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Post-Autistic Economics
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A Nudge Is Best Helping Students through the Perry Scheme
of Intellectual Development
Robert J. Kloss Robert
J. Kloss is a professor of English at William Paterson College in Wayne, New
Jersey. "Most
people would rather die than think, and most people do." Bertrand
Russell In "Critical Issues in the Assessment of
Student Development," Gary Hanson (1982) asserts that "our
assessment of student development must be refined to become more diagnostic
in nature.... A closer link must be made between the constructs of student
development and their antecedent causes" (61). He then posits a concrete
instance, that of an instructor aware of the Perry Scheme attempting to move
students from a dualistic to a multiplistic mode of knowing, noting that the
teacher would find a half-dozen questions helpful. Among these, three stand
out: "What teaching method or style challenges students who think in
dualistic ways? What causes some students to adopt a more complex mode of
thinking? How much change from one mode of thinking to another can be
expected in a year, a semester, or a month?" (61) As a teacher who has worked consciously and
conscientiously with the Perry Scheme in the classroom for more than ten
years, I have reached some tentative answers to Hanson's questions, which if
not fully correct are at least, in Robert Frost's charming phrase,
"momentary stays against confusion. " Several of my conclusions at this point follow: (1)
that the best subject matter within my discipline to challenge dualistic
students and stimulate such movement is fiction and poetry, especially the
latter, since it provides more possibilities for ambiguity, varied
interpretations, and multiple perspectives, three of the challenges that
constrain adoption of multiplicity and relativism; (2) that small group work
used frequently fosters and reinforces the exchange and importance of
multiple perspectives; (3) that free guided discussion-with the students
talking 80-90 percent of the time-nurtures growth because it diminishes the
instructor's authoritative role and increases reliance on peers' perspectives
and contributions to creating knowledge; and (4) that expectations need be
kept high that students can achieve
understanding, and that without exception they be both encouraged and
constrained to substantiate opinions, ideas, and hypotheses with evidence. My first conclusion need not deter professors who
do not teach fiction and poetry. With respect to content, though, no matter
the discipline, what is necessary is that the students be exposed to ambiguity
and multiple interpretations and perspectives, so that they can be stimulated
to growth. As Perry (1968) himself points out, the biological metaphor of
growth implies that to grow is better than not to grow, a value held in
"significant areas of our culture, finding their most concentrated
expression in such institutions as colleges of liberal arts, mental health
movements and the like" (44-45). My remaining conclusions apply more to
technique than content and are directly applicable to any discipline. William G. Perry's epistemological scheme was first
set forth in his Forms of Intellectual
and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme (1968). It is one
of the few developmental schemes useful for teaching that has been proved by
voluminous replication and has been more recently expanded in Belenky et al.,
Women's Ways of Knowing (1986) and
Baxter, Knowing and Reasoning in
College (1992). A brief summary at this point would be useful for those
unfamiliar with the scheme. Perry's
Phases of Development Perry posits that students move, in their learning,
through a series of fairly well-defined phases that can be delineated by
detailing the ways in which they view themselves in relationship to what they
believe knowledge to be: dualism, multiplicity, relativism, and commitment in
relativism. In dualism, students view knowledge as received truth. It is facts, correct
theories, and right answers. In this naive epistemology, professors already
know these things, and education consists of their revealing them to the
students. Learning thus is simply taking notes, memorizing the revelations,
and recapitulating them on demand, by way of tests or papers. Students are
made uneasy by omission of portions of the text-another
"infallible" authority-and by being asked to think independently,
offer their own opinions, and draw their own conclusions. They believe that
teachers, who have all the right answers, should simply disclose them instead
of making the students perform what to them seem senseless tasks. For this same reason, peers as a source of
knowledge are rejected out of hand. Dualistic students spend a great deal of
time trying to figure out and are confused by "what it is that the
instructor really wants." Their most nerve-wracking confusion results when
authorities disagree. Subsequently, as multiple interpretations and diverse
opinions manifest themselves more and more in their classrooms, faith in
authorities and right answers is worn away, and they conclude that, at least
in some areas, no one knows the answers. They have now entered multiplicity. In multiplicity, knowledge is simply
a matter of opinion. Professors, then, are not authorities with the right
answers; they're just people with opinions. And, in this still-naive stage,
because "everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion," the
students' are as good as the instructor's or anyone else's. All opinions,
they adamantly declare from their vantage point, are equal. Consequently,
they are baffled at instructors' criticisms of their work, believing that
prejudice, whim, and personal feelings are the criteria for judgment. As more and more instructors demand evidence,
