easier to maintain discipline (to keep the class quiet and make sure everyone is really doing the exercises)? I think both these effects are helpful
I realize and confess that my sentiments are unusual, that my thinking on this subject is grossly distorted by ideology and therefore not to be trusted, and that I don’t myself know how to set up a learning environment that will actually work for actual children, but I must beg the community’s forgiveness, because I want to say this anyway: I think this ideal of “discipline” causes tremendous harm (which of course I understand is not to say that it doesn’t also have benefits, but those benefits are not the subject of this comment). I consider it a monstrous tragedy that so many millions of people grow up (as I grew up) without any conceptual distinction between learning important things and being enrolled in a school and obeying the commands of the designated “teacher”, with no idea of there being a difference between morality and obedience.
Personally, I’ve mostly recovered from this phenomenon to my satisfaction. I now have an explicit notion that it is morally righteous to learn great ideas and train useful skills, and some experience of the pleasures and satisfactions to be had from these endeavors—which is not to boast that I’m doing well; I would never be so delusionally arrogant as to think that I’m doing well—but I think I’m doing far better than I was before I learned these ideas. It certainly seems so when I contrast myself to my fellow undergraduate students. Last semester at community college, I witnessed a student passionately arguing with an instructor that surely his paper deserved an A- rather than a B+. (I’m given to understand this is not an uncommon occurrence.) I imagine there are many who would take such incidents as evidence that there’s not nearly enough discipline in “our” schools: how insolent of a mere student to argue with an instructor! I, however, draw a different moral. I wanted to cry out to the student: Don’t you see how silly this is? Your work, your creation is already good or already bad, no matter what letter the instructor writes on it afterwards! But perhaps it was I who was being silly. The student, of course, didn’t care about good writing; he just wanted to get into the University of California at Berkeley. That was the highest goal he had been trained to aspire to, from the days when his elementary-school caretakers rewarded him for being quiet and doing what all the other children were doing. Again, I do not claim that I know how society should be organized; any particular reform or revolution I might propose could very well just make things worse. But can I at least say that it’s sad to see entire generations of human minds systematically crippled in this way?---because it’s sad.
We obviously use the word “discipline” to mean different things. For me it’s something like “stop talking loudly while the teacher is trying to explain a difficult concept to your classmates”.
As an illustration, here is a quote from my favourite blog about teaching:
A teacher in a British school is likely to be used to starting to do something, even something as simple as speaking, and having to stop what they are doing due to deliberate disobedience. If you are not a teacher it might be hard to imagine how frustrating this defiance is. I can only suggest that you imagine that feeling you get when you are in a traffic jam on an important journey. Now imagine how you feel when you think the traffic is starting to move on, only for it to grind to a halt a second later, and imagine that happening repeatedly for hours on end. Now imagine how you feel when you realise that the hold-up is not actually due to an accident ahead, or a busy road, but is in fact due to somebody (probably a caravan owner) deliberately driving at 10mph in front of you and not letting anyone overtake. Now imagine that you are trapped in this situation for two dozen hours a week. Finally, imagine that every so often your boss drives up to your window and tells you that if you are trapped in a traffic jam it must be because you are a crap driver. If you can imagine that, then you have some idea how frustrating it feels to be a teacher.
Are you familiar with the signaling theory of education? I think that, properly considered, it makes sense of a lot of the things you find so aggravating.
Sort of (if ability is hard to directly observe, but higher-ability people find it easier to obtain credentials, then there could be an equilibrium where one needs a credential in order to be taken seriously, even if the process of obtaining the credential doesn’t actually do anything), but not in any substantive detail. But really (notwithstanding a book I had daydreamed of writing), it’s probably better that I don’t look into it. As I keep telling myself (and keep neglecting to take my own advice), it’s much healthier to just focus on doing good intellectual work, rather than waste any more precious time and emotional energy continuing to feel pointlessly bitter and resentful that “society” (whatever that means) doesn’t care about the sorts of things I consider good work.
(Speaking of healthy working habits, I’m going to try taking out a $20 StickK contract and putting “127.0.0.1 lesswrong.com\n127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com\n127.0.0.1 reddit.com″ in my /etc/hosts for 14 days to see if I can remember what it feels like to not be constantly distracted; wish me luck.)
I teach writing at a community college (I began in January), and I agree with this.
I wouldn’t see that student as a sign of poor discipline. If the student was arguing solely about the grade, then like you, I would see it as a waste of time and emotional energy—his and mine.
Incidentally, one of the things I like about the class I’m teaching is that, even before I got there, the syllabus was set up to get students thinking about their purposes in writing the various essays they write, and the purposes the authors of the assigned readings had. Many of my students aren’t getting further than “the purpose is to inform” (argh!) yet, but at least I have an opportunity to teach the difference between instrumental goals and terminal goals.
