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Guile and Gullibility
Every semester, I teach American Government to 70 Freshmen. As part of the class, my students are required to review a book on American politics and, every semester, I observe the complete lack of guile my students have. Even the best students are ultimately quite gullible. They take everything they read at face value, some of them go so far as to deny that a book of facts can possibly have a point of view. This distresses me for what it says about how my students think about and understand the world.
Despite the name of the class, the three branches are, in fact, only a quarter of the class, and government itself probably only half. The remainder is a basic introduction to politics: public opinion, regime-types, parties, and so on. The class covers this much territory because, truly, the government of the United States doesn’t do so much to govern us as it is simply the mechanism through which the forces that do govern us — majoritarianism, elitism, media, interest groups — work, and the purpose of the class is to give students an idea of how these forces influence students so that they can be aware of their surroundings. It is all part of that ancient ethos about knowing thyself and, ideally, recognizing that you know nothing.
Everything we know is the result of an appeal to authority. Yes, even science, the authority of empiricism, is a much weaker foundation than many realize. The manipulation of knowledge is a simple and effective way of controlling other people. It needn’t be done intentionally or maliciously. In a democracy, public opinion itself can be quite powerful: what the public believes becomes what everyone believes in short order, and half of Americans can’t all be wrong, no? This terrified the Founders, who put great effort into preventing the formations of absolute majorities through federalism, separation of powers, the and First, Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. In the friction between competing authorities, Americans could suss-out the truth for themselves; but first Americans need to understand what is happening around them.
Hence, the book review I assign. I give my students three authorities — me, their textbook, and the book they are reading — and I ask them to evaluate the book, explaining its purpose, whether or not they are convinced, and how they justify their belief. The knowledge will still have its roots in an authority, but it should be justified belief, which is at least part of a definition of knowledge.
Overwhelmingly, they fail the task. Some stumble on the first point: unable to divine the purpose of a book, simply declaring it “factual.” Some stumble on the second. So many times my students declared a book “accurate” that I almost created a macro to ask “how do you know?” And as for justification? Well, if you can’t tell me what a book is about and whether it is right in the first place, what is there to justify? But even those who offer a justification, ultimately fall back on mere authority. They held their position because it was congruent with either the book they were reading (begging the question) or because they agreed with me (simply appealing to another authority). There was no sense of why the book was trustworthy; many of them implicitly thought the book trustworthy because it was right in the small factual details — thus, if it gets the small things right, it probably gets the big things right, but none explicitly argued this — or why I was trustworthy. They were simply authorities. (And don’t get me started on the cavalier attitude toward citation; if citations are an evidence chain, then nothing my students know is admissible anywhere.)
My students are not even willing to state on their own authority what they are currently feeling, that is how much they rely on outside authorities. And so they simply line-up with the authorities they like better without any real deliberation, thought, or judgment. How do they know what authorities they like better, given that they cannot even state their own preferences? I strongly suspect they get it from the first authorities they were placed under — which, if we’re lucky were their parents, but was probably TV and the broader culture — the very thing the Founders were trying to avoid.
It is dispiriting. There are things that students should simply be able to catch if they have been paying attention to the class. Most conspiracy theories should fall apart on the fact that the number of people necessary to keep the secret is far too large, and if the conspiracy was small enough not to be detected, then it would not have the power to implement itself in a country as decentralized as the US. And yet my students think these conspiracy theories they review — whether about the Bilderbergs, the FED, or someone else — are accurate. They believe JFK was murdered by a conspiracy of someone (precisely by whom depends on the book), yet most of these conspiracies are so large we would surely know about it.
In one paper, on Prohibition, the entire book was about how conservatives in the 1860-1880s wanted to impose Prohibition to reform society, end the long tradition American tradition of violence and alcoholism, and how this would improve society and help it progress socially. The phrasing of the review alone should have set off alarm bells: conservatives do not, as a rule, wish to end long traditions. Conservatives today might be interested in maintaining prohibition, but the people who wanted to do it in the 1860s and 1880s were rightly known as Progressives. To some extent, the book detailed the coalition (women and mainline Protestants) which also should have been a tip-off. I do not blame the student for not knowing this in advance, but the student should have at least noticed the incongruity — that groups not normally thought conservative, doing things not usually called conservative were being hung with monicker “conservative” — and at least felt that there was something wrong, even if the student could not put their finger on what.
The effect of this on my students, I do not know, but it infuriates me in two ways. First, that authors would engage in such misdirections in the first place — I teach my advanced students to be their own devil’s advocate and to qualify and caveat their claims for precisely this reason — and second that my students fall for it. And I don’t know how to teach them better to break out of it other than, when I return the reviews, to point out that they are all very gullible as nicely as I can.
