Althouse: "A cadre of mindless, obedient... students...."

June 28, 2023

"A cadre of mindless, obedient... students...."

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A post shared by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson)

39 comments:

Dave Begley said...: Global warming, CRT and DEI.; 6/28/23, 7:27 AM
Temujin said...: The Montessori method and others like it take a very different approach. On the other hand, some charter schools take an even more disciplined approach, which has shown to work for some.

Maybe kids need the discipline. And maybe it can work IF the actual subject matters...matter.; 6/28/23, 7:34 AM
rehajm said...: I dunno, he sounds like the weed smoking kids in every public high school spouting slurry in an effort to appear intellectual. He omits the incredible improvement in living standards that occur with an opportunity to abandon subsistence farming...

Even the tracking obsessed, much too union teachers from my day had an interest in educating students. It all kind of ended about the time drugging boys became a great idea but that was long after the video example given here...; 6/28/23, 7:37 AM
West TX Intermediate Crude said...: A cadre of mindless obedient students may have been what they wanted, but it was not what they got.
What they got was a couple of generations of progress in science, engineering and the humanities that played a major part in building the best country in the history of civilization (as measured by numbers of people who risked everything to get here and the subsequent improvements in their lives and that their families' lives; also the average standard of living of its inhabitants).
Then, in in effort by a minority of people who thought that they knew more about civilization than the people who built it, they burned it all down.
We're now in the process of going through all the lot of ruin in a civilization.; 6/28/23, 7:42 AM
J L Oliver said...: As a student of education models, I have found that basic tool skills, reading, basic math, and writing need a more structured and disciplined approach, especially early elementary . The subject areas may have a small core of significant information to master, but the rest can be mainly interest and explored with the tool skills.; 6/28/23, 7:42 AM
mikee said...: Public schools as indoctrination centers to produce mindless, obedient workers?
How about parochial schools, with kids taught by nuns?
As my oft-truculent older brother said, "Catholic elementary school prepares you for jail."; 6/28/23, 8:00 AM
Owen said...: Peterson's points echo those expressed by Glenn Reynolds in his excellent short book, "The New School."; 6/28/23, 8:10 AM
rhhardin said...: Obedient is from ob-audire, to listen to, pay attention to; 6/28/23, 8:14 AM
Leland said...: I've heard his discussion of this previously. Education was fine until it became federal under Carter. It had regional issues in Democrat controlled segregated south, but that was being resolved by voting out the bums.; 6/28/23, 8:21 AM
Sebastian said...: Funny how right and left converge.

Of course, part of the prog vanguard opposed the military/factory education model--Dewey et al. And many "conservatives" supported it, as a way to assimilate outsiders and create common citizenship.; 6/28/23, 8:24 AM
Ampersand said...: Peterson's courage, smarts, and rhetorical skills can disguise the fact that he is sometimes guilty of reaching conclusions based on inadequate information. Similar to Tucker Carlson.; 6/28/23, 8:45 AM
Aggie said...: Yeah, sometimes Peterson says profound things that stimulate Big Thinking, and sometimes the bright red bullshit flag pops up, all by itself. I don't think he's onto anything here. Any successful educational system will combine rote memorization with critical thinking, because both of these are needed as a foundation to creativity. I raised my kids to be creative and inquisitive, and perpetually curious - but you've got to have a disciplined frame of reference for these things to work within.; 6/28/23, 8:46 AM
Mark said...: "Catholic elementary school prepares you for jail."

My 12 years did not prepare me for jail, but parochial education IME was exactly what Peterson is talking about.

In fact, the obedience to authority seems to be a universal experience among my friends who went to private and Catholic elementary schools ... that disciplined method is at odds with what most people are decrying as the problem with public schools today (teachers not in control, students unwilling to be cogs in the machine).; 6/28/23, 8:48 AM
Barry Dauphin said...: The problem with American students is that they’re too obedient?; 6/28/23, 8:52 AM
gilbar said...: Hey Teacher! Leave Those Kids Alone!
If you Don't Eat Your Meat, You Can't Have Any Pudding...
How Can You Have Any Pudding, If You Don't Eat Your Meat?; 6/28/23, 9:10 AM
hombre said...: Not a new idea. Likely correct, but there may never have been a cadre as mindless as GenZers.; 6/28/23, 9:20 AM
Narayanan said...: what does Jordan even know what is the purpose of education? from student POV expectation?; 6/28/23, 10:17 AM
narciso said...: roger waters was wrong that they wanted was thought control; 6/28/23, 10:22 AM
Che Dolf said...: "Yes, the people who invented 'mission type orders' and the inherently flexible 5 paragraph order framework - which contemplates adaptation around commander’s intent - were 'mindless, obedient soldiers.'"
- @corsair21c

JBP doesn't know anything about Prussia or the "Prussian model." What he thinks he knows is thirdhand baloney.

The older I get and the more I read, the more I learn that most "public intellectuals" have cartoonishly dumb opinions that they can deliver with perfect confidence.; 6/28/23, 10:33 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Obedience is a big thing on the left. Yuge.; 6/28/23, 10:53 AM
JK Brown said...: As we saw into the 3rd quarter of the 20th century, the Prussian model had utility. It got millions obediently killed in WWI, had utility in defeating race-based socialism in the '40s and produced obedient factory workers in the '50s and '60. But then, cheaper labor was discovered, the factories closed in America and the schooling proved less than amenable for the dynamism needed to find jobs without a master taking care of you.

