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So, over the weekend I gave my students an assignment to come up with a "dangerous idea". The assignment was given after having them read and discuss several essays off of the Edge Foundations website where scientists, professors, and researchers answered the same question.We read one about basing government on empathy, another about how we are all genetically inclined to murder, and other's about science, religion, and psychology. I thought it might be interesting to see what the students came up with.
Some students did a really good job. One suggested that we should all walk around naked. Then we couldn't create these false images of what the human body should look like and people wouldn't feel the need to spend so much money on clothes. Another said we should use the tax dollars in place to bulid the border fence and, instead, invest in Mexican companies and support their government's social programs. Some students just had observations, saying we should pay more attention to our telepathic abilities or what if we didn't have a history of violence and racism? But a good number of students, maybe a quarter of the ones who actually did the assignment, were just cruel. Several railed agianst the jail system, saying that prisoners should have no rights or privelges, that prison is just like living in the world except you can't leave. (I teach in a prison. Believe me, that is not the case.) Another said that we should take all the non-violent criminals and make them fight in Iraq. If they can prove themselves as loyal and patriotic then they don't have to finish their sentence.
The worst one, though, was the student who didn't have the guts to bring up the idea in class. During class the student said the dangerous idea was to put normal looking people on TV instead of beautiful people. Her paper was about how all government funding for the poor and homeless was a waist because they didn't appreciate the money enough.
I don't understand how these students can refuse so adamantly to step into another person's shoes. These students who go to a private university while receiving government loans and scholarships talk about how prisoners and the homeless guzzle up all the tax dollars. These students who smoke pot and drink under age consider every person in jail as evil and untrustworthy, and every homeless person lazy and stupid. These students talk about how illegeal immigrants and people on welfare don't appreicate enough the help they are given, yet these students don't show up to class half the time. Plus, a good number are taking the class over again because they failed it last semester. So who is it that doesn't appreciate the opportunities handed to them by the government?
Oh, and did I mention this is a Baptist university? While this won't suprise most people, it makes my job more frustrating. In the same breath that they condemn every person in prison, they discuss how God saved them from a life of sin. During the same half hour we discuss how illegal aliens don't belong in the country and shouldn't be allowed to use our hospitals, they talk about how the love of Christ has changed them forever.
While I may seem bitter at the moment, the fact is I'm actually quite opptimistic. I really believe that with one essay, one story, one moment when these students truely step outside themselves and see from another person's point of view, their whole lives will change. It won't be obvious or immediate, but when you look at the world from someone else's perspetive, just once, you can't help but do it again and again and again. Hopefully, this journal will keep offering up those perspectives.
5 comments:
Dude, I feel your pain. Kudos to you for fighting the good fight. But I think you're right to be optimistic. After all, they didn't land on this meanness on their own: it's been a powerful force in our culture for the last thirty years or so. I think it's starting to change - even if you've been told people who are down on their luck are there because they're bad, if you look at Iraq or Katrina, most people aren't so cold as to think anyone deserves *that.*
Nice blog. I like reading about teaching!
I think the one element that is missing in the students' conceptualization of the assignment is the understanding that "dangerous idea" in this case means going against the status quo. It seems the students whose responses to the assignment were in a way disappointing or shocking don't realize they are actually just going along with an already existing and pervasive mentality. They might just be taking it to the next level, but I don't find that dangerous in the same way as those students whose ideas show that they would attempt to completely overturn an existing, governing ideology.
At the same time, as young college students, it is very difficult to break through the egocentrism, especially in our culture, regardless of religious affiliation, as well as to break through the teachings of some of their greatest influences - their parents.
Perhaps an exercise in exploring the root of their ideologies would be helpful. As I tell my students, it's okay to think that way, as long as you understand where it comes from, and truly embrace not only the source and the message, but the ramifications of its outcome. The word "embrace" is a good one, in its most literal meaning, because I doubt even Hitler would have wanted to embrace the bodies of each and every individual who was murdered under his reign. (Though for your student who proposed we all walk around naked, I think I wouldn't suggest the literal...)
Best~
Denise,
I'm glad you like our blog. And, I really like your comment about embracing those ideas they are proposing. Especially when it comes to people.
I will have my students "embrace" something when we come back from Spring Break and I'll post about how it goes.
Just don't tell them to embrace anything *during* Spring Break.
I'm not so sure that this is a recent phenomenon limited to our society. I recently read The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. The behavior you described has been measured for decades, since the 50s when social psychologists decided to look for this stuff.
Basically, we each have the tendency to believe that he or she is better than the average person. Thus your students, who are here on loans and grants and smoke pot and have taken courses over, have a natural tendency to see themselves as being "above" or "better" than your average poor person living on government money and nonviolent criminal.
(The effect was measured, for example, when Milgram ran his famous experiments. [Sorry, Google him for more info.] He asked a panel of psychs: What's the likelihood we'll see people administer the highest level of shock to the student. They said nearly zero. The numbers, depending on variables in the experiment, ranged from 60% to 90% across the globe. Better yet, if you ask your average person, very few people would say that they'd fall in that 60% to 90%. Thus: we each tend to see ourselves as better than average.)
Also, don't let the fact that they're going to a Baptist university fool you one way or the other. One of the experiments described in Zimbardo's book, in a tiny nutshell: Priests at a seminary were charged with a task: present a powerful sermon on the Good Samaritan to a group of psychologists on the other side of campus for an important study on the nature of helping others. Some priests were given this task with very little time to get across campus. Some were given more time. The ones who were in a rush all ignored a man (a plant by the experimenters) in evident distress. The ones who had enough time to get where they were going stopped and helped the man.
The main lesson of the book being, of course, how easily situation overrides disposition.
BTW, I'm not excusing your students' behavior. It'd be a good thing to confront these attitudes. I'm just saying, be aware that this isn't a recent phenomenon, and it is one we are all susceptible to.
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