Teenagers have always been this way. That's just how they think - emotional reactions driving ideology. However, I have seen that while 22- or 23- year olds used to start to engage their rational brains, that age is getting older and older - and for some people, never.

This is definitely related to the studies that are showing that adolescence is lasting until 30's for many people. I think it has a lot to do with helicopter parenting - so many kids really don't have to live in the real world because their parents make all boo-boos go away.

This was pretty much how I felt during TFA institute and credentialing. That, and they seemed to split people into white people and people of color (native American, hispanic, African-American), ignoring the approximately ⅓ of corps members who were Asian-American.

Interesting article, and we see evidence of this "emotional reactions driving ideology" even on webdip forum, not just from teenagers but people in their 20s and 30s (and yes, for some, this does not change). There is very often a lack of nuanced thinking or in-depth thinking of an issue but rather a strong emotional reaction to an issue or an event that then becomes an ideology. They become blind to other issues and other voices. Their perspective is the only perspective and their goals/agendas are the only worthy ones.

As a 20 year old I shall state that this, although all to commonly the case, is not the case in every 20-30 year old.

http://www.theonion.com/article/college-encourages-lively-exchange-of-idea-38496

@Espi in any conversation like this, we are talking about trends, there are always exceptions.

On the other hand, perhaps you are twentysomething'splaining "Not THIS 20-something"

:-)

Luckily the Vox author states in the second paragraph "Not, like, in a person-by-person sense, but students in general." which is a point all to easy to agree with. Although trends are nice, all to often they generate a negative view point, just had to say what I did above to give a small counter-balance.

The article and my comments didn't imply that all 20-30 years old are like this. There are definitely some and in these cases, some bad apples can definitely ruin the pot.

I think there are parental issues here (but no studies link the two explicitly so it would just be speculation), but potentially this is a societal shift, not just parental ones. If people, on average, have to be in school longer for more credentials/degrees, and there are less and less jobs available, particularly desirable ones and ones that do not require postsecondary degrees, then people are potentially not needing to "grow up" as fast. If they stay in school until they have obtained a BA/BS or Masters or PHDs or they don't have "real" jobs until their late 20s or early 30s, then potentially they don't have to engage themselves with things like the real world or consideration of other views. So it is partly a question of structure (society) versus agency (parents/kids).

Personally, this is why I think people need to get out of school for a while before they do their PhDs, so they gain some perspectives. You exist in a vacuum of a sort if the only life you know is academia and that tends to perverse your perspective like thinking your agenda is the only worthy one, your research is the most important one, the absolute freedom of speech is the most worthy goal, etc. etc.

@zultar don't you think they should get out of school for a while before then? Until students spend time in the real world they can't know if what they are studying is something they will be able to apply, or even want to apply after school.

I teach intro history at the community college level in the US. Pretty much my first job in explaining history writing is to get students NOT to give me their opinion/emotional response. Learn to read a primary source for thesis, then later we can play with building a thesis that draws upon these primary sources.

I think 2 years of mandatory national service after high school would do our society a world of good. So would 4 years of public university after those 2 years for free. #BernieSanders2016 #HeinleinWasRightAfterAll

AmeriCorps NCCC is probably one of the closest things you will get to that.

I don't think everyone has to get out of school before they do their bachelor, or even that everyone needs a 4-yr degree. I do think they shouldn't just stay in postsecondary their entire lives. I have found those people tend to (not always) lack perspective, be arrogant, and have a rather tenuous grasp on reality. All their learning is theoretical and have little to no real life relevance, not to mention having responsibilities.

Not everything you learn in school needs to be "applicable" or lead to a job/career. People should plan for their degrees or what they want to do and they should think about what they are going to do once they are done with their undergrad. It's fine to study philosophy or any number of liberal arts degrees, but maybe think about what you would do AFTER you are done. Don't rely on your parents to catch you or be forgetful that you may have college debts to repay. In the confine of that though, you can still get a second degree or a minor or two and study things that interest you that may or may not lead to anything afterwards. It just takes some planning. College isn't a time of just "play" and do whatever the hell you want without consideration of cost, personal development, and the future. Very few people can afford to just go to college for kicks and giggles. You can do what you want but there is a price for that, whether or not you know it's there or acknowledge it.

