A "teachable moment"

In the earlier 101 today, a student in his group was very heatedly saying that he didn't agree with the article the students had just read--which was not an opinion piece but was conveying the result of a study of cell-phone use among the generation that follows the "Millennials"--so, for the most part, students just a smidge younger than the students in the class. I told him he couldn't "disagree" with facts--but then I realized that what he was talking about was an objection to the author's generalizations, which are statistically valid and rely on a preponderance of the evidence but which are nevertheless generalizations.

So, I ended up talking at length about valid generalizations--and the fact that educated readers implicitly understand that there are outliers, cases that do not fit the generalization. Further, in an article in a popular medium (in this case, The Atlantic), the author is under no obligation to specifically cite the numerical data in every single paragraph, especially when the author is referring to her own research.

However, I stated, that doesn't mean that a student can't verify the findings by doing some research to ascertain whether other studies come to the same conclusions. It also doesn't mean that there might not be an angle that the student sees that the author has left unaddressed. In this particular instance, one of the generalizations was that young adolescents in what the article's author calls "iGen" are slower to get their driver's licenses than previous generations, being perfectly content to let their parents chauffeur them around. My student pointed out that in his area, most parents are single parents, and even in two-parent households, both parents are far too busy to be driving their children around, hither and yon. So, I said, you might want to do some research into whether there are class distinctions in the effect of cell-phone use especially in terms of kids' maturity and self-determination.

Talking with Paul, I realized that a possible reason why my student was so fiercely resistant to the article's assertions was that he felt his own independence, maturity, and emotional stability--and those of his friends--were being impugned. If I'd realized that possible cause earlier, I'd have reminded him that one of the places we started this semester was not only with the idea that critical thinkers "[hold] everything open to unlimited verification" but also with the assertion that critical thinkers "can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices"--or, conversely, can contemplate challenges to their dearest prejudices. (Those quotations are from The Critical Thinking Community, “Sumner’s Definition of Critical Thinking.” http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/sumnerrsquos-definition-of-critical-thinking/412.)

Since that student demonstrated the need for me to talk about generalizations, statistical validity, preponderance of evidence, I decided to talk about all that with the later section. They were more puzzled, I think, than anything by the mini-lecture, but I'm still glad to have reinforced that awareness of how to read (and think) critically with both classes.

I also thought, as I was wrapping up the 5:00 class and getting ready to come back to the office to write this post, that I am boring the hell out of myself with my perpetual complaints about being tired and cranky. I am perpetually tired and cranky, but instead of focusing on that, I need to find some effective attitude adjustment. (Sleep would help, of course, but I need to find something more feasible, as knowing myself and my schedule, it's unlikely I'll get much more sleep than I've been getting.) As I mentioned to Paul, I'm carefully monitoring what it takes for me to feel all the joys that still exist in this career for me; when I can't feel them, even knowing they're there, early warning bells about the thin edge of the "bitter and jaded, burned out" wedge start to go off. I saw one colleague today who is in many ways bitter and jaded--and who looks like hell to boot--and I thought, "Not me, please god: not me." I want to stay in this career at this institution as long as I can still do my job effectively for the students and without a toll on my emotional or physical health. I'm still OK on all that--but I can feel the tipping point creeping closer.

Meanwhile, it is time to start counting how many class meetings are left. I meet with the 101 students eight more times this semester: that's it. I meet with the SF student nine more times, as I haven't met with them yet this week. That's nothing; that's a sneeze. I'm sure I can breathe my way to December 21 without much struggle. And I'm actually really looking forward to putting some time into planning my classes for spring; I hope to do some of that--as much as possible--over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Now, however, I need to get groceries, which I meant to do over the weekend and never got around to doing--and with Thanksgiving coming up, I sure don't want to be in the store tomorrow or Wednesday. Off I toddle.