Published in Culture, Education
Sorry for self-commenting so much -there is a lot to respond to.
An example from outside of my class, but still on my university:
In the school paper there was story about a forum held by our public safety and diversity offices about threats against Middle Eastern students from the surrounding community, where those students were reassured that the university was a safe place, and not xenophobic like our host community (I really hope that word choice was the reporter’s and not one of our department heads).
The students reporting the threats were not identified. The place where the threats were issued was not identified. It wasn’t even clear if the students reporting the threats were present at the meeting to explain what they’d seen.
Earlier in the week I had heard on facebook that a Middle Eastern students car had been shot up -literally, with bullets and buckshot -by someone in the greater community.
My students believed this. And it sounds possible -this is Midge’s point.
However. If someone had shot up a car on our campus, there would have been a news story about the event when it happened, not a week later response from the University. There would have been e-mails and cops, a police report. 16k people on this campus, someone would have heard the gunshots.
No one on campus asked these obvious questions. Instead we just insulted our hosts and now wonder why they don’t like us.
Except that we had, in fact, covered this point in the class. I’d have been ecstatic if the student had argued that the book was correct -the student would be wrong, but I’d still be ecstatic. What bothers me is the unthinking acceptance of the existing prior mindset and the inability to figure out that the book’s author, parsing this finely is doing so for a reason -either because they wish to make a limited and precise point, or because they are hiding something. Regardless, the purpose is not “to present facts.”
I think there’s something to this. I was a junior by the time I attained a firm grasp of the difference between liberal and conservative. I think it requires a knowledge of history and the fundamental principals of political thought that few 18-year-olds possess.
Regarding the need to appeal to authority, it’s required for success in K-12 education. Most classes are structured around “repeat after me” instruction and evaluation. Heck, that was most of my college experience too. (Yea, I went to a state school.) Freshmen can be forgiven for not knowing it’s acceptable to offer and defend their opinions.
Even if they’re inclined to share their opinions, they may feel that they shouldn’t because they can’t defend them convincingly. Most of us have lamented our inability to persuade intelligent and informed liberals of the merits of conservatism. How confident do you think a self-aware freshman will be that he can convince you of something you don’t already believe? They’re not wrong to conclude an appeal to authority is more likely to persuade.
What they haven’t figured out yet is that they’re lucky enough to have a teacher who expects more of them, and they should take advantage of it.
Yes. And yes. And in the case of my friend’s students, the conversion to Zinnism reflects simple disillusionment: Wait. My parents told me that the US was the city on a hill. But I think maybe we committed genocide. That means that not only are we NOT the city on a hill, but…maybe everything my parents taught me about this country (and, by extension, my faith) is wrong.
I’m simplifying to the point of absurdity, but I’m sure you get where I’m going with this. In the face of revisionism, the (completely understandable) impulse for many conservative, Christian parents is reactionary. And I just feel like…that is a mistaken impulse.
It’d be more accurate to say that 50% of the American public is below median intelligence. After all, if 9 people have an IQ of 100 and 1 has an IQ of 50, it’d be accurate to say that 90% of that group are above average intelligence.
Learning to judge books is a skill. Sabrdance, perhaps you need to wade in a bit more with your students’ reading assignments. Let them pick a book from a list to review first, and then you assign them another book that comes at the same topic from a different angle. So if, for sake of argument, the kids first reviewed D’Souza’s Reagan, the next book you’d assign would be Johnson’s Sleepwalking Through History.
Perhaps this bothers me less because it strikes me (and Jaynes, and Polanyi) that interpreting new data according to prior beliefs is more natural than using new data to call prior beliefs into question. (This is especially evident in the lab, where noisy data would constantly – and unjustifiably – be overturning well-established theory if there weren’t a presumption that error, and not some better theory, is usually the more likely explanation for disagreement between theory and data.)
Unthinking acceptance of what is “already known” is naturally baked into the learning process – it (justifiably) takes considerable persuasion to overturn it! You are persuasive, but maybe not so persuasive that they’d learn to change their priors the first time around. Which, on the bright side, means an unsuccessful first persuasion doesn’t make eventual persuasion hopeless.
Perhaps we are talking past each other, or perhaps we are in disagreement -I cannot tell. I understand the idea of linear processing -it is why I mentioned it in the OP. The authorities they listen to are the first authorities (or maybe just the most recent authorities, based on Layla’s comments) they hear. The entire purpose of a college education is to break that habit. The reason scientists accept well-established theories is supposed to be because they trust the method and because in making the theory well established, it was tested six ways to Sunday, and they have personal experience using the theory successfully.
My students do not have this justification.
