Posted on 07/19/2010 4:58:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Recently, several “intellectuals” convened to deal with a problem so serious it could not be tackled by just one college professor. The question was this: How can professors stop an epidemic of students missing their examinations without jeopardizing student grades by resorting to point deductions?
The problem was so serious that the handful of intellectuals who first noticed the problem – and noticed others noticing the problem – sent out a mass email inviting others to attend a “brown bag” luncheon to brainstorm. They were searching for “solutions”, which would stop short of actually punishing students for missing their examinations.
I certainly have no problem with professors getting together to find “solutions” to difficult “problems.” But I do have a “problem” with the way these professors were characterizing their “problem.”
A better description of their “problem” – one that better reflects its magnitude – would sound something like this: How can we retain the secular/progressive view of human nature, which is needed to justify secular/progressive policies, in light of a wealth of evidence to the contrary?
The thoughts of the professors responding to the mass email were enlightening. One complained that she wanted to give her students the benefit of the doubt, but they constantly pushed and tested her. The more she withheld punishment, the more prevalent the undesirable behavior.
Another observed that the more often she does nice things for students, the more often they take advantage of her. She seemed perplexed by the fact that rewarding a missed exam with another administration, thus giving the student more time to prepare, led to more missed exams.
The dilemma of the perplexed professors highlights the fundamental difference between the conservative and the progressive views of human motivation. The former suggests that you can sometimes threaten to do bad things to people and expect good things in return. The latter suggests that you can promise to do good things for people and expect good things in return.
In the 1960s, our government began to put the progressive view of human nature to the test. We launched a War on Poverty in an effort to build a Great Society. Soon, we began to see mountains of data refuting the secular/progressive view of human nature.
By the end of the first decade of our efforts to build a Great Society, crime in America had skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. The 1960s saw record increases in crime rates, which have yet to be broken.
Progressives thought that giving people welfare, food stamps, and huge increases in the minimum wage would all be nice favors, which would be returned in the form of greater citizen conformity. The fact that it didn’t work has done little to shake the foundations of progressive faith in human decency.
Since the failed effort to build a Great Society there have been repeated calls to build more prisons in order to clean up the mess progressives have created. But, for years, progressives have fought tooth and nail to prevent or slow the expansion of prisons.
The result, of course, has been an increase in homicides and gang-rapes in prison due to prison overcrowding. In short, the progressive view of human nature has produced more violence among both free and captive populations. More people are dying everywhere but the progressive vision of human decency is immortal. It cannot be slain by any wealth of empirical evidence.
More recently, we have seen the effects of progressive gun control policies. Like prisons, guns are reminders of human depravity, which the progressive cannot accept. And so the progressive seeks to ban guns. Nonetheless, in 2008, the Supreme Court lifted a ban on handguns in Washington D.C., which resulted in a 25% decrease in homicides the next year.
The D.C. homicide data speak volumes about human nature. The presence of guns is a threat, which helps many depraved individuals conform to the dictates of the law. Nonetheless, progressives still fight the very reforms that have helped preserve innocent lives. They do so because it is more important that they preserve their vision of human decency.
It isn’t surprising that progressives who cannot manage a classroom cannot also manage “society.” It would be better if the progressive would confine her decision to accommodate, rather than punish, irresponsibility to the classroom. But intellectuals rarely keep their ideas to themselves. They are obliged to impose them on “society.”
Replacing the Judeo-Christian view of human nature with the progressive view of human nature has proven to be a bad idea. And bad ideas have bad consequences for fallen human beings. But progressive hope for the secular transformation of human nature springs eternal.
The floggings will continue until morale improves? Unlikely.
The students are just not holding up their end. In this day and age of word processors and color printers, a bright student should have no problem developing a beautifully authentic looking counterfeit Doctor’s prescription form on which is written an excuse from the exam....... the final exam.
“On such and such a date So and so was under my care and confined to bed suffering from a severe penicillin reaction.” Signed SCRAWL in black ink
Or for regular tests and maybe a cut class, a suitably authentic court summons could be counterfeited and printed on pink paper.
Another cop killed IN UNIFORM in cold blood in Chicago this weekend:
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Off Duty Killed
In front of his home, in uniform. And retiring next month:
•An off-duty police officer was shot and killed near 74th Street and Evans Avenue at about 6:20 a.m., police said.
A police detective on the scene said the officer was pronounced dead at 6:41 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and that he was coming home from a midnight shift.
He was outside cleaning the glass of his recently purchased 2010 black Buick when three suspects approached the detective said.
Sun Times coverage here.
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/
You want a true eye-opener?
Read the comments section:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=13350456&postID=911067942507232108
There are over 300 comments.
We’re in real trouble, folks.
Not floggings, but consequences. Not morale, but self-discipline/self-control, responsibility.
Really sad. These all seem to have been just cold-blooded killings. I was living in NYC when black radical groups were targeting the cops and law enforcement; those were terrible times. At least then we had an FBI and courts that were interested in nailing violent thug radicals.
