in evaluating a scientific claim? It's important they learn that if a scientific claim sounds strange or absurd to them as lay people without any real basis to evaluate it, then it is entirely reasonable for them to dismiss it out of hand because really science never says anything surprising, counterintuitive, or at odds with common sense.
Make no mistake: this valuable lesson you are teaching has profound roots. Arguably the whole of Western civilization rests on it. How can our students understand the elevated and elect place European thought has had on the world stage, if they do not grasp the idea of Progress, and its concommitant idea that all scholarship and study prior to our present paradigms is risibly ignorant and primative? If they are not socialized to understand that we now are much superior to our predecessors and the proper relations to have with them are contempt and dismissal, how will they understand how to relate to other races?
And speaking as someone in the social sciences, I truly look forward to encountering students such as yours when they move in professional circles, already coached to anxiously look to authority figures to tell them which theories are acceptably fashionable; to sneer with joyful abandon at their colleagues and coworkers; to revel in publicly humiliating their own grad students, lab techs, and interns; and to treat every challenge or correction to their own work as a death threat. No doubt it will be a rare pleasure to work with them.
P.S. I trust you enjoy being served the dish you brought.
Re: It's been a week and I'm still thinking about your comment