support, substantiation for the students' conclusions, however, students
begin to temper their views and see that instructors are trying to help them
learn a way of doing things, but their criticism now shifts to the
instructors' not making their evaluation criteria clear. They have clearly
not yet learned to shoulder responsibility for their work. When they begin to
learn how to argue, counterargue, consider alternatives, and offer several
possible conclusions, they are entering relativism. In relativism, they learn to weigh evidence and distinguish between weak and
strong support. What has previously been just ritualistically pleasing the
instructor by following abstract academic rules for argument now becomes a
way of thinking, and students achieve new insights about what it means to
know and to learn. They now understand-those few who reach this stage during
a college career-that knowledge is contextual: What one "knows"
about anything or concludes about something is colored by one's perspective,
assumptions, and methods of inquiry. Most questions and problems thus become
more complex. Faculty members now become resources to help students learn
disciplinary methods of analysis; learning itself becomes use of the methods
to understand complexities. Finally, when students recognize that they must
eventually make choices and commitments, they transfer these understandings
of complexities and diverse perspectives from academic pursuits to the
creation of a personal world view. They have now reached Perry's final phase,
commitment in relativism. This
requires them to integrate the relatively objective, removed, and rational
procedures of academia with their more-empathic and experiential approaches
to all other aspects of their lives. The foregoing condensations do not capture the
complexity or richness of the Perry Scheme, nor do they speak to the supports
and challenges that must be provided to students during each phase. Once the
epistemological stage of the students in the classroom becomes known, these
supports and challenges do need to be provided, as I shall shortly show. But
first teachers must become aware of the existence of developmental stages in
growth such as Perry delineates. Jerry Gaff (1991), in his study of reform in
general education, recalls evaluating the progress of a new interdisciplinary
program at one college and asking the faculty how the students were
responding. Faculty members replied that the students were passive and needed
to be told what to do, they tended not to participate in the discussion of
key texts, and they avoided drawing their own conclusions. Recognizing the
behavior as characteristic of students at a particular level, Gaff inquired
of the faculty if they had ever heard of the Perry Scheme. None had. After
explaining it briefly, he found that faculty attitudes toward the student
behavior had changed for the better (184-85). (I remember quite clearly my
own initial exposure to the Perry Scheme and how stunned I was by its
explanatory power. Much if not most of the bewildering student behavior I had
been at a loss to understand fell into place on the scheme, and I then both
understood them and judged them less harshly as a result.) Gaff justifiably draws at least two implications
for teaching from this experience with teachers unfamiliar with Perry's work.
First, college instructors should understand-perhaps even take it for
granted-that the typical freshman student cannot perform sophisticated mental
functioning. He or she is unable, for instance, to cope with two conflicting
interpretations, both of which may have some explanatory power. Second,
teachers should attend to students' needs for challenges, to stretch their
cognitive powers, and for supports, to reduce the threat of failure and help
them cope with the insecurity of not knowing something with certainty
(185-86). Practical approaches to these matters have appeared
in the literature in the past decade (Andrews 1981; Brookfield 1991; Hays
1990; Moore 1990; Rodgers 1983; Tiberius 1990). More recently, Toni-Lee
Capossela (1993) has collected a dozen useful essays that foster critical
thinking, a number of which (e.g., Capossela, Jones, and Zeigler) specifically
employ the Perry Scheme in the construction of individual and sequential
writing assignments typical of the freshman course in composition. Most, if
not all, of these are adaptable to other disciplines. Libby Jones (1993), for
instance, argues for moving students out of dualism through assignments that
rely heavily upon dialectical thinking and writing. She builds upon Jack
Meiland's (1981) argumentative essay structure in his College Thinking, which constrains students to assume multiple
viewpoints and possibly recognize that truth can actually lie in more than
one of them. William Zeiger (1993), too, follows this path, employing African
folk tales as a vehicle for the journey. Meiland himself copiously
demonstrates the writing of the multi-viewpoint paper with topics from
education, politics, and sociology. From my experience, I would like to detail the most
useful challenges to undergraduates (mostly freshmen) in my literature'
writing, and linguistics classes, those challenges that help them move from
dualism at least to multiplicity and perhaps to incipient relativism. It is
questionable that any further movement through the phases is either possible
or desirable with the limits of one semester. As it is, students under the
constraints of complex ways of thinking sometimes, in Perry's words,
"retreat, temporize, or escape" as alternatives to growth (1968,
177 ff.) A nudge is better than a shove in these matters. Challenging
Dualists The example I will use is dualists, the phase of
the typical freshman student. For this group, my goal is to create
environments and tasks that invite right/wrong thinkers to change themselves.