I posted this article for a few different reasons. First, I have three older teenagers myself: two in college and one in high school. I've heard many of their experiences in the classroom, some of which reflect the experience of the author. One of my college kids is on the debate team and she can't stand listening to some of the kids in her political science classes who have immediate gut reactions to conversations but can't back their perspectives up with facts or logic. Ges sees this all the time so it seems. I do sense that she also has a negative reaction to the knee-jerk political reactionaries in class and wonder if that creates immediate emotitional polarization of the clasroom and ends up chilling discourse. Zultar pointed out that this also occurs on the webDip forum. 100% true.

Additionally, most webDipians are students themselves and are neck-deep in this experience every day. I thought that providing the perspective of an instructor might be an opportunity for them to think differently too--exactly the type of self-critique that the author claims is less and less common in educational settings. How one conducts themselves in the classroom has a compounding ripple effects which can creating life-affecting situations for professors. Helicopter parenting doesn't just prevent children from dealing with the consequences *of* their actions, it inures them from having to feel sympathy for others who may be affected *by* their actions. The focus is entirely on the kids and not the others.

Lastly, I had the great experience of coaching a high school swim team this spring. It was the first time I had to deal with scores of teenagers who weren't my own (I had 120(!) on my roster at its peak). I am not a teacher myself, but I found myself seriously considering retooling my career in that direction. And then I saw this article. I know that there are quite a few professional educators out there in webDipia as well, so I wanted to see what their responses were. Is it worth going into academia any more? Is the author's experience common or uncommon? Will it ever get better? Lots of questions needing answers.

@peterwiggin I'm curious about your experience with TFA. Is it a good program? Are you glad you participated?

@Jeff, it depends on what you mean by "academia." If it's at the university/college level, it can be very hard to get into and unless you are already on that path, it's probably not worth it. Untenured track positions are undesirable because of how universities treat them, like trash a lot of times. If it is teaching middle/high school, then you need a teaching certificate or an emergency one, and that could be fun/rewarding. And no, it is unlikely to get better anytime soon.

@Brankl, I got accepted into TFA and quit after the first week of training. I appreciate their vision but I think they do a lot of things wrong, particularly with their training model. Their training was horrific. It was bad and misguided and geared towards the lowest common denominator. You do not learn to teach well; you learn (barely if I am being generous) to "control" a class. It does not prepare you well for teaching. It relies mostly on these young teachers to work hard to compensate, which is why there is a high burnout rate.

@Jeff: For background, I teach 1-2 classes at community colleges or state universities a semester as a sideline to my main work, and greatly enjoy the teaching almost all the time. My wife is a tenured professor at a state U with 13 years of experience.

What rings true in Schlosser's piece is the existential anxiety of many adjunct professors who teach this way for a living. They are very well-educated, often have student loans, and are paid little with little job security. (In some institutions, lecturers do have 3- to 5-year contracts, but in others one is hired on a semester-by-semester basis.) Many lecturers have to teach 6+ sections at a variety of institutions to eke out a rung at the very bottom of the insecure middle class. (A depressing feature of life as a community-college lecturer is that I get an email from the admin every April about how to apply for unemployment benefits for the summer months.)

Schlosser is correct that bad student evals matter and that in many fields the market for adjuncts is saturated. The biggest problem, however, is not fear of being bounced by student grievance, it is the extent to which one is hostage to the larger economy. For instance, our CC department enrollments were down drastically this past semester, presumably because the overall entry-level job market in our area had picked up. Fewer students = fewer sections. There is also a problematic race to the bottom in terms of workload. "Easy" professors get more students, and also have less grading to do -- a virtuous circle, of sorts.

I disagree with Schlosser on a number of points, though. In my teaching, I routinely deal with difficult topics (human origins, origins of religions, comparative flood narratives, the Holocaust, early US experiences of Native Americans and African Americans, slavery) and have never gotten a student complaint, formal or otherwise. My wife says the same thing. In fact, these difficult topics generally have the best discussions. Our classrooms are incredibly diverse in terms of faith, background, class, ethnicity, you name it. The key, at least in history, is to let the past speak as much as possible. Give the students enough background to understand primary sources, and then let the student interact with the text. (I do also say about 50 times in discussion, "We're all clear that the owner of the slave ship is saying this, not me, right?") Also, in any humanities/social science field, we make the move from judgment ("That's racist!") to origins and significance -- What are the roots of this understanding of race? What purpose does this racism serve, for whom? How does it color other developments? As we provide tools to deal with uncomfortable texts, students gain power to channel their discomfort into meaning-making, and this tends to pay off.

