I think it’s actually very telling as to their model for how information is supposed to flow. You have authoritative sources of information, and information is supposed to flow from them into the community, and the authority is supposed to remove from the community anything that is wrong information. It is absolutely unallowed for something “wrong” to be present, mucking up the community and confusing people, because people will accept that uncritically, and that would be a catastrophe. It would be chaos.
One of my absolute favorite interactions of all time with lemmy.ml people was when, after a long time back and forth arguing on some topic, one of them tried to pull rank on me saying he taught seminars about this stuff and he was familiar with how pernicious it was when someone raised up inappropriate and incorrect statements like I was making, and how he would have to remove them from the class to keep everyone on the truthful page of information. As it happens I was a teacher of teachers for many years of professional life. I’m very familiar with the situation where a student is disagreeing with the teacher or questioning what’s being presented. There’s one very specific way that I would generally handle it and recommend that the teachers under me handle it, and I strongly disagree with his approach although I am familiar with that attitude. (And I do get it, in terms of pure class organization and not wanting a chaotic environment.) I talked to him about it from that perspective, how I would recommend to approach it if that kind of thing comes up, and why just removing all the “incorrect viewpoint” students from the class is about one of the worst things you can do. Assuming of course that they’re raising their counterpoints in some kind of reasonable and not deliberately-destructive fashion. But usually, they are if anything a little overly cautious about disagreeing with the teacher. In my experience.
He stopped responding to me after that. 🙂 It was an absolute bedrock element of his “the world is divided into authorities and obedient listeners-to-authority” that he always got to be the authority, never the listener, I guess.
Ha yea I’ve felt some of that before, I despise that whole “I’m right, you’re wrong and you’re wrong for even trying to question it” mindset.
I’m of the mindset and teach my own children to respectfully question something you’re being told, even if that means questioning someone in a teaching position because we’re all human and we all make mistakes
Yeah. Respect is key to teaching as with many other things. Which means earned respect. There’s not a thing wrong with people respecting whatever authority figure enough to listen and pay attention to what they have to say. In teaching as in many other domains, it’s a necessary part of having a positive interaction on all sides. But whenever someone says it’s the student’s (or whoever’s) role to respect the teacher (or whoever) unconditionally, and the teacher doesn’t have to earn the respect or demonstrate that they’re worthy of having it placed on them, the student just has to pretend to it and act accordingly, that’s a huge red flag about how they look at the intended interaction.
Someone questioning what you’re saying is – most of the time – showing that they take the whole endeavor seriously enough to ask questions openly and learn. You addressing the question effectively, even if the question is “wrong” or not on the same page as what you’re teaching, is a chance to earn genuine respect and encourage your students to be genuine about their side of it. I love when that stuff happens. But, you have to actually be worthy of respect to welcome that interaction…
Got dam they’ve gone full micromanager LMAO
I think it’s actually very telling as to their model for how information is supposed to flow. You have authoritative sources of information, and information is supposed to flow from them into the community, and the authority is supposed to remove from the community anything that is wrong information. It is absolutely unallowed for something “wrong” to be present, mucking up the community and confusing people, because people will accept that uncritically, and that would be a catastrophe. It would be chaos.
One of my absolute favorite interactions of all time with lemmy.ml people was when, after a long time back and forth arguing on some topic, one of them tried to pull rank on me saying he taught seminars about this stuff and he was familiar with how pernicious it was when someone raised up inappropriate and incorrect statements like I was making, and how he would have to remove them from the class to keep everyone on the truthful page of information. As it happens I was a teacher of teachers for many years of professional life. I’m very familiar with the situation where a student is disagreeing with the teacher or questioning what’s being presented. There’s one very specific way that I would generally handle it and recommend that the teachers under me handle it, and I strongly disagree with his approach although I am familiar with that attitude. (And I do get it, in terms of pure class organization and not wanting a chaotic environment.) I talked to him about it from that perspective, how I would recommend to approach it if that kind of thing comes up, and why just removing all the “incorrect viewpoint” students from the class is about one of the worst things you can do. Assuming of course that they’re raising their counterpoints in some kind of reasonable and not deliberately-destructive fashion. But usually, they are if anything a little overly cautious about disagreeing with the teacher. In my experience.
He stopped responding to me after that. 🙂 It was an absolute bedrock element of his “the world is divided into authorities and obedient listeners-to-authority” that he always got to be the authority, never the listener, I guess.
Ha yea I’ve felt some of that before, I despise that whole “I’m right, you’re wrong and you’re wrong for even trying to question it” mindset.
I’m of the mindset and teach my own children to respectfully question something you’re being told, even if that means questioning someone in a teaching position because we’re all human and we all make mistakes
Yeah. Respect is key to teaching as with many other things. Which means earned respect. There’s not a thing wrong with people respecting whatever authority figure enough to listen and pay attention to what they have to say. In teaching as in many other domains, it’s a necessary part of having a positive interaction on all sides. But whenever someone says it’s the student’s (or whoever’s) role to respect the teacher (or whoever) unconditionally, and the teacher doesn’t have to earn the respect or demonstrate that they’re worthy of having it placed on them, the student just has to pretend to it and act accordingly, that’s a huge red flag about how they look at the intended interaction.
Someone questioning what you’re saying is – most of the time – showing that they take the whole endeavor seriously enough to ask questions openly and learn. You addressing the question effectively, even if the question is “wrong” or not on the same page as what you’re teaching, is a chance to earn genuine respect and encourage your students to be genuine about their side of it. I love when that stuff happens. But, you have to actually be worthy of respect to welcome that interaction…