But it did keep the teachers and professors employed, often as trainers, because the one thing American schools won't teach students is how to study. Many learn enough for survival, but then schooling values getting good grades, not real learning or long term retention.

The recent problem is that they've broken the C-students who in the past survived their schooling, while becoming educated about the world and went forth to create the economy to keep the B and A students employed in their cubicles.; 6/28/23, 11:11 AM
Narr said...: John Taylor Gatto was all over this decades ago. There's truth in what he says as regards the Prussian model, but OTOH the modern university was almost entirely a German invention too--and as others have noted, the US public education system was the Great Assimilator.

Then again, the US Army (and others) adopted spiked helmets after the Prussians showed up the French in 1870-71. People like the strong horse.

The biggest problem with his thesis as far as history goes is that the German Army did NOT achieve it's greatest successes by way of Blind Obedience (Koerpergehoersam) but because their
soldiers were among the "most enterprising, self-reliant, and courageous" in the world (in the words of Istvan Deak, a real historian, recently deceased).; 6/28/23, 11:30 AM
boatbuilder said...: If you don't have a discipline-based method for getting students to learn things that they otherwise wouldn't have any interest in learning, including how to master things that they don't know about but need to, students won't learn those things. They will learn what interests them. Which in the case of a very small minority of gifted and curious individuals will be a good thing. The rest of us will learn about baseball and how to catch fish, and be ignorant and uneducated. And probably won't make very good soldiers, either.; 6/28/23, 11:30 AM
Dude1394 said...: Instagram,meta,tough to support that medium; 6/28/23, 1:29 PM
gadfly said...: Nope to Facebook always and forever, so I am not signing up for Instagram just to view this post.; 6/28/23, 1:31 PM
Narr said...: Sorry, "Kadaver-" not "Koerper-" Point remains.; 6/28/23, 3:16 PM
Mal said...: @Narr, I couldn't have said it better myself.

I remember the first time I read "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto, it completely blew my mind!

https://shorturl.at/ivAK9

Take this passage, for example:

Looking backward on a thirty-year teaching career full of rewards and prizes, somehow I can’t completely believe that I spent my time on earth institutionalized; I can’t believe that centralized schooling is allowed to exist at all as a gigantic indoctrination and sorting machine, robbing people of their children. Did it really happen? Was this my life? God help me.

School is a religion. Without understanding the holy mission aspect you’re certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare.

Once I started reading it, I just couldn't stop!

https://shorturl.at/ivAK9; 6/28/23, 4:01 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Heh. Oh, is that why I didn't like it?

I (mostly) had such nice teachers, and yet the thought of K-12 school causes a tiny shudder.; 6/28/23, 4:16 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: I did not know that... as Johnny Carson used to say.; 6/28/23, 4:36 PM
The Godfather said...: Look, we don't need a history lesson to know that education can be used for indoctrination -- and that it IS often so used. So what? My German ancestors came to the US to get away from the Prussians. None of them was re-Prussianized by the US public schools that they all attended. My family was on the anti-German side in both World Wars.
I went to public schools until I was 12. I never was required to say "Sieg Heil" to a teacher.
If you want to improve US public education in the 21st Century, that's great, but don't build your case on what happened (or may have happened) in the late 19th century.; 6/28/23, 4:48 PM
Narr said...: Whatever the actual case in American education, one thing I never see is evaluation of other countries' systems.

How did Peterson's schools in Canada differ from ours? What countries do things differently, and with what results?; 6/28/23, 5:18 PM
Readering said...: I attended private Catholic schools in England. Desks in rows. Teachers definitely expected obedience, backed up with corporal punishment.; 6/28/23, 5:18 PM
Taxiest said...: To quote Michael Malice, "public schools are literal prisons for children and the only time many people will ever encounter physical violence in their lives." Moreover, "Socialists regard your property as their property, but even more nefariously they regard your children as their property."; 6/28/23, 5:38 PM
Narr said...: We had two years of mandatory JROTC in HS and two mandatory semesters of ROTC in college, if you want to talk about militarization.

That's where the possible overlap with the verdammter Prussians was strongest, since their schoolmasters were often retired noncoms. For my part, I had a lot more respect for those short-timers and recently retired guys than for the athletic coaches, who were mostly just college boys, and not the best of the type.; 6/28/23, 6:22 PM
Mark said...: "Instagram,meta,tough to support that medium"

I know Drago will launch a personal attack for noting it, but Jordan is quote unhappy with Twitter right now.

He noticed that their statistics are bullshit and Elon picks and chooses winners/losers just like Jack did.; 6/28/23, 11:49 PM
Valentine Smith said...: Mal thanks for the link. Fascinating.; 6/29/23, 12:15 AM
Rusty said...: Readering said...
"I attended private Catholic schools in England. Desks in rows. Teachers definitely expected obedience, backed up with corporal punishment."
They did a good job. You certainly learned to recite the catechism.; 6/29/23, 9:49 AM
Bill R said...: My Catholic elementary school 1956-1963 was often irritatingy authoritarian. Even my 12 year old self found it so.

But everyone, everyone! learned to read, write, and do basic math. And we learned some history, civics and music along the way.

My wife teaches high school math now. The kids get to high school barely literate and completely unable to do basic arithmetic.

There was something to be said for the old model; 6/29/23, 12:15 PM
farmgirl said...: Holy cow- I have something in common w/Gadfly lol!; 6/29/23, 1:13 PM