I would like to thank all the people who came to my talk on Compassionate Critical Thinking at Buffalo Street Books last Saturday. I deeply appreciate your comments and support. And thank you to Asha, Woody, and other staff who helped create the event.
During a discussion with friends at a party, I voiced a not very original analysis that Donald Trump’s proposed economic policies posed a threat to the interests of his supporters from lower economic classes. A friend replied that was “just your opinion.” Trump’s supporters held a very different viewpoint. My viewpoint was supposedly biased against Trump and so I couldn’t see him clearly—but, of course, “we are all biased.”
If this was a class, I would ask students what exactly was an opinion, a theory, or a fact. Do these words have different, contrasting, meanings? If so, what are those differences? But this was a party and the discussion was interrupted and dissolved. This view, this meme, that we all have bias, can be ambiguous at best, and undermine critical thinking at worst. It could undermine the value of taking a position based on facts instead of opinions.
What is bias? What could it mean to say, “Everyone is biased?” Or, “all viewpoints are biased?” ‘Bias’ is sometimes used in a way that is almost synonymous with having a perspective. We always speak and act from a particular perspective and all perspectives have limits. No one is omniscient. So, in this case, yes, everyone has bias. It couldn’t be otherwise. So, why even use the word ‘bias’ instead of ‘perspective’?
One student argued in a very insightful manner that ‘bias’ can simply mean a preference. This meaning, however, could run into the same difficulties as ‘perspective.’ ‘Bias’ can also mean, according to my Encarta Dictionary, “an unfair preference for or dislike of something” or “to influence someone or something unfairly.” Bias is not simply any preference but an “unfair” one. In statistics, ‘bias’ means “a distortion of a set of results.” To be biased can also mean to be prejudiced. Why do people use ‘bias’ instead of ‘preference’? Probably because of the emotional charge, which comes not from the meaning of ‘perspective’ or ‘preference’ but from ‘distorted’ or ‘prejudiced.’ You can’t say you want the emotional charge of a word and deny the implications or connotations that come with that charge.
And the fact that all perspectives are limited does not mean that all are biased. Limited is not the same as distorted. If it were, then it would imply that everyone acts unfairly or is prejudiced, which would undermine any effort to act against distortion/unfairness/prejudice. You need humility and understanding in the face of the limited nature of your viewpoint. You need clearer observation, more careful analysis, more reliable sources of information, and possibly more self-awareness and empathy in the face of distortion.
Saying “everyone is biased” also creates logical problems. It implies an “irrefutable situation” in which non-biased viewpoints are impossible. “A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.” (Karl Popper, Philosopher of Science) Likewise, “If a word’s meaning includes everything, then it means nothing. If a theory can’t possibly be proven wrong, then it is actually useless.” Since meaning is a function of being able to make distinctions, to say “everyone is biased” has no meaning.
And we clearly need to make distinctions, including between opinions, distortions of facts, and demonstrable facts. We are constantly forming viewpoints and emotions based both on what we hear and how we listen. When we distort the situation around us, we tightly restrict the information we allow into our awareness. Our emotional health, and maybe our political rights and power, might depend on our learning how to spot logical gaps, check the truthfulness of statements, read our own body responses, and be aware of when we listen openly and when we close our ears and eyes—and are aware of when our thinking is distorted, unfair, biased.
Sometimes teachers ask themselves, “How do I get students to use the full writing process, to start with brainstorming and proceed to outlining, first draft, etc.,?” I think that question assumes that the writing process, as usually taught, is the most appropriate way for each student to approach writing. Why not start with: “How do I help each student to think clearly and express that clarity?” Or: “How do I help this student to write well or to write at all?”
Even more, you can ask yourself: “How do you write what is your own truth?” Discovering what works best for you, and why, can help you relate to your student’s struggles. When writing is viewed as revelation or discovery, a means not only for expressing but thinking critically about your life, then writing becomes intrinsically motivating. It is not just something imposed by a teacher. And then the most important part of writing instruction is already taught.