The biggest disagreement I have with Schlosser is his belief that the basic issue is a "liberal" one. The problem with college teaching does not exist at one particular point of the political spectrum. Many students privilege emotional response over reasoned argument, but this is largely because they have not been taught the joy of reasoned argument. Show students how one respects and critically reads a source at the same time, and they are excited about the possibilities.

Can one have a rewarding career in academics? Yes. However, it really is a crap-shoot getting a stable, tenure track job. You have to be the very best, and there have to be schools looking for your particular specialty. You must be prepared to move almost anywhere, which is very hard on families, or make sacrifices to stay together. You absolutely must be organized and good at long-term planning and multitasking.

If you can keep your day job, though, I highly recommend teaching a class on the side as I do. It is fun to watch the light-bulbs go off in students' eyes, and fun to read Noah and Utnapishtim together and discuss the tradeoffs between polytheism and monotheism. Best!

Ok, Ges basically said what I said but longer. :)
That was a fairly detailed answer as opposed to what I said. I don't know about the need to be the very best (perceived or real) to get a tenured track position though. That might be true at a Research I institution, but I don't know how true it is at a liberal arts or a teaching college.

Zultar, your post was concise and to the point -- sadly, not my gifts as an educator. :)

By the way, Jeff, through the vagaries of fate I also hold a middle/high credential for teaching history, and I much much much much prefer the college classroom. Having students who paid to be in the classroom, and not having to be in loco parentis, are complete game-changers.

Things have changed in teaching in the last 20 years. Students have won lawsuits against universities over class content and teachers' views in Liberal Arts enough times to make universities shift away from defending the teachers. There is no longer an effort to support controversy and academic freedom.

Over 30 years ago Northwestern University engineering professor Earl Butz published a Holocaust denying book, but kept his position for a few years in spite of student protests until he was removed for problems in his engineering class teaching. But now a days tweets and/or speeches against the president , 9/11, or women can be considered grounds for dismissal or not hiring a person.

Although there is an element of truth in this article, in the sense that people are too unwilling to engage with things that make them uncomfortable, I did not feel at all in my college classes that anything was being held back. Very sensitive issues were discussed and no one was in fear of anything. Occasionally some students would get very upset, leave, etc. It happens, but it's part of college. Everyone else just carried on learning.

One time in a small seminar class on Nigerian history, taught by a distinguished scholar in African history (Dr Toyin Falola if curious), and we were having a discussion on god knows what. As you might expect the class was majority black, but a white student did say something along the lines of "not just black people have experienced discrimination worldwide. For example my family is Polish, and there has been a long history of marginalization in Europe based on..."

One student wouldn't let him finish. She wasn't having it. She said he was racist for bringing that up, and stormed out. Everyone else just sort of looked at each other (it was at a small round table type of thing, maybe 12 students). Falola just looked down smiling for like 2 minutes, and then he just started up lecturing again in his Yoruba accent. She ended up dropping the class. No one ever heard anything more about it.

Maybe it is more of an issue for adjuncts though, but that is something that is wrong with the university system, not so much the students. The article makes a strong point about college education become too consumerized, with the evaluations and whatnot. That is spot-on, but what do you expect? You keep raising the tuitions, and people mortgage their first-born to get in, of course they are going to have high expectations. How about making education free - that would solve many of these issues.

I find that this "I don't care what you think, I know I'm right" attitude (or unwillingness to open one's mind) is far more present in politics than in education and I find it a little bit ridiculous that nobody has pointed this out. For every college or grad student that has this issue, there is some ultra-hippie in his 50s who still gets on a bus to go to Grateful Dead concerts around the country or some guy sweating his ass off on his porch chewing straw and plucking a banjo that does this same thing. Assuming that this is a problem within education is stupid and schools are the last thing that can fix this issue. It comes down to parenting and growing up in a diverse manner, experiencing the world and seeing what is wrong with it firsthand instead of avoiding them, and simply being taught outside of school to keep an open mind and let the white guy whose family, like mine, might have been murdered in a camp in Poland, speak his mind in the hopes that he will listen to you when you speak too.