They should thus be helped to appreciate multiple points of view and accept
them as legitimate. They should learn, especially, to perform basic analysis,
compare and contrast, and justify their statements. I help them, for
instance, by doing the following:
To create an environment in which these kinds of
comments can be made, of course, an instructor should provide compassionate
aid for the dualist in the form of supports. Among these should be a high
degree of structure to operate comfortably within, plentiful concrete
examples, and multiple opportunities to practice the skills of complex
thinking. It is usually helpful, as well, to determine at the
outset of the semester the level of cognitive development upon which students
are functioning. This information suggests which supports and which
challenges one should offer to the group or to select individuals. For
instance, if at all possible, instructors should have students in the first
class write a short diagnostic essay on one of two topics: The Best Class I
Ever Had, or How I Learn Best and How I Know That. Either of these topics
will enable them to see that the students will fairly readily fall into the
categories of the Perry Scheme with the vast majority responding as dualists,
others scattered among the remaining levels. The following (Rodgers 1983) are
typical examples of "Best Class" responses: Dualist: "My best
class was history last year. It was a class in world history. The teacher's
lectures were clear and well-organized. He knew his stuff, and he would go
over things till no questions remained. You knew what was expected and
exactly how you would be graded. He was not vague and wandering all over the
place like my English teacher." Multiplist: "My favorite
class taken in college was English 261. I enjoy reading novels and short
stories and that is what this class involved. I also like the class because
the teacher encouraged the
students to participate and state their own ideas. I like a class where the teacher does not just tell you everything but lets you state your opinion. Whether he agreed or
not, never mattered because
different meanings could be read into the stories. In the class I got to know
a lot of my classmates fairly well which made me feel more comfortable." Relativist: "My best
class was Genetics 3-002. Genetics is a relatively new discipline and those
working in the field had proposed a lot of hypotheses to account for certain
things but the teacher didn't even pretend that he had the answers. The
course offered you a real chance to push yourself to think and try out new
ideas. I suppose that you could have passed the tests even if you didn't read
the book-it required that you solve problems, not memorize stuff." Once instructors have a sense of the distribution
of their class along the Perry Scheme, they are better prepared to adapt
lessons, comments, and conferences to both that probable majority of dualists
and to the minority who appear to be on other levels. Movement through the Perry positions, if it occurs
at all, can then be tracked in the responses of the students to the class,
the instructor, and the content through the semester. One way to do this
quickly and easily is by using the One-Minute Paper advocated by Angelo and
Cross (1993; see also Light 1990; Kloss 1993). In this classroom assessment
technique, the instructor reserves a few minutes at the end of class to allow
students to write an anonymous one-minute response to a question or a
statement on a 3" x 5" index card. Commonly used are, "What
was the most important thing you learned in this class?" or "What
one question still remains for you?" The cards are then collected, read,
and responded to by the instructor in the next class. During the first several weeks in my freshman
courses when I ask them to simply tell me how things are going, responses
like the following are most typical (emphases throughout, except where noted,
are mine): "You help us link these ideas together but I
don't know if everything we said in class is correct and if it's everything
we needed to know. Can you say in class