I noticed that whenever I first try to discuss the process of writing with a group of secondary school students, they rarely like or fully understand how to outline or brainstorm. Or maybe they don’t like it because they don’t understand it. They think the “full writing process” is a waste of time. Outlining feels artificial, inauthentic, as if it would rob them of their creativity. Brainstorming, they think, only gets in their way. It feels reassuring to “just write” or just get something down on a page.
It’s helpful to ask students directly how they approach writing, what works for them and what is most difficult, but you have to listen and watch closely for answers. They might not be able or willing to say it all in words. And you need ways to individualize instruction in response to what they say.
Sometimes, the problem is that they don’t know how to organize their ideas or they are easily overwhelmed by material. In that case, offer a form to guide them step by step through structuring their essay. Or, show students an old, pre-computer scriptwriting process, that involves writing, on 3 x 5 cards, each scene you envision for the movie. Then you place the cards on a table and move them around to find the most appropriate plot line. You could adapt this to a research or persuasive essay by recording facts, theories, and lines of reasoning on the cards and move them around to build the strongest argument for your position. Or you could use a concept map or computer graphics to serve a similar purpose.
Underneath their resistance to writing might be a lack of trust in their intellect or they might not be able to focus attention enough to hold onto and clearly hear their own ideas. In that case, I explain that writing can be part of thinking. The purpose of brainstorming is to allow you to work with your brain and not against it. The brain processes that foster insight and creativity are different from those that edit, or check spelling and grammar. So doing a brainstorm frees the mind from anything that is irrelevant to simply getting down a first draft. But even more, I talk about uncovering your own truth. Brainstorming is a way to free your mind from assumptions and get at what isn’t initially clear. It is a way to integrate material and synthesize information. Start by assigning meaningful topics or questions to write about or get students involved in creating the topics. Then use prompts to help students understand the question or assignment: “How are you hearing the question? What is it asking you to do? What are the different parts of the question?”
Then brainstorm how to approach the question: “What is it that you really feel, think and want to say? What intrigues you about this subject? What do you love or hate about it? What are your assumptions?” Sometimes, when you don’t know where to begin an essay or can’t figure out how to answer a question, make the essay the unraveling of your confusion. Start your brainstorm or the essay itself by voicing what troubles or confuses you. By going directly into your confusion, it unravels.
When you brainstorm, just put your pen to the paper and write whatever comes to you in response to the prompt. “What do you hear in your head? What thoughts and ideas come to you? If you get lost or confused, write down your confusion. Write what you hear, hear what you write. Edit later. Write until what you hear feels real, honest, exciting, and large enough to do justice to the topic. Write until the topic feels new or fresh to you.” Much of this instruction I learned from a wonderful writing practice called proprioceptive writing, developed by Linda Trichter Metcalf and Tobin Simon. It also asks students to use a pen or pencil instead of a computer or phone because when you write with the hand, you actually shape the words and thus have a greater ability to see and hear what you write.
Emphasize that any writing, not just short stories or poetry or film scripts, is creative, and can follow the creative process. You begin with preparation and immersion in the material. You go through a time of frustration, even confusion and questioning. Then you allow an incubation period. You step back. You meditate. You play games. Especially for younger students, but its great with anyone, have some fun. Loosen up. For example, if the assignment is to write a persuasive essay, ask the students, ”If the different sides or aspects of this question were animals, which ones would they be?” You can imagine each side of an argument has a different tone of voice and have them speak to each other. Or you can have students draw the central questions they are dealing with. Then insight and understanding comes more easily to them. Then you test what you think is correct.
When writing is explained in this way, it’s creative, not just work. When the student’s actual thoughts, obstacles and ways of thinking are made part of the process, the assignment becomes less an imposition and more of a revelation. The student feels like you’re helping them discover their truth and power, not taking it away. And that’s exactly what you want and what writing is about.
*For more information on teaching writing and on a process of thinking creatively, critically, and with compassion, see my newly released book, Compassionate Critical Thinking.
A question can be beautiful and exciting. A good question can be a gift. In education, for example, when a teacher asks students a real, honest question, it can fire up a real and honest discussion. Such questions are at the heart of education. To notice such a question you must be at least part way to an answer. The question reveals that, and possibly what, you don’t know.