Also, if that made no sense, I'm drunk at the bar and probably won't remember posting it anyway.

I see the article as less about emotional reactions driving ideology, zultar, than about emotional sensitivity overruling attention to substance in discussing things.

There is certainly nothing wrong with feeling passion about one's ideals. There is a great deal wrong with allowing that passion, and not reason, to become the focus of discussion about them.

The remainder of your remarks were quite interesting.

It's perfectly normal for people to not get all of their brain axon-to-dendrite myelin sheathing (white matter) until they are well into their 20s. The myelin sheathing promotes better voltage transmission as well as sodium ions, or better communication between brain cells. The process starts in early adolescence as the brain starts paring pathways that aren't being used and sheathing the most-used pathways. But the last part of the brain to get its increased myelin sheathing is the prefrontal cortex, the place where mood and emotions are regulated and judgment overcomes impulse. It's how teens and young adults are wired. It's why rental car companies don't rent to people under 25 years old.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201312/why-is-the-teen-brain-so-vulnerable
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inspire-rewire/201402/pruning-myelination-and-the-remodeling-adolescent-brain
http://www.brainresearch.us

Actually, rental car companies do rent to under-25's, Mujus -- it just costs more. ; )

Anyway, the article is highlighting a *change* (or alleged change) in the college class atmosphere, so the properties of teenagers and young adults would not explain it.

In any event, I'm skeptical of facile attempts to account for the behavior of large groups of people by alleged "brain wiring" issues, since I think (apart from other issues) there can be problems of cause and effect in those analyses, and there are in any event always many counterexamples to the claimed pattern. (Some teens are more responsible than most adults, for example).

Interesting article. 30+ years ago when I was studying 'O' level economics my teacher was explaining supply and demand with reference to whiskey sales. Half way through class he remembered he was being assessed that day and wiped the whiskey heading from the chalk board (yes it was a chalk board) and replaced it with potatoes. I think any assessor wouldn't have batted an eyelid at using whiskey as an example, but it illustrates the fear of those being assessed to play-it-safe. The thing is changed never comes from playing-it-safe. Sure teachers are worried about their careers, but people who take up arms to overthrow corrupt governments have more to fear, slaves had more to fear, suffragettes had more to fear. If you want progress you can't be fearful and cowered. The educator admits to changing his teaching materials and his teaching is blander because of it. I'd encourage him to think carefully about what he wants from a teaching careers. If he wants to inspire people, perhaps meekly succumbing to fear isn't going to achieve the results he aspires to.

*the thing is, change never comes from playing it safe.

I've been a fulltime college teacher for three years now, and part time for several years before that, during graduate school. I am very much the vulnerable faculty member - adjuncting for two years, and a non-tenured lecturer now, the kind of person who should be most concerned about these things. My anecdata is the complete opposite of this guy's. The only self-censoring I do is of things that I think might lead to disruptive classroom discussions, or things that I'd like to talk about but are too complicated/emotional/etc to handle in the limited time that I have with students. I've never censored or avoided material because I am afraid it would make students complain about me, and in fact I try to intentionally bring in things that I think are challenging - talking about evolution and science, the origins of how we think about race, birth control, and so on.

Admittedly, my experience may be different from others - I teach in the South, where there's a different dynamic maybe, and I've mostly taught at community colleges and small regional schools. The problems of corporatization and commodification of higher education are really bad. But I don't think they directly influence classroom teaching, at least in my experience.

I second entirely what Ges says.

I love ckr's term "anecdata." A problem in the classroom, in reporting, and in much political discourse, is that people do not understand the difference between anecdote and trend. Anecdote is very powerful, and can be usefully used to illustrate a broader, data-supported reality. However, in discussion one anecdote is often presented as a self-sufficient counterargument to a position backed up by a great deal of observation and evidence. Example: "Slavemaster X taught his slaves to read and gave them a chicken at Christmas, so the lives of African Americans living in slavery really weren't that difficult." Schlosser has this anecdote/trend problem, too. In building his argument, he overgeneralizes from his own experiences within America's curious higher-education edifice.

Counter-point:

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity