Re: [RC] Learning orientations and political bias

[David R. Block]

Title: To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical

Bull-F******-Shit it isn't unjust. You can tell me all day that it is not on ideological grounds and I will but laugh. Go with the groupthink. 1984 is a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual. David To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.--Thomas Jefferson   On 8/9/2013 3:00 PM, bil...@aol.com wrote: The following article is onto something important. For anyone who has done any teaching it is clear that certain worldviews that various students espouse do effect learning. Not that there always is a 1:1 relationship. In some cases this can be rather complex and not very obvious. But generally a number of patterns are hard to miss.   In other words, there is a Mormon pattern, an anarchist pattern, a Catholic pattern, a Leftist pattern, an Evangelical pattern (itself broken down into sub-patterns for Pentecostals / Charismatics,  community church believers, Baptists, etc), and so forth for Jews, business majors, and artist types and still more.   It surely seems that everyone is lobotomized about something, or several somethings,  and that some people are more lobotomized than others. But everyone has been lobotomized along the way, or as Buckminster Fuller once said, "we are all damaged children."   BR   ======================             from the site: In Socrates' Wake   August 7, 2013     Learning orientations and political bias Later this week I'll be joining fellow ISW'ers Jennifer Morton and Harry Brighouse for a conference on "Education: Ideals and Practices." It looks to be a great event, and I thought I'd share my paper with our readers. I'd welcome any feedback you might have. The paper draws on a fair amount of empirical research about learning and personality, but it was motivated by my own observation that students' political beliefs map onto personality differences that shape how students learn. Here's the abstract: Anti-Conservative Bias in Education is Real — But Not Unjust Conservatives commonly claim that systems of formal education are biased against conservative ideology. I argue that this claim is incorrect, but not because there is no bias against conservatives in formal education. A wide swath of psychological evidence linking personality and ideology indicates that conservatives and liberals differ in their learning orientations, that is, in the values, motivations, and beliefs they bring to learning tasks. These differences in operative epistemologies explain many demographic phenomena relating educational achievement and political ideology. Systems of formal education thus disadvantage conservatives, especially in the later stages of formal education. Conservatives are therefore ‘selected against’ in the process of formal education, not due to their values or ideology but because their learning orientations are not especially conducive to academic success beyond a certain point. However, because the bias against conservatives in not ideological in origin, a case cannot be made that conservatives are victims of institutional injustice. This bias against conservatives in formal education could be mitigated were the purposes of formal education radically modified (the education of the military class in Plato’s Republic serves as a model). But such a model of formal education would ill serve the needs of modern, industrialized, information-driven societies. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org   --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to radicalcentrism+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.     -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org   --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to radicalcentrism+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.