And for that matter, lab science has the same falsification problem that social science does, so maybe that presumption of error should be jettisoned, too.
(And frankly, we put too much emphasis on experiments -Galileo didn’t just roll balls down ramps, he had a good theoretical explanation, too.)
I’m afraid you’re working against other professors. Deference to authority is a large part of the progressive project; all decisions should be made by The Experts, after all.
I’ll throw in my piece as a student on the other side of this, shall I?
The way classes work are as follows: You are given material. Memorize the reasonings. You will be tested on that. Know it.
Some of my compatriots at school recently took Engineering Ethics with the Honour’s College. Of all the courses in my degree plan, I am afraid of Engineering Ethics the most, but these students had problems for a different reason. They were asked, as you seem to be trying to make your students do, to argue the validity of various points, such as GMOs and Physician Assisted Death (which also comes with a cute acronym: PAD). One of the students was astonished to discover not everybody in favor of GMOs is evil and trying to kill the world.
That said, this particular professor, and indeed the Honour’s College as a whole, is the exception and not the rule. Outside of this class, there generally is one answer.
I suspect your students are just trying to know the answers you want, and will gladly parrot anything so long as they think it’ll get them a good grade.
What I’m trying to say is that students – and people (or learning machines) generally – don’t have to have that justification in order to think in that way.
Agreed. But in saying “we put too much emphasis on experiments”, you are agreeing with me that we rightfully interpret data in light of theories we already have.
Did I label the two as the same. I did not. They are different, I never said they were the same. But establishing some understanding of them would help anyone. Deductive and Inductive are truly not that hard when you think about it for a couple of seconds. One is based on creating absolute conclusions, about what is both logically consistent (truth preserving; valid) and also according to worldly data true (soundness). 2+2 always equals 4 for example (both truth preserving and true)
Inductive is about using your worldly experiences to create general rules of how the world works most of the time. You observe 9,000 black geese and conclude that all geese must be black. You see your 9,001th goose and it happens to be white you thus alter your conclusion to the vast majority of geese are black.
I won’t deny that such logic might be harder varying on the individual but they are both important.
In the “real(ish)” world, I often find that people will focus on the most limited objective consistent with an “assignment” (project). It may be that even bright students are taking the easiest path to “producing a required essay” because school is something to be endured instead of something enriching.
For ‘reasons’ I left college after one year, returning four years later. Upon my return, I found the whole thing much easier. Just an attitude shift on my part.
I definitely realize you did not say they were the same!
But to a layman believing that “logic” should mean something like “commonsense” or “plausibility”, formal logic can seem, well… a little illogical. (For example, it’s not uncommon for smart, honest people to harbor hostility toward inclusive “or” on the grounds that it just isn’t how real people typically use “or” in daily speech.)
And someone with formal training in deductive logic, but little-to-none in inductive logic may simply not be aware that his mastery of deduction contributes less than he realizes to good inductive or plausible reasoning.
And Sherlock Holmes’s usage of “deduction” did not clarify matters!
Oh, absolutely -laziness among especially the smartest students is entirely possible. I am reluctant to say that my colleagues are also encouraging this -certainly the ones in my department often voice the same complaints. I tend to think, as someone upthread noted, that students are really getting this in high school. Some of my colleagues blame the rise of standardized testing (and standardized written tests encourage BS-ing over good argument). I’m not quite willing to go there, and to the extent I am not for the same reasons.
Right, I understand why they have the bad habit, it remains a bad habit I am trying to break them of.
but that we questioned when we learned them first. My students are not investigating the theories when encountering them first.
I agree with you, but is this really an issue? How many times in informal language has someone said “either X or Y” and someone responded “or both.”
You are playing a bit fast and loose with “induction.” Formal induction is that an event happened today. It happened yesterday. It happened the day before, and so on into eternity. Thus, if nothing changes, we expect it to happen tomorrow. The formal math involves using sequences and series to prove that we should expect the result to repeat indefinitely. Deductive reasoning can be very helpful here.
You seem to be using it more in a probabilistic sense, which is a separate item. That because an event has happened frequently in the past, it is likely to happen at some point in the future, probably at the same frequency, but maybe not next -that will muck up deductive reasoning unless you are ready for it.
Don’t be. It makes for a better thread.
Agreed. You are skillfully shaping a productive discourse
Oh I remember Professor Smith ensuring we knew that Sherlock does not deduce, he uses inductive logic. I agree that laymen might be confused but that is why you take a Philosophy class in logic. I remember being explicitly taught both deductive and inductive (although we never really covered abductive reasoning) and being tested on them independently of another.
My point being that it maybe confusing for some but if you are taught it in a philosophy class and pay even mild attention (perhaps my subjective tastes are fooling me) you should pick up on what they are and the difference between.