“Question authority” can be a powerful and useful slogan. It can mean you can and should challenge, not automatically believe in, the power and viewpoint of those people in positions of power, whether it be institutional, social, or personal. It means you can question and challenge those who are charismatic and those you put on a pedestal or highly admire.
To question does not mean to denigrate but to elucidate the meaning, test the accuracy and applicability, or to do justice to the person or concept and reveal implications. There are different questions you ask when you doubt the truth of a statement, and those you ask when you simply want more understanding.
Sometimes, a question is asked facetiously, or to end or divert a discussion, so not all questions are honest, or insightful. I remember students taking “Question Authority” to mean there are no authorities; no one’s viewpoint has any more truth-value than anyone else’s. I think that all questions asked in a classroom should be heard; but the level of understanding of those with little or no experience in an area of life is rarely as deep or broad as those with actual experience, or who have extensively studied a subject.
To question that anyone who has experience in an area of life has a viewpoint that deserves a little more weight than someone without that experience, is to deny the value of experience and learning—is to deny there are truths to learn. The value of life itself can be undermined. Authority is not only a person in power but also a source of reliable information or truths, accurate observations and such. “What do you mean by ‘truth’” is one question a teacher must not ignore.
Sometimes, a question does not go deeply enough. People often question only up to the point of reinforcing their own, old viewpoint. A person, for example, might question whether the views of a climate scientist are biased by their science and not question how their own views are biased. They might inquire into what was in Secretary Clinton’s emails but not wonder what might be revealed by Mr. Trump’s emails or tax returns. They might question that teachers with experience with a student might be able to objectively describe the student’s learning, but not question the value of a score on a test created by an educational corporation. One of the most important times to question is when you assume your own viewpoint is the one and only truth.
‘Authority’ comes from ‘author’ or ‘creator,’ ‘originator.’ So when you assume your own ability to think, question, act, and you learn how to monitor and let go of thoughts and emotions, you are an authority. In Buddhism and mindfulness training, the meditator is taught to doubt any explanation, any conceptual thought, but not lose faith in one’s ability to understand—to doubt the thought until one’s awareness and clarity of mind and heart is sharpened.
Empathy is needed to take in, value and learn from other viewpoints. And a little humility regarding your assumptions or naming of what is true can be extremely useful. Such humility does not undermine your ability to think and act but enlivens it. Understanding, as Paulo Freire (and opposed to Professor Gradkind in the novel Hard Times by Dickens) and others have argued, is not like depositing money in the bank, not a thing to posses. It is more of a relationship, a guide, a clarity and a spark. It is not a wall to keep you or anyone else out but a hand to hold. Your understanding of the world and yourself is constantly changing, flowing. You need to make your questions into vehicles to help you navigate and work with the flow, not dam it up.
For most of my childhood, my family lived in a house in Queens, New York, which is a suburb of NYC on Long Island. There was still a feel, where I lived, not just of suburbs but of the declining remains of a rural area. There were many trees. We were one block away from a huge golf course, with a lake and hills, where I ran with my dog, played football with my friends, and went sledding in the snow. It was quite a privileged and protected life.
I used to write all sorts of stories for myself. One fall, at the age of 6 or 7, I borrowed a little wagon from a neighbor. I invited 2 or 3 friends or relatives to hop on the wagon and took them on a guided adventure through my backyard. The adventure was partly a story I invented and narrated, partly theatre, partly a miniature midway ride. I had such a good time, I repeated it until there were no more customers and winter closed down the midway.
While my love of writing started in my early childhood, until recently, I thought of it only in terms of fiction. As I got older, I realized the motivation behind my writing was not just to entertain, but also to feel inspired. I loved the heady joy of pulling ideas, images, and feelings together. It was so alive. I felt that I had something worthwhile and meaningful to say and to give. In other words, creative writing had the power to teach. The only thing I was unsure of was whether teaching had the power of creation.
And I discovered that it did. After college, I joined the Peace Corps, in Sierra Leone. As a teacher, I felt respect from my students. What I was doing mattered to them. So I wanted to do it even more when I returned to this country. I found this again in other teaching jobs, most notably at the Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca, NY. Part of my childhood desire was met. Now that my book, Compassionate Critical Thinking: How Mindfulness, Creativity, Empathy and Socratic Questioning Can Transform Teaching, is being published by Rowman & Littlefield, the other half of my yearning is about to come true. It is not a novel, but certainly describes a creative approach to teaching.
