Get Ready to Intellectualize. . .
- Introductions
- Syllabus, Course Expectations, and all that
- Readings and Assignments
- Here’s a bit about the larger goals of our time in this AWESOME class:
“College learners pass through three stages of intellectual development before becoming sophisticated critical thinkers.”
a) Dualism.
- tend to see the world in polar terms: black and white, good and bad, and so on.
- have what Perry calls a “cognitive egocentrism” – that is, they find it difficult to entertain points of view other than the ones they themselves embrace.
- tend to ally themselves absolutely to whatever authority they find appealing.
- At this stage in their development, students believe that there is a “right” side, and they want to be on it. They believe that their arguments are undermined by the consideration of other points of view.
b) Relativism.
- understand that there often is no single right answer to a problem, and that some questions have no answers.
- beginning to contextualize knowledge and to understand the complexities of any intellectual position.
- students in this phase sometimes give themselves over to a kind of skepticism. For the young relativist, if there is no Truth, then every opinion is as good as another.
- At its worst, relativism leads students to believe that opinion is attached to nothing but the person who has it, and that evidence, logic, and clarity have little to do with an argument’s value.
c) Reflectivism.
- eventually come to see that, indeed, some opinions are better than others.
- begin to be interested in what makes one argument better than another. Is it well reasoned? Well supported? Balanced? Sufficiently complex?
- When students learn to evaluate others’ points of view, they will begin to evaluate their own. In the end, they will be able to commit themselves to a point of view that is objective, well reasoned, sophisticated – one that, in short, meets all the requirements of an academic argument.
– William Perry’s Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme (1970)
Part of what this course is designed to do is move you all from dualism, PAST SCARY RELATIVISM, and to reflectivism – and one of the best ways to begin this process is to dive into examining gender, sexuality, race, class, and even hipsterism – to see how our culture socially constructs these identities.
Because we all have one, we’ll start of with gender. Take a look at this excerpt from a Season 2 episode of Parks and Rec:
How does Leslie Knope use the gender biases and constructions of what is “female” to her advantage? What of these constructions do we believe?
English 104 