I think you're definitely on the right track. In my experience, one of the major tensions is between teaching people what to think and how to think. The esotericism you critique, in my experience, leads to students who have been told what to think lacking the skill to critique it. Students then either reject what they were taught outright (but may pretend during the term to get the grade) or accept it entirely, without realizing the weaknesses of the perspective. Teaching students instead how to think, by encouraging trying on different perspectives, allows people to develop intellectual qualities to engage with reality in creative ways. Another major tension, perhaps driven by my own experiences of elite institutions is getting the ends or the why wrong. Students become focused on expected utility and productivity over relationships and growth because the incentive systems they experience emphasize utility and productivity and undermine relationships (e.g., by treating success as competitive) and growth (because they often focus only on current performance). I find the work of groups like the Program for Education Research that Scales (perts.net) the start of a helpful corrective there, but there is lots more that can be done as well.
Tim, you have such great, concrete recommendations! (I'm reading that book you rec'd and enjoying it, and I just signed up for a PERTs info session.) I like the "what to think" vs. "how to think" distinction, and I think that especially applies in certain institutions / contexts. For instance, at a school with a strong religious mission, and fairly uniform ideological culture, students might find even more pressure to "perform belief" in the right sort of way, and so might be fairly anxious to "think rightly" (orthodoxly, I suppose). In my context, the pressure is less to adopt the right "ideological" view, but to "think rightly" in the sense of thinking *how* the professor wants you to think. So you get students performing curiosity, for instance, writing essays like, "This thinker really opened my mind and transformed the way I see X..." -- even in cases where the student didn't get much out of it. I suspect many of these challenges will have distinct applications given the specific context, but, nonetheless, the distinction you offer is helpful, and the resources are great. Thank you!!
I think you're definitely on the right track. In my experience, one of the major tensions is between teaching people what to think and how to think. The esotericism you critique, in my experience, leads to students who have been told what to think lacking the skill to critique it. Students then either reject what they were taught outright (but may pretend during the term to get the grade) or accept it entirely, without realizing the weaknesses of the perspective. Teaching students instead how to think, by encouraging trying on different perspectives, allows people to develop intellectual qualities to engage with reality in creative ways. Another major tension, perhaps driven by my own experiences of elite institutions is getting the ends or the why wrong. Students become focused on expected utility and productivity over relationships and growth because the incentive systems they experience emphasize utility and productivity and undermine relationships (e.g., by treating success as competitive) and growth (because they often focus only on current performance). I find the work of groups like the Program for Education Research that Scales (perts.net) the start of a helpful corrective there, but there is lots more that can be done as well.
Tim, you have such great, concrete recommendations! (I'm reading that book you rec'd and enjoying it, and I just signed up for a PERTs info session.) I like the "what to think" vs. "how to think" distinction, and I think that especially applies in certain institutions / contexts. For instance, at a school with a strong religious mission, and fairly uniform ideological culture, students might find even more pressure to "perform belief" in the right sort of way, and so might be fairly anxious to "think rightly" (orthodoxly, I suppose). In my context, the pressure is less to adopt the right "ideological" view, but to "think rightly" in the sense of thinking *how* the professor wants you to think. So you get students performing curiosity, for instance, writing essays like, "This thinker really opened my mind and transformed the way I see X..." -- even in cases where the student didn't get much out of it. I suspect many of these challenges will have distinct applications given the specific context, but, nonetheless, the distinction you offer is helpful, and the resources are great. Thank you!!