that we got all the points we were supposed to? " " I would like you as the teacher to point out the more important topics from each
chapter and ask the class questions." "I feel the class is going
very well. However, I feel that there could be a little more input on the
stories from the professor because he
knows more about the stories and points of the stories than the
students." "I think the stories would be easier to understand if
you explained them." "Overall I think things are going well but
I also think you should participate or
run the class a little more. " Here the distinct voices of dualists can be heard
loud and clear, resonating in the anxiety about peers being a reliable source of knowledge and in
the attribution of truth to a single authority, the teacher. At this point
early in the semester, my challenges are simply to persist in "making
them do it," to encourage and verbally reward diverse viewpoints, and to
demonstrate that knowledge is neither proclaimed nor found, but created. About a month to six weeks later, different types
of responses begin to appear as students move into multiplicity: "This
(group discussion) allows us to learn for ourselves and to discover the many themes or ideas in the story
(Sort of like a detective!)." "It (discussion) always gives me new
ideas and different ways and views
to look at a story." "Once the class starts analyzing together, the
story seems to fall into focus. It seems as though there are many different paths you can take when analyzing a
story." "The stories are interesting and I seem to discover different aspects of them when
discussed in class." Acceptance of multiple viewpoint and peers as
legitimate sources of knowledge has begun to manifest itself. Resistance to the complexities of thinking in a new
way, however, occasionally surfaces through expression of annoyance and a
desire to cling to certainty: "It bothers me a little that everyone
seems to read into the stories a lot. In a way, it's good because it gives me a view that I would never thought
existed. I'd be interested in what you thought of the story also. "I
enjoy having the different people' opinions, but I feel that there are
aspects of the story which we, as students are not capable of fully
understanding and therefore I feel you
should not hold back as much in directing us in the right direction." Some dualists even become guarded and obliquely
hostile "I do not feel that I'm learning to write better or think
clearer thoughts as to what I'm reading. I find when we discuss a story it takes on no direction and just sort of
hangs there." Comments like these last, though are both
expectable and justifiable. We, as
teachers, need to remember that growth creates a sense of loss for students,
the loss of a certainty that has sustained them and been a refuge in an
increasingly complex and confusing world. I shall return to this matter at
the end of this discussion. The stage of multiplicity that most reach is laden,
moreover, with new cognitive pitfalls: "I have learned that everyone's opinion is all right." “In this class, I have learned that my
opinion is valuable. Also that no one
is wrong in what they believe.:" Because the world will never
tolerate such innocence, however charming it may be in the young, I must
bring new challenges to bear on naive beliefs. Especially useful in this
regard are application of the rules of evidence and logical analyses of
arguments supporting one literary interpretation rather than another. Critical
Thinking As students wrestle with the ambiguities of
literature and as critical thinking succeeds in complicating what to employ
them once was once quite simple, they tend to employ metaphors or familiar
phrases to explain the change of themselves and to register their discomfort
and perplexity. Meaning has become elusive, covert, coded, foreign: "I
like that you have gotten me to read
into a story." "Not only are we learning to read between the lines
of literature, but we're also learning about ourselves." "I can
(now) figure out the real meaning behind the story." "I am still
experiencing difficulty in translating the poetry." "(The class) is
motivating my desire to understand and decipher short stories."
