Comment by apatters | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apatters | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree strenuously and I believe the piece will be damaging to the intellectual future of your students.

The title is "Seeking Truth" but the author doesn't appear to be doing that. A more accurate title would be "Declaring Truth Without Supporting My Claims!"

- Author makes an extraordinary, vague, unfalsifiable claim that "America is Broken," but does not provide extraordinary or rigorous evidence

- Author makes the further claim that it's all the fault of Republicans, again providing little in the way of evidence

- Author appeals to the authority of science, but doesn't apply the rigor of good science to his own arguments; we are ironically expected to take his own claims on faith

For the most part this article is just another piece of incendiary rhetoric with little compelling evidence of anything, all it adds to the debate is emotion.

The author should narrow the scope of his claims and address opposing viewpoints in good faith if he wishes to construct a credible argument.

If this shit passes for academic nowadays, no wonder a growing number of Americans feel we no longer need academia.

Teach your students a dialectical method instead, where opposing and specific viewpoints are presented with the requirement to make a rational, evidence-based defense of their positions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

"damaging to the intellectual future of your students"

This might be true, if the teaching environment suppresses criticism of material presented. This is not what is supposed to happen, though: materials should be presented as an opportunity for critical evaluation and the multiplicity of views presented by students should provide the dialectical input needed, possibly supplemeted by interjections by the instructor if the students are showing groupthink. This is better that presenting two opposite claims and leaving it to the students to figure out on their own if one of them is correct. (Usually neither is entirely, and in real life, not every pirce of information comes helpfully accompanied by an appropriately matched opposing viewpoint).

You're quick to assume the worst. Why is that?

Not to disagree with your overall point, but Marcuse wrote about plurality as a poor substitute for critical thought in the 60s:

"Now in recalling John Stuart Mill's passage, I drew attention to the premise hidden in this assumption: free and equal discussion can fulfill the function attributed to it only if it is rational expression and development of independent thinking, free from indoctrination, manipulation, extraneous authority. The notion of pluralism and countervailing powers is no substitute for this requirement. One might in theory construct a state in which a multitude of different pressures, interests, and authorities balance each other out and result in a truly general and rational interest. However, such a construction badly fits a society in which powers are and remain unequal and even increase their unequal weight when they run their own course. It fits even worse when the variety of pressures unifies and coagulates into an overwhelming whole, integrating the particular countervailing powers by virtue of an increasing standard of living and an increasing concentration of power."

The instructor's interjections provide a look-in here, but the whole presupposition is that the students have learned and sufficiently refined the capacity for critical thought inside and outside the classroom setting.

It is, of course, not any kind of substitute for critical thought. But the GP referenced dialectic by way of arguing for contrary materials to be presented in class: my point was that a living argument among the students is better for teaching dialectic than a curated selection of contrary views. The responsibility of the instructor goes beyond this elementary requirement for ensuring multiple viewpoints are presented.

Pluralism alone works somewhat counter to the original spirit of dissent - it means assent to one of the available groups. Which will ultimately lead to conflict unless mediated, and in conflict, bigger (or louder, or richer) usually wins, and takes all.

That is if you assume that critical thinking is a goal of this educational system, not producing malleable effective work drones cheaply, or the slightly loftier goal of making sure USA stays ahead in advanced technologies.

It has other aims too, like reducing crime indirectly and allegedly making social mobility more possible.

Neither from which critical thinking skills requirement follows directly.

If it were cultivating American spirit of dissent combined with cooperation and multicultural integration, the critical thinking, analysis and reading skills could follow from that. But this seems to have fallen by the wayside...

Dissent without critical thinking leads to quarrel, anarchy and dissolution.

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