(Meta-discourse note: some time after writing the parent, I worried that I had worded it far too harshly. I usually try to keep most of my comments here very close to being emotionally neutral, on the grounds it’s better to err on the side of being Spock-like than to risk letting my passion tempt me into saying something obviously wrong or harmful (which has happened a few times). But given the karma count and lack of disapproving replies to the parent, perhaps I didn’t actually do so poorly by making an exception this time? Maybe I should even update a little bit in the direction of thinking that it’s okay to express emotion sometimes, as long as you clearly explain what you’re doing? I’m not sure.)
[Edited to add: Actually, I still feel guilty about being non-nice, so I’ve edited out the two instances of cusswords, which, while entertaining, didn’t actually add any substantive content.]
I realize and confess that my sentiments are unusual, that my thinking on this subject is grossly distorted by ideology and therefore not to be trusted, and that I don’t myself know how to set up a learning environment that will actually work for actual children, but I must beg the community’s forgiveness, because I want to say this anyway: I think this ideal of “discipline” causes tremendous harm (which of course I understand is not to say that it doesn’t also have benefits, but those benefits are not the subject of this comment). I consider it a monstrous tragedy that so many millions of people grow up (as I grew up) without any conceptual distinction between learning important things and being enrolled in a school and obeying the commands of the designated “teacher”, with no idea of there being a difference between morality and obedience.
Personally, I’ve mostly recovered from this phenomenon to my satisfaction. I now have an explicit notion that it is morally righteous to learn great ideas and train useful skills, and some experience of the pleasures and satisfactions to be had from these endeavors—which is not to boast that I’m doing well; I would never be so delusionally arrogant as to think that I’m doing well—but I think I’m doing far better than I was before I learned these ideas. It certainly seems so when I contrast myself to my fellow undergraduate students. Last semester at community college, I witnessed a student passionately arguing with an instructor that surely his paper deserved an A- rather than a B+. (I’m given to understand this is not an uncommon occurrence.) I imagine there are many who would take such incidents as evidence that there’s not nearly enough discipline in “our” schools: how insolent of a mere student to argue with an instructor! I, however, draw a different moral. I wanted to cry out to the student: Don’t you see how silly this is? Your work, your creation is already good or already bad, no matter what letter the instructor writes on it afterwards! But perhaps it was I who was being silly. The student, of course, didn’t care about good writing; he just wanted to get into the University of California at Berkeley. That was the highest goal he had been trained to aspire to, from the days when his elementary-school caretakers rewarded him for being quiet and doing what all the other children were doing. Again, I do not claim that I know how society should be organized; any particular reform or revolution I might propose could very well just make things worse. But can I at least say that it’s sad to see entire generations of human minds systematically crippled in this way?---because it’s sad.
[Slightly edited from original version]
We obviously use the word “discipline” to mean different things. For me it’s something like “stop talking loudly while the teacher is trying to explain a difficult concept to your classmates”.
As an illustration, here is a quote from my favourite blog about teaching:
Are you familiar with the signaling theory of education? I think that, properly considered, it makes sense of a lot of the things you find so aggravating.
Sort of (if ability is hard to directly observe, but higher-ability people find it easier to obtain credentials, then there could be an equilibrium where one needs a credential in order to be taken seriously, even if the process of obtaining the credential doesn’t actually do anything), but not in any substantive detail. But really (notwithstanding a book I had daydreamed of writing), it’s probably better that I don’t look into it. As I keep telling myself (and keep neglecting to take my own advice), it’s much healthier to just focus on doing good intellectual work, rather than waste any more precious time and emotional energy continuing to feel pointlessly bitter and resentful that “society” (whatever that means) doesn’t care about the sorts of things I consider good work.
(Speaking of healthy working habits, I’m going to try taking out a $20 StickK contract and putting “127.0.0.1 lesswrong.com\n127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com\n127.0.0.1 reddit.com″ in my /etc/hosts for 14 days to see if I can remember what it feels like to not be constantly distracted; wish me luck.)
I teach writing at a community college (I began in January), and I agree with this.
I wouldn’t see that student as a sign of poor discipline. If the student was arguing solely about the grade, then like you, I would see it as a waste of time and emotional energy—his and mine.
Incidentally, one of the things I like about the class I’m teaching is that, even before I got there, the syllabus was set up to get students thinking about their purposes in writing the various essays they write, and the purposes the authors of the assigned readings had. Many of my students aren’t getting further than “the purpose is to inform” (argh!) yet, but at least I have an opportunity to teach the difference between instrumental goals and terminal goals.
Fully agreed!
(Meta-discourse note: some time after writing the parent, I worried that I had worded it far too harshly. I usually try to keep most of my comments here very close to being emotionally neutral, on the grounds it’s better to err on the side of being Spock-like than to risk letting my passion tempt me into saying something obviously wrong or harmful (which has happened a few times). But given the karma count and lack of disapproving replies to the parent, perhaps I didn’t actually do so poorly by making an exception this time? Maybe I should even update a little bit in the direction of thinking that it’s okay to express emotion sometimes, as long as you clearly explain what you’re doing? I’m not sure.)
[Edited to add: Actually, I still feel guilty about being non-nice, so I’ve edited out the two instances of cusswords, which, while entertaining, didn’t actually add any substantive content.]