"I've learned that some things are not as they seem. I also learned that
behind almost everything there is a hidden meaning." Such metaphorical expressions disclose that
students are now struggling heroically with the ambiguities of literature,
complexities of art. Some become overtly exasperated at the difficulties of
rigorous analysis and logical thought and discussion.: "Why must we totally over-analyze everything??? It gets so boring and monotonous" (emphases in the original). Most students
struggle on. The students having reached the threshold of
relativism, it is now time to re-introduce and emphasize evaluation of
literary interpretations by means of non-absolute criteria such as our
particular analysis being more persuasive, stimulating, enlightening, or
coherent than another. Here I stress, as much as possible, the result being
an organic whole. Words, metaphors, images, behavior of characters-all these
tightly connect to express a theme. Again, it is only fair to note that I have here
highly oversimplified this progression and any given class is always a mix of
levels at any given time. Various students meet various challenges, however
well supported, easily, willy-nilly , or not at all. Eternal dualists
sometimes remain. Consider this response from middle to late in the semester
linguistics course: "It's a different (difficult?) course, I'm not sure
why you have to take it, but people are set in their ways and probably won't
use much of what we learned. I just want to get a 'B.' I don't like the book
at all. It's impossible for me to get anything out of it. I would like
basically for our classes to contain what I need to know for tests since the
book is no help." It is hard to know where or how to begin extricating
this upperclassman from academic agony, but it is undoubtedly safe to say
that, the credentialing system being what it is, dualists receive
baccalaureates, just like everything else. Just as mixed levels in a classroom raise important
questions for planning and teaching, so they do for evaluating. Some
questions about evaluation include: How can I devise evaluation that helps
students understand the complexity of knowledge? How can I assess their
ability to identify parts as a whole, to compare and contrast, and to learn
to explain abstractly the reasons they hold their views? How can I construct
tests that are not merely reading or vocabulary exercises, but true
assessments of the analytical skills of the students? One possibility among many suggests itself here.
Expose your criteria to students in this way: provide them with a set of
sample questions that deal with the same content at different levels of
intellectual skill (Bloom's taxonomy, of course, comes to mind immediately).
Hold a discussion of the differences in the nature of the questions. If
possible, provide as well sample answers and discuss those in detail. This
last will be especially fruitful for dualists-who feel supported by models-if
comparison and contrast of both appropriate and inappropriate answers is
made, demonstrating the presence or absence of complex thinking. As the many student references above to the
pleasure and benefits of open discussion demonstrate, peer groups in the
classroom become invaluable in moving students through the scheme, even if
only used briefly. Use of a question to open a class and letting groups
exchange answers for ten minutes before open discussion can be a most
worthwhile use of time. A simple question such as, "What is the most
important word in the opening paragraph?" when written on for four or
five minutes constrains use of higher cognitive skills: analysis in
interpretation of the part related to the whole, evaluating in making a
judgment of value, and synthesis in composing a written answer. Exchanging
responses with others further involves all students in reading, writing,
speaking, and listening. All levels of students, as Capossela (1993,58) has
noted, profit from such exchanges; dualists see that intelligent peers
disagree on important issues, multiplists observe that diversity is more than
the idea that "everyone has a right to their own opinion," and they
begin to distinguish well-supported from poorly-supported ideas; and
relativists gain by listening to others speak of difficulties of reaching
decisions, of commitment, and of questions that still remain. Over the years, I have also learned to make more
use of a highly undervalued teaching skill, something I like to call creative
silence. I have learned to talk less to the class, and my students have
responded accordingly and learned to talk more. As David Perkins (1993) in
his continuing studies of the cognitive aspects of teaching and learning
recently declared, "Teaching is less about what the teacher does than
what the teacher gets the students to do" (31). Getting students to talk
more is usually a simple matter of waiting. Or, rather, a complex matter of
balancing their needs with yours. They need to find their own voices, to
develop their own perspectives, to create with the others around them
knowledge that is more firmly theirs for their
having made it. As one of my freshmen put it, " You allow the
students to be open and run the class. You don't stand up in front of the
class and throw the chapters back to us. One interprets and understands more
this way." Though I still lecture on occasion, I more often than not
follow Wilbert McKeachie's advice: "I lecture only when I'm convinced it
will do more good than harm. " Marsha Magolda Baxter (1992), in her study of
student development, Knowing and
Reasoning in College, points out that allowing students their voices
focuses on their emerging knowledge and not ours. "Being careful to
balance confirmation and contradiction, the teacher introduces her or his
knowledge in the context of the students' evolving thinking" creating
instead of a monologue a dialogue of
authority. To accomplish this, "We need to be silent and suspend the
authority automatically ceded to us by the students, the classroom structure,
and the academic system" (276). When we trust and respect them, students can learn
to speak for themselves. Listen: "In the beginning, I really didn't like
the class at all. But after a few weeks I've gained an interest in the class.