When you teach, you hold the hearts and minds of students in your hands. You have this amazing opportunity that you just can’t ignore and dread disappointing. You can take students on the greatest adventure imaginable—into the depths of their own minds and hearts. You can show them that there are these depths unrecognized in many schools, or maybe unrecognized since they were small and inspired children. You can show them how valuable and important they are. Show them the joy of play in PE, the miracles of nature in science, the creative spirit in literature, and in social studies classes, show the great diversity of possible ways of living and the importance of relationships, .
My book describes and illustrates methods to use in teaching as well as an overall conceptual framework for understanding the way the mind and heart can work together— to take in more of what’s around you and think more clearly and critically. Critical thinking is fueled by caring and feeling, and guided by mindful awareness to focus attention, and notice, formulate, and ask questions. Compassion and imagination help you understand and explore diverse perspectives and let go of distorting judgments.
When you quiet the mind by accepting, caring for and valuing it, you hear the world more distinctly. You hear what your own body is saying and how to befriend your emotions. The world is not at a distance but at your fingertips, or is your fingertips. What you think is right to do is evaluated more clearly. You feel more joyful, your life more meaningful, your relationships with others more conscious and honest. Now that is a worthwhile adventure to undertake—that is a way of teaching.
*The release date for my book was delayed a few days, but the book launch in Ithaca, at LACS, on Thursday, October 13, at 7:00, will go on as planned–I hope. There will also be a book talk on Saturday, October 22, at Buffalo Street Books, at 3:00 pm. I hope you can come.
What is compassion? Empathy? I have to admit that I used to lump these two together. Some educators have trouble using the word ‘compassion.’ It sounds too “spiritual” to them, or too over-used, whereas ‘empathy’ is something most anyone could support.
Psychologist Paul Ekman defines three forms of empathy, the third being close to what many people think of as compassion. There’s “cognitive empathy” or an ability to read the mental state and emotional expression of another person. Then there’s “feeling with” or caring for others. (A sociopath, for example, might be able to read emotion but not feel for the other.) Then “compassionate empathy” or to have a concern for another and the energy to help.
I noticed my secondary school students can get very cynical about the possibility of compassion. I think they take a stance against it in order to dare me to prove otherwise. They argue that compassion, like altruism or selflessness, is impossible. People act compassionately only to get some reward or because it feels good. If it feels good, then it isn’t compassion, isn’t selfless. They think they have me or have compassion on the point of a logical dilemma. I am always gladdened by their recognition that compassion feels good. When you act for the good of another, there is a sense of joy. There is even good evidence that there are physical and psychological benefits from acting with compassion. The problem is that the supposed dilemma masks the essence of it. When you act in order to get the benefits, then you lose the joy of compassion. The joy is embedded within the selfless caring.
With compassion, you do not help others in order to feel superior; that is pity. You do not simply feel a sense of sorrow about what they are going through; that is sympathy. Both pity and sympathy are based on an emotional distance with the other being. With empathy, that distance diminishes. The situation becomes more close up and personal. With compassion, you not only “feel with” the other person but want to step in and act in accord with that feeling; you want to act in a kind, caring manner. You value the welfare of another person like you value your own welfare. A sense of closeness compels action.
And it is this closeness that the students want. They want to know that other people can act for the good of another person, because they want to know that people can be caring. They want to feel that care themselves, both in the giving and in the receiving.
But what does compassion do for us? Clearly, it assists our ability to cooperatively work with others. But what else? V. S. Ramachandran describes how, when you watch someone doing an intentional action, like reaching out for a sandwich, the motor control neurons in areas of your brain fire in a manner as if you were doing the action. You model in your brain what another person is doing and respond physically and mentally to your model. You understand what the other person is doing through reading your own response to your model. The neuron systems that enable this empathy have been called called mirror neuron systems. If you see a person experiencing pain, your pain neurons fire almost as if you were in pain. Did you ever flinch back when you saw a person hit? Or smile when you saw someone smile? In this way you break part of the barrier between yourself and others.
