I would think a teacher’s desire is to mold the students’ mind to their satisfaction, propagate their memes, etc. etc. not just… make them execute pointless gestures just to show who’s boss.
Showing them who’s boss is a precondition for all the rest.
At this point I should say that I’m not sure how much this sort of behaviour is a good thing and how much a bad. Hypothetically, one can confabulate all sorts of scenarios either way. But I have no experience of teaching children.
Ah, but we all have experience in being taught, don’t we. Some good, some bad. We would do well, I think, to give a long, hard look to the way we were taught, not only regarding how it may have affected us, but also in how it might affect our children, were they to be subjected to similar treatments.
Because, in the face of authority performing such seemingly pointless gestures, I have half a mind to teach my children to reject such orders on general principle, and say so to their teachers in no uncertain terms—without being rude about it, which might be a bit of a challenge.
Point is, when my kids grow, I want them to be the sort that would say no in Milgram’s Experiment from the moment the victim revoked consent, if not earlier. (Also, intuitively one-box on Newcomb’s problem, etc. etc.)
When children can evaluate good ideas, it makes sense to tell them to obey the authority when a request is good, and to disobey when the request is harmful.
But before that age, the obedience in the Milgram’s experiment and the obedience in “please stop hitting your younger sibling” or “please stop talking now so we can learn the alphabet” is probably processed by the same algorithm.
Very pertinent. So it’s a matter of age… well, we would do well not to underestimate our kids’ ability to learn; it’ surprising what they can achieve when nobody’s told them they shouldn’t be able to yet. Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to get a firm grip on what the state of the art in developmental psychology says on how to best go about teaching them right from wrong.
I agree that children are often capable of understanding and doing more than is typically expected of them. And sometimes they are not. And sometimes they start doing it correctly, only to ruin it later; which is probably an inevitable phase in learning a new skill.
Just like it is easy to make a mistake of automatically assuming that children are not capable of something, and not giving them really a chance, it is also easy to make a mistake of seeing a child doing something correctly for five minutes, and assuming that nothing can go wrong later. In some environments the former kind of error is typical, but I have also seen (and done) the latter.
A high school where I was teaching made a new rule that students are allowed to ask a teacher about a context of what they are taught, such as why do they need to learn something and how is it related to the long-term goals. (There was a long list of new rules, most of them applause lights.) At first sight, it seems like a good idea: the teacher should explain a motivation for teaching something, and if they forget, it is great if the students can ask freely. But in real life this rule was abused heavily. Imagine being asked again and again after each sentence: “why is it necessary that we learn this?”, especially when it’s made obvious that the person asking does not really care about the answer (because they don’t even bother listening to the answer), they only enjoy using their new power that allows them to completely stop the education. (Later the list of the rules was updated in a way that neutralized most of them, such as: “students have a right to do X… but only if the teacher considers it appropriate”, and then removed and forgotten.)
So, having this experience, I can easily imagine what would happen if the same high school students received a lesson about Milgram’s experiments and why it is wrong to obey authority blindly. Suddenly turning off their iPhones would become an evil comparable with being ordered to commit a genocide; they would refuse heroically, socially rewarding each other for being so heroic.
Perhaps this could be fixed by attaching a minor cost to the disobedience. Such as: You are allowed to refuse an unreasonable request, but you later have to provide a written explanation of what was requested from you, how you refused it, and why do you think it was the right thing to do.
“Imagine being asked again and again after each sentence: “why is it necessary that we learn this?”, especially when it’s made obvious that the person asking does not really care about the answer (because they don’t even bother listening to the answer), they only enjoy using their new power that allows them to completely stop the education.”
Well, I had forgotten they were capable of such pettiness, but that’s an interesting topic on its own, isn’t it? I mean, how and why do adults outgrow this (and when don’t they)?
Showing them who’s boss is a precondition for all the rest.
At this point I should say that I’m not sure how much this sort of behaviour is a good thing and how much a bad. Hypothetically, one can confabulate all sorts of scenarios either way. But I have no experience of teaching children.
Ah, but we all have experience in being taught, don’t we. Some good, some bad. We would do well, I think, to give a long, hard look to the way we were taught, not only regarding how it may have affected us, but also in how it might affect our children, were they to be subjected to similar treatments.
Because, in the face of authority performing such seemingly pointless gestures, I have half a mind to teach my children to reject such orders on general principle, and say so to their teachers in no uncertain terms—without being rude about it, which might be a bit of a challenge.
Point is, when my kids grow, I want them to be the sort that would say no in Milgram’s Experiment from the moment the victim revoked consent, if not earlier. (Also, intuitively one-box on Newcomb’s problem, etc. etc.)
When children can evaluate good ideas, it makes sense to tell them to obey the authority when a request is good, and to disobey when the request is harmful.
But before that age, the obedience in the Milgram’s experiment and the obedience in “please stop hitting your younger sibling” or “please stop talking now so we can learn the alphabet” is probably processed by the same algorithm.
Very pertinent. So it’s a matter of age… well, we would do well not to underestimate our kids’ ability to learn; it’ surprising what they can achieve when nobody’s told them they shouldn’t be able to yet. Nevertheless, it might be a good idea to get a firm grip on what the state of the art in developmental psychology says on how to best go about teaching them right from wrong.
I agree that children are often capable of understanding and doing more than is typically expected of them. And sometimes they are not. And sometimes they start doing it correctly, only to ruin it later; which is probably an inevitable phase in learning a new skill.
Just like it is easy to make a mistake of automatically assuming that children are not capable of something, and not giving them really a chance, it is also easy to make a mistake of seeing a child doing something correctly for five minutes, and assuming that nothing can go wrong later. In some environments the former kind of error is typical, but I have also seen (and done) the latter.
A high school where I was teaching made a new rule that students are allowed to ask a teacher about a context of what they are taught, such as why do they need to learn something and how is it related to the long-term goals. (There was a long list of new rules, most of them applause lights.) At first sight, it seems like a good idea: the teacher should explain a motivation for teaching something, and if they forget, it is great if the students can ask freely. But in real life this rule was abused heavily. Imagine being asked again and again after each sentence: “why is it necessary that we learn this?”, especially when it’s made obvious that the person asking does not really care about the answer (because they don’t even bother listening to the answer), they only enjoy using their new power that allows them to completely stop the education. (Later the list of the rules was updated in a way that neutralized most of them, such as: “students have a right to do X… but only if the teacher considers it appropriate”, and then removed and forgotten.)
So, having this experience, I can easily imagine what would happen if the same high school students received a lesson about Milgram’s experiments and why it is wrong to obey authority blindly. Suddenly turning off their iPhones would become an evil comparable with being ordered to commit a genocide; they would refuse heroically, socially rewarding each other for being so heroic.
Perhaps this could be fixed by attaching a minor cost to the disobedience. Such as: You are allowed to refuse an unreasonable request, but you later have to provide a written explanation of what was requested from you, how you refused it, and why do you think it was the right thing to do.
“Imagine being asked again and again after each sentence: “why is it necessary that we learn this?”, especially when it’s made obvious that the person asking does not really care about the answer (because they don’t even bother listening to the answer), they only enjoy using their new power that allows them to completely stop the education.”
Well, I had forgotten they were capable of such pettiness, but that’s an interesting topic on its own, isn’t it? I mean, how and why do adults outgrow this (and when don’t they)?
I expect people mostly outgrow this as we develop less petty, more satisfying forms of power we can exert.