PZ Myers and some thoughts about education and religion
I mostly shouldn't post to other people's blogs. I'm a bit of a jerk, and a lot of other people are a bit of a jerk, so it often escalates. I justify being a little bit of a jerk because they're being a little jerky, and then you're calling someone a shitrat fuckerface. The web has revolutionized communication, mostly allowing people to scream at each other without meaningful repercussions. I can post to some people's blogs because I know them pretty well, or because they are sufficiently reasonable that even if I'm a little bit of a jerk they'll be the mature one, which I feel actually makes me less of a jerk in the first place if I'm confident that they're not going to be asshats.
Well, PZ Myers can be a jerk. I mean, he's not even particularly hiding it. I'm sure he's also a nice guy in a lot of ways - but he's extremely aggressive and he's got a lot of social cache, y'know, he's a fairly popular blogger (meaning he has fans who'll serve as attack dogs and do nothing but stroke his ego) and a professor. Oh, sure, he's also smart and funny and much of his outrage I share, but . . . he can be a jerk. I shouldn't post there and I'm going to stop, but I've still got to get something off of my chest!
Myers posted here about a professor, Denis Rancourt, at the University of Ottawa who has been suspended pending a review because he changed the way he taught his class. It seems Rancourt doesn't believe in, well, grades and the lecture system. He thinks that chasing after grades hurts their education.
Okay, here's the thing. Rancourt's right. There's a whole field of science (much of it specifically in physics education and Harcourt is a physicist), of which my wife has a master's degree in I should note, that studies education. When grades are offered, rather than learning the material it appears most students work to get a good grade and that seriously damages retention of material. This is a fact, in the scientific sense, of it has been researched robustly enough that anyone who looks at the data must conclude that there's a strong negative correlation between retention of information from a class and grading.
Myers appears a little sympathetic towards Rancourt's plight at first, but at the end Myers said, "The other problem is that a university education is not the product of a single instructor, and we must respect the whole of the curriculum and work together with our colleagues" and "I'd like to know how far he deviated from the course curricula…a little flexibility is good, but if he was ignoring the needs of the whole discipline's program, then that's also reason to say bye-bye to Rancourt."
Here's the thing to me. Myers spends a lot of time attacking the anti-reason stance of religion, particularly fundamentalist religion. There, he doesn't say that he's got to work with them because they're just wrong. He says that science is the only legitimate way to talk about biology in the classroom and he's supports efforts to pressure religion - through both court action and legislation - to prevent religions from having a say about how biology is taught. I agree with him, of course! I rant fairly regularly about how intelligent design isn't a science and has no place in a biology classroom. I likewise support efforts to keep this nonsense out.
But Rancourt's evidence concerning education is as real, accessible and true as evolution. Grades scientifically stink. So when Myers talks about how he's gotta work with people in his department, I think he's being mealy-mouthed. He'll stand up to any god botherer in the world and call them a fool for trying to poison science, but when someone brings scientific data to the classroom to change the way they teach he's ends up talking like a wimp. (And sort of looking ignorant - one of the truths is that both faculty and students would be much better off if lectures and grades were abandoned for just about any other system at all. Which he'd know if he looked at the data, but he doesn't have time for that. Y'know. Even tho' he's a teacher.)
I mean, I'll stay it straight. I know that most teachers are contentious. Many of them, particularly primary and secondary, do heroic jobs in the face of all kinds of craziness from insufficient resources to crazy education boards to insane parents. But the education system most schools use is literally medieval. A thousand years ago, the Catholic Church formalized the process through which priests became priests. Part of this was making sure the priests had a good idea of what was in the Bible, and other definitive works. Well, books back then were really expensive - the choke point being the clerks (y'know, clerics) who copied them. They could transcribe only so fast. So it developed that one person with access to the book would read the book to others. This person was already a priest, and thus an authority - not only with status, but also because he was one of the people who helped to determine if a given person could ever become a priest. So when someone in the audience - now the class - had a question, the lecturer (a word that hasn't much changed, even) would answer the question with authority. Some discussion might be allowed, but it was pretty hierarchical. This system was, itself, based on the sermon - where the priest would tell the parish what to think and they didn't have too much room to gainsay it.
I mean, this is still basically the system. You have lecturers ("masters" and "doctors of philosophy" - all these terms the same terms used by medieval priests) who collect a congregation and sermonize them with near absolute authority because they have both credentials and they hold the keys for the academic advancement of the student.
So, here's Myers, this guy who hates religion, who thinks it's stupid and we should do away with it. And most days, he goes into a classroom and . . . plays the role of a medieval priest lecturing to his congregation!
At no point does he consider that he's totally aping the behavior of a medievel priest. He defends the system that medieval priests have created. He's doesn't even know there's science, real science, that condemns this system, this literally medieval system (which should surprise no one, that a medieval system stinks). And in the comments, when I told him that there was science behind it, he was indifferent to that fact, too busy defending his reputation or whatever to care about how, y'know, there's science here. (Many of the others were worse, talking about their personal experiences with lectures - which is like a religious person talking about how religion has been good for them and is, therefore, good, while ignoring all arguments to the contrary.) But he's here defending this system invented by medieval priests that has changed shockingly little in over a thousand years.
Argh!
Adrienne says Myers' reaction is normal - that people in science education have studied that reaction. The people who do well in that kind of system are the ones promoted from within it, so they tend to defend it. It is, after all, responsible for their current job and status. But it's still frustrating because, y'know, here's this guy who's all about the data, about the science, and there's this big portion of his life where he's acting like a medieval priest and in that part of his life he seems comfortable ignoring the data that is so important to him in other areas.
And yet another part of me finds this utterly fascinating as an example of comparmentalization and how people who honestly think that they're hardened, frosty scientific materialists nevertheless have unconsciously adopted the attitudes of religion. As a sign of how powerful religion is even to the most blatantly, consciously atheist members of the community and how religion continues to shape us even after we've really tried to reject it. It has shaped almost every part of our society in ways that we can't even see a lot of the time. Which is why Nietzsche said both that god is dead but that god casts a mighty long shadow. Even across the lives of the most strident atheists.
Well, PZ Myers can be a jerk. I mean, he's not even particularly hiding it. I'm sure he's also a nice guy in a lot of ways - but he's extremely aggressive and he's got a lot of social cache, y'know, he's a fairly popular blogger (meaning he has fans who'll serve as attack dogs and do nothing but stroke his ego) and a professor. Oh, sure, he's also smart and funny and much of his outrage I share, but . . . he can be a jerk. I shouldn't post there and I'm going to stop, but I've still got to get something off of my chest!
Myers posted here about a professor, Denis Rancourt, at the University of Ottawa who has been suspended pending a review because he changed the way he taught his class. It seems Rancourt doesn't believe in, well, grades and the lecture system. He thinks that chasing after grades hurts their education.
Okay, here's the thing. Rancourt's right. There's a whole field of science (much of it specifically in physics education and Harcourt is a physicist), of which my wife has a master's degree in I should note, that studies education. When grades are offered, rather than learning the material it appears most students work to get a good grade and that seriously damages retention of material. This is a fact, in the scientific sense, of it has been researched robustly enough that anyone who looks at the data must conclude that there's a strong negative correlation between retention of information from a class and grading.
Myers appears a little sympathetic towards Rancourt's plight at first, but at the end Myers said, "The other problem is that a university education is not the product of a single instructor, and we must respect the whole of the curriculum and work together with our colleagues" and "I'd like to know how far he deviated from the course curricula…a little flexibility is good, but if he was ignoring the needs of the whole discipline's program, then that's also reason to say bye-bye to Rancourt."