These neurons enable you to be a sophisticated imitator, which facilitates imagination, learning and understanding. You learn through imitating the sound of a word, how to hold a hammer, how to solve a formula. You understand a character in a novel by creating a model of the person in your mind and then “reading” your response to the model. You mirror mostly unconsciously. You can be so good at it that you need mechanisms in your brain and in your skin to prevent you from constantly imitating others. There is even a condition where people can’t stop their imitating; it is called echopraxia.
Even more, you can’t think without a context, and other people are part of the context in which you are embedded. The depth of your self understanding is proportional to your understanding of others. To understand how to hit a baseball, you need to see it clearly from your perspective, but you also need to know the baseball, what it can do, how it can curve or dive. The more you know about the baseball, the more capable you will be at hitting it. You and the other arise together.
But when anxious, jealous, or depressed you might think of yourself only as what distinguishes you from others. You might focus on your skin only as a wall meant to keep others out, enclosing an unchanging, isolated being, and you must constantly defend that wall. You need that wall to keep out germs and create the integrity of your body-mind system. Yet, your skin also breathes, in and out. It excretes—and it senses, touches. When your hand touches mine, we can join together.
What do you feel when you think of your skin only as a border and wall? You create the sense of being constantly uncomfortable, anxious, even at war. It is a big burden. But compassion recognizes your borders are also places of contact. It gives you a larger viewpoint. It recognizes that you exist thanks to an entire universe and you are never and can never separate from that universe. Compassion alters your very sense of self and thus can alleviate anxiety, fear, and other painful emotions.
Empathy and compassion can be strengthened with mindfulness practices. Mindfulness and compassion strengthen the insula, which is an area of the prefrontal cortex of the brain involved in understanding the emotion of others. The insula is also involved in the arousal of energy and focus. Compassion practices not only make the insula stronger; they ready you to act in a kind or helpful manner. Teaching mindfulness and compassion practices will lead to improving the environment in schools. It will improve learning, thinking and understanding. It will ready students and teachers to act in ways which improve relationships and to intervene in actions like bullying which undermine and destroy relationships. Students and teachers will act to stop bullying because when they see it happen, they feel the pain of being bullied, and they have the inner commitment and awareness to stop it.
So, when you feel a push to speak or act, especially when you are angry or anxious, use compassion. Think about what you want to say and then how you might feel when hearing it. If you pity the other person, or feel very distant, what happens to understanding? Only by an empathic modeling and understanding of another person’s intent do you understand what they meant to say and what you mean to say to them. This is a skill all schools could benefit from teaching.
Last week, I talked about why understanding emotion is important in thinking critically and clearly. It is not just understanding emotion, however, that is important but being mindfully aware and able to monitor, and let them go. This week, I will discuss one perspective on what exactly an emotion is. This approach combines Western psychology and neuroscience with Buddhism. One practice I discussed last week is to use analysis or deconstruction. Analysis itself can be turned into a way to intervene in and let go of an emotion. To analyze or deconstruct an emotion, first understand the triggers and evolutionary uses of emotion and then go to the components of emotional experience. An intellectual understanding of the physiology and psychology of emotion combined with mindfulness can be extremely helpful to us in terms of thinking more clearly or calming our body. Let’s use anxiety as an example.
Triggers: what can trigger anxiety in you or your students? Take a moment to think of times you were anxious. What set it off? Can you find any characteristics these triggers share?
Use: What use can anxiety have? When students understand that each emotion has a purpose or use, they can also come to understand when the emotion goes beyond the use. For example, students want to hold onto anger and don’t see why it might serve them better to let it go. When you prolong the emotions, they go awry. Anxiety and worry can help you prepare for something. It can energize you. To do something you care about, you need to be energized. The energy of anxiety, stress, is the energy of waking up to prepare. It is useful.
One of the things many emotions do is orient us in time. How does anxiety orient us in time? Usually, it orients you to the future. You think of how things might go wrong. But the “future” is an idea, right? Anxiety can orient us out of the present experience to an idea of another experience.
Components: A Buddhist teacher named Shinzen Young has a great description of the components of emotion that influenced (but is not exactly the same as) my own approach. What are the components of emotional experience? I will discuss feelings, sensations, thoughts and images, and motivated actions.