I think it's good that we have a discussion every class on the stories that
we read to find out each other's interpretations and view point the story. So
the class is improving in my opinion." "When I come to class I
don't know what to think, but after we discuss the story, I understand it
much better and I think this helps me very much." "Occasionally I
will be surprised by the progress of a classmate and realize that 1, too,
have benefited in proportion to my contributions. I do hope that those
students who have remained silent will loosen up a bit for all our
sakes." "Class is fun and the way we learn about the stories is
fun, but beyond that it is a great way to gain knowledge. I remember more
when we do the discussions."
"What's also good is that we figure it out ourselves, it's not handed to
us, or rammed down our throat like lima beans. " (This last parent/child simile serves to remind me
of how often students reveal themselves and their perceptions of us in
implied metaphors. Another example: "Maybe if you would threaten us in
some way to speak up in class there would be more people talking. You
encourage us a lot but a threat here and there wouldn't hurt either."
And I can't begin to count the times I have read in literature essays
"analyze" misspelled as "analize," confirming for me once
again that on some deep level students see themselves as regularly producing
from their guts a praiseworthy product to parental specifications. ) Students' growth-their creation of knowledge for
themselves-is virtually impossible in a classroom where the instructor does
all or most of the talking. A frustrated colleague once asked me what I do
when students don't respond, and I said, "I just wait a little
longer." Two weeks later, she reported that things were going better in
her class. As she phrased it, "Once I figured out that I was the one
that was anxious, I was okay." Frequently we need do no more than
overcome our anxiety, silently count to three to lengthen the wait-time for a
response, and sit tight. Mary Budd Rowe (1987) points out that by increasing
wait-time from the typical one second to as little as three seconds, the
effects on students are many and beneficial. Among other things, they
increase the variety and number of their responses, increase the length of
their responses from 300 to 700 percent, are more speculative about
alternatives, offer support with more logic and evidence, increase their
questions, and increase their confidence and sense of control in the
classroom (97-98). Alternatives
to Questioning J. T. Dillon (1988, 1990), who has probably done
the best empirical research on questioning both within and without the classroom,
convincingly argues the value of the instructor's silence and of other
alternatives to questioning in the classroom. He demonstrates that, like many
professionals who elicit information from others (e.g., psychiatrists,
pollsters), as teachers-Socrates to the contrary not withstanding-would
probably do better to ask fewer questions
and let the respondents-in our case, students-talk more. Dillon (1990,
179-81) suggests at least nine alternatives to questioning, an adequate
repertory for teachers who wish to involve students more actively: 1. Make a
declarative or factual statement: "Huck is in a dilemma here he must
choose between turning Jim in and eternal damnation." (Expect elaboration) 2. Make a
reflective statement: "So Dana, you think Hamlet still doesn't have
enough evidence at this point.' (Shows
attention; invites further response) 3. Describe
the student's state of mind: "Jerry, you seem to feel strongly that Miss
Emily was simply 'crazy' as you put it." (Probes for reflective analysis) 4. Describe
your own state of mind: "I'm confused; five minutes ago you said exactly
the opposite." (Expresses feeling;
invites clarification, resolution) 5. Invite
student to elaborate on a statement: "Sandy, convince me that what you
said about Atticus is true." (Probes
for further evidence) 6. Encourage
the student to ask a question: "You might ask me why I think Miss
Emily's behavior was perfectly predictable." (Suggests overlooking of important idea) 7. Encourage
students to ask questions of one another: "It is possible, as Harry
implies, that Hamlet loves his mother too much, in the wrong way." (Provokes controversy) 8. Describe
your own status: "I think "The Road Not Taken" is definitely
not about taking a difficult or unusual path through life. There's no
evidence for that." (May provoke
controversy; encourages further probing) 9. Maintain
a deliberate silence: __________________________. (This encourages reflection. We can't require them to think and not
allow them time to do it.) Perseverance over time produces results.
Sometimes even the negative responses have their positive side: "The
only not so good thing about this course is being afraid to speak aloud. It's
scary having to 'debate' your thoughts." The overwhelming majority of
responses, however, are purely favorable.: "I have learned to question,
doubt, analyze, and reread. I can't take things in stride any longer. I tend
to question their credibility." "Being able to ask questions about
what we don't understand is great but the best part is when you make us prove
what we think. That makes us learn and understand."