Here's the thing to me. Myers spends a lot of time attacking the anti-reason stance of religion, particularly fundamentalist religion. There, he doesn't say that he's got to work with them because they're just wrong. He says that science is the only legitimate way to talk about biology in the classroom and he's supports efforts to pressure religion - through both court action and legislation - to prevent religions from having a say about how biology is taught. I agree with him, of course! I rant fairly regularly about how intelligent design isn't a science and has no place in a biology classroom. I likewise support efforts to keep this nonsense out.
But Rancourt's evidence concerning education is as real, accessible and true as evolution. Grades scientifically stink. So when Myers talks about how he's gotta work with people in his department, I think he's being mealy-mouthed. He'll stand up to any god botherer in the world and call them a fool for trying to poison science, but when someone brings scientific data to the classroom to change the way they teach he's ends up talking like a wimp. (And sort of looking ignorant - one of the truths is that both faculty and students would be much better off if lectures and grades were abandoned for just about any other system at all. Which he'd know if he looked at the data, but he doesn't have time for that. Y'know. Even tho' he's a teacher.)
I mean, I'll stay it straight. I know that most teachers are contentious. Many of them, particularly primary and secondary, do heroic jobs in the face of all kinds of craziness from insufficient resources to crazy education boards to insane parents. But the education system most schools use is literally medieval. A thousand years ago, the Catholic Church formalized the process through which priests became priests. Part of this was making sure the priests had a good idea of what was in the Bible, and other definitive works. Well, books back then were really expensive - the choke point being the clerks (y'know, clerics) who copied them. They could transcribe only so fast. So it developed that one person with access to the book would read the book to others. This person was already a priest, and thus an authority - not only with status, but also because he was one of the people who helped to determine if a given person could ever become a priest. So when someone in the audience - now the class - had a question, the lecturer (a word that hasn't much changed, even) would answer the question with authority. Some discussion might be allowed, but it was pretty hierarchical. This system was, itself, based on the sermon - where the priest would tell the parish what to think and they didn't have too much room to gainsay it.
I mean, this is still basically the system. You have lecturers ("masters" and "doctors of philosophy" - all these terms the same terms used by medieval priests) who collect a congregation and sermonize them with near absolute authority because they have both credentials and they hold the keys for the academic advancement of the student.
So, here's Myers, this guy who hates religion, who thinks it's stupid and we should do away with it. And most days, he goes into a classroom and . . . plays the role of a medieval priest lecturing to his congregation!
At no point does he consider that he's totally aping the behavior of a medievel priest. He defends the system that medieval priests have created. He's doesn't even know there's science, real science, that condemns this system, this literally medieval system (which should surprise no one, that a medieval system stinks). And in the comments, when I told him that there was science behind it, he was indifferent to that fact, too busy defending his reputation or whatever to care about how, y'know, there's science here. (Many of the others were worse, talking about their personal experiences with lectures - which is like a religious person talking about how religion has been good for them and is, therefore, good, while ignoring all arguments to the contrary.) But he's here defending this system invented by medieval priests that has changed shockingly little in over a thousand years.
Argh!
Adrienne says Myers' reaction is normal - that people in science education have studied that reaction. The people who do well in that kind of system are the ones promoted from within it, so they tend to defend it. It is, after all, responsible for their current job and status. But it's still frustrating because, y'know, here's this guy who's all about the data, about the science, and there's this big portion of his life where he's acting like a medieval priest and in that part of his life he seems comfortable ignoring the data that is so important to him in other areas.
And yet another part of me finds this utterly fascinating as an example of comparmentalization and how people who honestly think that they're hardened, frosty scientific materialists nevertheless have unconsciously adopted the attitudes of religion. As a sign of how powerful religion is even to the most blatantly, consciously atheist members of the community and how religion continues to shape us even after we've really tried to reject it. It has shaped almost every part of our society in ways that we can't even see a lot of the time. Which is why Nietzsche said both that god is dead but that god casts a mighty long shadow. Even across the lives of the most strident atheists.