Is it possible that the discussion so far has been the equivalent of trying to tease out the elements of haute cuisine dog chow? Just give them their damn degrees already.
Mark Steyn’s take:
Twerking Your Way Through College
I would prefer to subsume the term “inductive reasoning” not used in the narrow, mathematical “inductive proof” sense into the wider notion of plausible, or probabilistic, reasoning, yes. I do this not to play fast and loose, but because I believe it is actually more honest terminology.
As far as I can tell, what mathematicians call “inductive proof” and what non-mathematicians call “inductive reasoning” are two different thought processes whose names are unfortunately confusingly similar. I enjoy writing inductive proofs, and agree deductive logic is vital to constructing them, but even I can see that, when philosophers talk “inductive reasoning”, they tend to mean plausible reasoning – reasoning that does not yield the certain conclusions of a mathematician’s inductive proof :-)
Not, I think, a separate item.
This is quite a frustrating conundrum. I’m not at all qualified or experienced in teaching knuckleheads, but have you tried some variation of the following experiment?:
Have half the class read and study from one book that takes a firm stance for proposition A. Have the other half of the class read and study from a book that favors proposition B (as opposed to A). Tell the entire class that the final will be to persuade the rest of the class to accept the “correct” answer (but don’t specify what that answer is). Watch them bang their heads against the wall because neither side will be persuaded since they think their grade depends on winning the argument. After the dust settles, have a class conversation and review how much your evil scheme approximates reality.
-E
I don’t see what any of this has to do with varying the magnetic flux over a closed circuit in order to generate current.
Our robot overlords are prepping future generations for their role as “power source”.
-E
I’ve seen this little drama play out in the math-philosophy cross-listed Logic 101 course, a course which does not delve into probabilistic reasoning, but which does teach the inductive method of mathematical proof. This confuses the philosophy majors, who expect inductive reasoning to be, as Wikipedia puts it,
I used to laugh at philosophy majors for just not understanding that the “inductive proofs” they were asked to write in Logic 101 weren’t plausible arguments, but were expected to be as valid as any other mathematical proof.
Now I realize that, according to their prior understanding, their anger at having plausible argumentation rejected as “not inductive proof” was reasonable, just like the objection “But that is not how real people use ‘or’!” is reasonable. True, these reasonable objections must be set aside to get anywhere, but denigrating them as unreasonable is unfair.
The overloaded terminology we’ve inherited (whether from Sherlock or us crazy mathematicians) does add to the confusion.
I think this depends on what university you attend. To be honest when I learned geometric proofs in highschool I never heard inductive placed before it. I personally can delineate between inductive and deductive reasoning. For me the simple thing I always remember is that deductive is dogma and inductive is not.
Obviously not everyone shares in that and there are loaded terms that might confuse people. But if you truly care to learn then you will read through such and learn the material.
This is a good idea, and I do it for my upper division students. There is a more pedestrian reason not to do this for Freshmen -textbooks for survey classes are expensive, and so I am reluctant to ask my students to buy a second book (this is also why I don’t assign a book, they get the book from the library). This is a regional comprehensive, my students are not wealthy.
At the 300 level, I can give my students regular books, which they can get from Amazon for $20, and then we debate them. It does work as you think.
I’ve gradually come to realize that it’s prudent not to underestimate the degree to which simple, unstated differences in usage of overloaded terms can stymie even well-educated people. Even when we’re clever and widely-read enough to “know better”, I think “we instinctively want to defend ‘our’ definition of [overloaded terms] in order to defend who we are” – and neither is it strange that we do so: at some level, it’s just efficient to assume an overloaded term has been defined “your way” unless explicitly prompted not to.
It requires less data storage I’ll give you that.
I observe this with my students, too. They don’t like it when we read different historians writing on the same topic offering different interpretations.
In their own writing, most students can do a decent enough narrative of what happened or what the book was about. Few can construct their own argument, presenting their own ideas.
I’ve also wondered why. I suspect for some they just don’t care enough to put in the effort to analyze something. They’d like the answer so they can memorize it to spit back on the test. We have an extensive core curriculum, which students talk about “getting out of the way” so they can get on with their major, their real classes.
Others, I think, are simply unable to make a judgment about anything. It makes them uncomfortable to say one thing is better than another, much less than some is wrong or right.
Whatever the case, they lack the language to understand or express any of this.
It all seems to flat and boring. And sad.
This past semester I had an assignment analyzing a primary source. One question I asked was to determine if the source were reliable. Of course, everyone said yes, of course, it’s reliable.
I just realized the change I need to make for next time: assign them to find at least one instance where the source is unreliable and make it worth part of their grade! Maybe that will help.