Feelings can be defined as the sensation of touch, or as the initial orienting energy, or awakening of attention. This energy later develops into taking something as good, bad, or neutral, pleasant or unpleasant, to like or dislike; then a state of mind, or emotion, and holding on, pushing away, or being indifferent.
Sensations are the experience of your physiological responses or changes. When you learn the sensations of an emotion, you can learn to spot or feel them and can more easily let them go before they become overwhelming. It is also important, and can be tremendous fun, to ask students what an emotion looks like in someone else. For example, what does an anxious person look like? A moment-by-moment awareness of your own experience can help you better observe and understand what someone else might be experiencing. Emotion is not just felt but communicated. What are the sensations of anxiety?
1. Where are the sensations in your body? A technique I learned from a fellow teacher is to ask students to draw a human figure and circle places where they feel anxiety.
2. How– Describe the sensations of anxiety. For example, are they like pins and needles, tight or loose, cold or warm?
3. How much-How intense are the sensations?
What goes on physiologically with anxiety? The fight-flight-freeze response, our body system that deals with threats, becomes active. You treat your own sensations as a threat. The sensations are uncomfortable and you flee the discomfort. You don’t just feel uncomfortable—you fear the discomfort and what it might mean.
Thoughts: What thoughts or images arise when you’re anxious? We humans have a powerful ability to plan for the future, think, imagine. Language increases the power of these abilities. But that power can be helpful, or go awry. It is the power of thought and imagination and language that helps us develop an idea of our self and others. How does it go awry with anxiety?
When anxious, you think you are unable to face what you think is coming. You imagine others have a negative image of you. You leave behind your present experience. You think of yourself as a house of cards, easily broken, or as a fake, because you have lost contact with yourself. When you fear yourself and your sensations and thoughts, how does the world appear to you? When you flee discomfort, you live the sense of fleeing, of running away. And what happens to thoughts that go against the emotion? Do you hear them? See them?
Actions: What actions does the emotion motivate you to take?
Interventions: How do you intervene in, let go of, anxiety? Since anxiety can be feeling and imagining you can’t handle a future state or event, you flee from your awareness. Your imagination can create distressing images of your future, or wonderful ones. It can undermine or increase your strength depending on how you use it.
When you can safely take action directed at increasing your self-awareness in the present, and better understand whatever is the trigger for anxiety, you can reduce anxiety. When you honor your own sense of what is comfortable and what is not, utilize mindfulness, compassion for yourself as well as others, and imagination practices, and you treat whatever arises as something to learn from. You learn how to inquire into a question, face a challenge and better understand your thinking process.
Mindfulness/Inquiry Practice: What happens to your thinking if you feel you can face any idea, anything that arises? Let’s explore that.
Just sit back and take it easy. If it feels right, close your eyes now or in a minute or so, and take a few slow, calm breaths. Or look at a blank surface before you. Maybe focus on your hands resting in your lap, or your feet on the floor. Or notice how it feels to breathe in—and breathe out. Focus on your face, around your mouth. How do the muscles around your mouth respond as you breathe? As you breathe out? Do you notice any tension, heat, or joy? As you breathe in, can you feel your body expand a little bit? As you breathe out, can you feel your body let go, relax, and settle down? Then focus on your shoulders. Notice what sensations you feel as you breathe in, and breathe out. As you breathe in, do you feel your body expand a little bit? As you breathe out, can you feel your body let go, relax, and settle down? Maybe go to your belly next and simply notice how your belly breathes in—and out. If any thoughts come up, just calmly notice them and appreciate the noticing, and let them go as you return attention to the sensations of breathing.
And now engage your imagination. Let come to your mind an image or memory of a courageous action of your own, or one you witnessed or read about. What was the courageous act? Who did it? What made it courageous? What does courage mean to you? Does it have to be dramatic, like in some movies? Or can it be something simple, like sticking up for someone or speaking out? Or doing something you never did before but was frightening? Or putting yourself at some risk? What does it feel like to be courageous? Imagine feeling courageous. Imagine feeling that you could face whatever came up in your life and just sit for a moment with that feeling.
