This morning I came across an interesting reading about the development of thinking during college, and I thought the information was worth sharing with inquiring minds. William Perry, Jr. of Harvard has identified three different development phases that typically occur during one’s college career. This information was lifted directly from page 571 of Pierce Howard’s The Owner’s Manual to the Brain, 3rd edition.
*Dualism. The entering student tends to see the world in terms of right and wrong , good and bad, and searches throughout freshman and sophomore courses to find the right answers.
*Relativism. The maturing student tends to eschew (great word) the notion of a single right approach or answer, instead embracing a pluralism in which multiple points of view and value systems may be simultaneously good or right.
*Commitment. The mature student, while still embracing relativism and pluralism, affirms a personal set of values. This commitment is integrative and accepting of other systems, unlike earlier commitments that were unexamined and based on unquestioned authority.
What I’d like for you to do is to apply these findings to you and your current level of thinking. Do you accept that something is true or right based on what your teacher, textbook, or some other authority says? Have you found yourself doubting some of your earlier beliefs? Do you find that you are occasionally “at odds” with others with whom you associate because of differing beliefs?
Please respond to this post with an experience or observation of your own. After I hear from a couple of you, then I’ll share some of my development thinking milestones that might not have happened had it not been for college.
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4 comments:
I'm coming at this from a different angle, I suppose, since I am actually 42 and in college. However, I can see some of the same parallels that I experienced from college age until now. When it comes to a belief system, I've found that you have to make it your own. What I'm saying is that as a child, I completely accepted and believed all that I was taught. I'm referring to my Christian faith, and various character principles. As I reached my teens, I began to pull away, asking myself many questions, never really doubting, but trying to make sense of it in my life. Only after I'd come to the point that my faith was a part of ME, and began then to know that what I'd been taught, I really believed. It then became faith-I made it my own. I believe this is true for many things, it may be your morality choices, your character choices, whatever...you have to reach the point that you believe it because YOU believe it;that it is such a part of you that you can't live without it, or else it's not really belief at all.
I knew I could count on you to respond with something pithy and thought provoking! Thanks.
Since you mentioned your Christian faith, I'll piggyback on that just a little. I've had advisees who refuse to take REL 101 because they see it as blasphemous to learn about Hindus and Buddhists when "those people" are so screwed up in their thinking. I mean, my goodness, isn't it a little weird to believe in a religion that allows cows to wander in the streets when children are starving? Or Buddha...what kind of "god" is that??? I'm being silly and sarcastic, of course...just trying to make a point.
I would have to say that almost always I do accept what my teacher says to be true or right. Some of the classes that I have taken, such as Chemistry, I really knew knothing about it before going into it. Since she was the teacher I assumed and believed that she knew what she was teaching and I went by what she taught. Once in a while in one class a teacher will tell you something but in another class, on the same subject, a teacher will tell you something a little bit different. In those cases Im not really sure what is true. It is then that I might go online and try to figure it out for myself!
You're "maturing," don't you think? Even in psychology (or should I say especially in psychology), it's challenging to come up with absolute truths. If it were easy, then we wouldn't have so many perspectives. As an example, just look at the right of the screen and take a gander at these men who were all "right," and yet each differed in his views on human thought and behavior.
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