And one I especially prize: "I have begun to learn how to ask
questions and what questions to ask. I just have a problem with the
answers." Grief in
the Process of Growth To which I echo, “Me, too!” Thinking people are
often troubled by answers to questions they ask. Like psychoanalysis,
education helps to make you more rational, not necessarily happier, helps you
to struggle better, if not always to succeed. I am frequently ambivalent
about the "good" I have done these students by stimulating them to
think. The alienating effects of complex thinking are often seen in freshmen
as they progress in their quest for knowledge. Where certainty once reigned
supreme in the eighteen-year-old, confusion and dismay hold sway less than a
year later. I suggest that this is the result of a serious and occasionally
devastating sense of loss. I have saved two responses for last to illustrate
this point. The first plaintive query comes from an upperclassman in my
linguistics class after several sessions in the middle of the year during
which I rectified long-held misconceptions about grammar and language for the
class as a whole: "The one remaining question I have is how can we be
taught one thing as children and it not be true?" The second (a response
I receive every single semester) is from a first-semester freshman in an
Introduction to Literature course: "I don't like the way we go deep into
the story because it makes it lose its meaning." What these have in
common, of course, is a deeply felt sense of loss and, if I am not pressing
the point too far, some sense of betrayal. We teachers would do well to
reflect on this. Somewhere in the last decade I picked up a
quotation, the source long lost, that I use occasionally for writing
assignments. "At each stage of learning we must give up something even
if it is a way of life that we have always known." Attributed only to
"Ginivee, an Australian aboriginal woman," these words provide a
springboard to begin examining with students what they surrender when
embarking upon the educational journey. Among other things, they leave
behind, often forever, friends who didn't go to college from whom they will
soon become alienated; perhaps even family who may become more and more
ambivalent about the student's growing independence, changing and differing
values, and novel, possibly outrageous, ideas picked up at "that
place." Perry (1989) himself has long been concerned with
this matter. Reconsidering his scheme recently he declared that, "every
step involves not only the joy of realization but also a loss of certainty
and an altered sense of self." And somewhat earlier (1985) he made a
poignant plea for teachers, advisers, counselors, all who work with college
students to allow for grief in the process of growth, "especially in the
rapid movement from the limitless potentials of youth to the particular
realities of adulthood. Each of the upheavals of cognitive growth threatens
the balance between vitality and depression, hope, and despair. It may be a
great joy to discover a new and more complex way of thinking and seeing; but
yesterday one thought in simpler ways, and hope and aspiration were embedded
in those ways. Now that those ways are to be left behind, must hope be
abandoned too? "It appears that it takes a little time for
the guts to catch tip with such leaps of the mind. The untangling of hope
from innocence, for example, when innocence is 'lost,' may require more than
a few moments in which to move from desperation through sadness to a wry
nostalgia. Like all mourning, it is less costly when 'known' by another. When
a sense of loss is accorded the honor of acknowledgment, movement is more
rapid and the risk of getting stuck in apathy, alienation, or depression is
reduced. One thing seemed clear: Students who have just taken a major step
will be unlikely to take another until they have come to terms with the
losses attendant on the first" (1985, 108). I have quoted Perry at length because of the wisdom
of his words and the deeply felt humanity of his tone. We who have chosen to
make our life's work the growth of others would do well to recall that
literal biological growth occurs willy-nilly. No redwood resists becoming
gigantic. But we have all repeatedly witnessed students who resist learning,
refusing (it would appear) to grow. The biological metaphor applied to
education cannot adequately account for the complexity of our species. We
must keep in mind that we are asking students to exit voluntarily an idyllic
life of certainty where the locus of authority is clear-a Garden of Eden-and
to assume the heavy burden of remaking the world anew day after day after
day, a Sisyphean task at best. If we remember this, we will have a better
perspective on how drastically uneven and unfair an exchange it may seem to
them, and we can understand better the wisdom of their resistance. WORKS CITED Andrews,
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