If you’re doing this with students, practice beforehand. And always give them choices. After a guided practice, have them process the experience, maybe write down the thoughts or images that came up for them or what it felt like to feel they could face whatever arises. Then let them share their thoughts, if they feel comfortable and safe doing so, with you or in a small group.
Can you imagine doing something like this with your students?
**For a fuller development of the components of emotion and the role of emotion in thinking, see my soon to be released book, Compassionate Critical Thinking: How Mindfulness, Creativity, Empathy and Socratic Questioning Can Transform Teaching.
**Here is a link to Mindful Schools, to see a video on using mindfulness to help MS children deal with anxiety.
Last week, I wrote about how to begin anything, especially the school year. One of the most important things teachers do to begin the school year is get to know the students, to help them feel supported, trusted, and part of a community. To do that, especially after a summer like this one marked by so much violence in the news, it is important to ask students about their summer, and discover what, if anything is disturbing them. Anxiety in schools has been rising over the last four or five years. Recognizing this in class, allowing students some space to talk about their emotions, is a crucial component of creating a supportive educational community and showing students that education can be a meaningful force in their lives.
Take a minute to think back on how you were affected by different events of the summer. How did you respond to Orlando? Nice? The police shootings of African-Americans? To shootings of police⎯or Donald Trump’s attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel? To the drought in New York or other weather disasters? By studying yourself, you learn how to help students do the same. If you can’t be a student to yourself, how can you ask students to do it?
Then bring up the image of one of your students. Imagine how she or he stands, her face, his posture. Then imagine how the student might have responded to different news items reported this summer. Pick another student and do the same. Maybe write down what you notice, in yourself, in your students.
If schools are to accomplish one of their hopefully prime goals, namely teaching critical thinking, teachers have to understand the role emotions play in thinking. Does being worried, for example, or anxious, fearful affect student learning? How?
Would you say that emotion does not influence how or how clearly you think? Depression, for example, can be viewed as a state of mind that severely limits the amount of new information your mind will process. When depressed, it is especially difficult to process information that goes against the view of the world that keeps alive the depression. What about anger, jealousy, fear?
Yet, what about this: If you aren’t interested in a subject, how hard is it to think about it? How hard is it to think clearly when you’re bored or don’t care? If you don’t care, you don’t think. When you’re interested in something, when you care, your mind and body are energized. Without emotion, thinking is difficult if not impossible.
We grow up, or at least I grew up, with people saying that emotion or feeling, and thinking are opposed. We are told to stop being emotional. But emotion, or at least feeling, is what integrates, assigns value and thusly guides and gives meaning to thought.
Teachers can’t be therapists. But you can use the skills that teachers normally teach, analysis, critical thinking, focus, and empathy, in order to understand and let go of emotion. For example, when you analyze an emotion, you step back from it. You switch your mind from being identified or caught in emotion to the mind of analysis. When you inquire, you become inquisitive.
There is also a form of analysis you can access that is the basis of any thinking. The initial level of emotion or any mental state is what Daniel Siegel and others call an “orienting response.” Brain and body systems become alerted and energized. You begin to feel. Then you get “elaborative appraisal” which involves activating memory, directing energy, and creating meaning. You feel bad, good, or neutral, pleasant or unpleasant. Only after this do you get the desire to hold, as in joy or love, or push away, as in distaste or hate. When your mind is energetic and quiet, you are more likely to directly notice and sense this level of feeling and the development of thought. You can let your mind rest inside a developing idea without being caught by it. You can learn how to name what arises, not to get involved in purely intellectual thought, but to study or increase awareness of your mental processing.
In the case of anxiety, for example: If you were in an ongoing class studying the role of emotion in thinking, after sharing and examining different triggers of anxiety, you would need to determine what they all shared. What is it about these stimuli that trigger the emotion? And what are the historical, social, political conditions that contributed to the anxiety-triggering events? Then you’d research several scientific and philosophical perspectives on emotion. You’d ask: What is emotion? And what is critical thinking?