Not any more, I don’t think.
Floggings are a consequence. This analysis of human motivation is either extremely poorly expressed or fundamentally flawed.
I agree with you.
Moreover, if you can wade through the comments, it appears that Chicago is about to have a bit of a powderkeg on their hands, with respect to its beleaguered police department.
From the comments, it sounds like they have been handed some PC mandate to take it easy on the gangbangers.
On the radio this morning it was announced that crime rates in the Maryland counties that edge DC have also had significant decreases in violent crimes.
Just a coincidence? I doubt it.
Second City Cop is my favorite blog. I read it every day.
Its a real education in ways of big city corruption by liberals. The comment sections of the blog posts is what makes it so compelling.
Back in the sixties the position of many “experts” was that humans were blank slates (tabula rasa) onto whose brains society could imprint anything they wanted. Humans were totally what society made them to be. We now know that was a totally bogus argument made up by the left to inflict their vision of the perfect society on America. People are hard-wired on many things. The fact that liberals don’t believe that has cost America years and thousands (if not millions) of lives thrown away sacrificed on the altar of liberalism and political correctness.
We are in trouble because of the bad attitude of cops. Jack booted thugs who use no knock warrants, breaking down doors in the middle of the night at the wrong house, who shoot grandma and get off with promotions and paid leave.
Criminals will always be criminals. Cops should not be criminals. But they are becoming more so every passing day.
So is failing the test for missing the test administration without proper reason. So is suffering in one’s GPA for having failed the test. So is academic probation for having failed to achieve a proper GPA. So is expulision for having failed to raise one’s GPA after being placed on academic probation.
All these should be tried first—then it’s on to flogging!
Seriously, why do you bring up flogging/morale-building? Could you not think of any intermediate steps along the way (”let the punishment fit the crime”)? The role of discipline is correction. The progressive approach (withhold consequence) is the fundamentally flawed practice here, not the useful tool of corrective discipline. Those in authority must rule with wisdom.
Mike Adams always has great insights and this column, like his others, doesn't disappoint. The answer to the question the "professors" commiserated on is simple - actions (or the lack thereof) have consequences. When students miss an exam, they get either a zero or an "F". College has always been a place for adults. If adults want the education, they go to class, turn in their term papers and take their exams - on time and on schedule, barring some significant event (such as severe injury or illness).
If the children in the class want credit for showing up, that's called a minimum wage job and doesn't have anything to do with either college or a college degree!
Given that positive and negative rewards are applied with consistency, negative rewards are only required a few times during the early formative years. Positive rewards work a heck of a lot better that the threat of punishment. Lay out the rules and consistently apply them. Make the rewards for positive behavior over the long run attractive and repeatedly point out that life tends to be the sum of choices made integrated over time. In general, negative energy detracts from life.
“Given that positive and negative rewards are applied with consistency, negative rewards are only required a few times during the early formative years”
I think the point of the Adams article is to point out that this statement is patently false, don’t you?
No.
Absolute rubbish. Negative "rewards" exist throughout our lifetimes. The fear of getting caught stops us from driving drunk. The fear of hunger, loss of status etc etc drives us to work and succed.
One of the problems with Government jobs and companies that are unionised is that the negative feedback loop has been short circuited, there is little or no consequence for poor performance.
If students can't be bothered to turn up for their final exams an incomplete will quickly remedy the situation.
From the article:
“A better description of their “problem” – one that better reflects its magnitude – would sound something like this: How can we retain the secular/progressive view of human nature, which is needed to justify secular/progressive policies, in light of a wealth of evidence to the contrary?...
The dilemma of the perplexed professors highlights the fundamental difference between the conservative and the progressive views of human motivation. The former suggests that you can sometimes threaten to do bad things to people and expect good things in return. The latter suggests that you can promise to do good things for people and expect good things in return…
Replacing the Judeo-Christian view of human nature with the progressive view of human nature has proven to be a bad idea. And bad ideas have bad consequences for fallen human beings. But progressive hope for the secular transformation of human nature springs eternal.”
Perhaps you are reading the article in a vacuum. Adams comes at this issue (and many others) from a Judeo-Christian sensibility. Flogging is not on the radar, though that might be what a secularist calls corrective discipline. Corrective discipline is not negative in nature, but positive, in that its intent is to bring about correction. I don’t discipline my child because I want to punish them. I do so because I love them and see the need to correct a wrong behavior (usually it is an attitude of defiance of, disobedience to, or disregard for my parental authority). As much as anything else, it is the discipline (done in love) that rivets my child’s mind on his action. The discussion we have afterward is to clearly define the wrong, to lay out the expectation of future conduct and to allow for reconciliation to occur. Conversely, withholding such correction (sparing the rod) is the equivalent of hating the child in the Judeo-Christian economy (see the book of Proverbs). There is no arresting of the attention of the “offender”, no direct association with the offense and consequence, and, most importantly, no opportunity for reconciliation brought about through true contrition.
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