You’d take time to study your own experience of the emotion. By studying one emotion, as it arises in yourself, you can learn a method to better understand and deal with any emotion. By taking the time to understand the emotional process, you and your students will be better able to monitor emotions and state of mind, and better able to focus attention. You will be better able to think clearly, relationships in the class will improve, and the atmosphere will become more positive and supportive. You also study yourself so you can increase the positive applications and limit the negative affects of the use of computers and other digital media.
And remember, it’s important to help students understand that it is not the trigger or stimulus alone which causes an emotion, but the environment they’re in, and how they interpret, think about, and initially respond to the stimulus.
*This is the first in a series of blogs on different elements of critical thinking. Next week, I will focus on the different components of emotion and how to use inquiry, imagination and mindfulness practices to study yourself, think more clearly and critically, and teach your students to do the same.
My high school students often asked: If it’s true that humans are (or can be) compassionate, why is there so much human-caused suffering and hurt in the world?
One scientific experiment greatly influenced, for decades, how many people thought about this question. This is the “obedience experiment” carried out by Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s, just after the beginning of the Eichmann trial. In that experiment, a volunteer was asked to play a teacher to help educate another person, the “student,” learn word pairs. Each time the “student” replied with the wrong word, the “teacher” would give him negative feedback in the form of an electric shock. The voltage of the shock was increased with each wrong answer.
The “teacher” sat in one room before an electronic control panel and could see through a window into another room where the “student” sat hooked up to wires. A white-coated experimenter stood in the room with the “teacher” encouraging and instructing with comments like, ”Continue using the 450 volt switch for each wrong answer. Continue, please.” The experimenter repeated these instructions even as the “student” began to scream and later drop over, silent. The “teacher” raised objections at times; but as the instructions continued, the “teacher” continued with the shocks. The student was, in fact, an actor; the shocks to the “student” were not real. However, the effect on the “teacher” was real.
It was initially reported by Milgram that 65% of the “teachers” actually continued to shock their students even to a lethal level. But, according to author and researcher Gina Perry, that statistic was only true with one of the 24 versions of the experiment. There were over 700 people involved in the experiments, and the 65% represents only 26 people. There were some variations of the experiment where no one obeyed the authority. If she is correct, this drastically changes how we might understand the experiment.
The philosopher Jacob Needleman studied the visual recordings of the experiment and commented on the facial expression and speech of one of the “teachers.” When questioned just after the experiment was over, the “teacher” said, “I don’t like that one bit. I mean, he [the “student”] wanted to get out and we just keep throwing 450 volts…” The teacher was dazed, and under further questioning couldn’t let himself comprehend what he had done. He couldn’t comprehend his own feelings let alone allow himself to feel what the “student” might have felt.
A startling parallel to Milgram was a series of experiments by Daniel Batson who tested whether people would act compassionately to save others from suffering. In one experiment, volunteer subjects, like Milgram’s teachers, watched people receive shocks when they incorrectly answered a memory task. The volunteer was told the person they were watching had suffered trauma as a child. They were then given the choice to leave the experiment or receive the shock intended for the supposed trauma victim. Many subjects felt such compassion for the other person they volunteered to take on their pain.
What is the message of these experiments? The first is often considered a revelation of the potential for evil in all of us. It is argued that the evil arises from our propensity to obey authority despite clear evidence of the wrongness of the act.
I would question or refine that interpretation. The psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, talks about the “fundamental attribution error” which is a failure to recognize just how much other people and the context influence our behavior. He says that we tend to overestimate the role played by people’s disposition or personality and underestimate the power of the environment or context. It is not just the authority figure that people follow but the whole situation.
Our understanding of who we are and what is real and possible is formed in tandem with our understanding of our situation with others. If other people, in this case the experimenter, act as if the only important factor in the situation is whether the “student” answers correctly and not their physical well being, then it is less likely that the “teacher” would act compassionately. The second experiment demonstrates that even one biographical detail, one thought about the subjective experience of another person, can allow us to identify with them and act compassionately toward them.
Maybe one conclusion from these experiments, as well as one answer to the student’s original question, is that we are such social beings that how we feel about ourselves is tied to how we feel about others. Our very sense of self is inextricably tied to how others relate to us. What we think is right is tied to the situation we are in. Thus, compassion is natural to us and can be developed and strengthened—or undermined—by the way our social situation (including school community) is structured. What we define as humane or appropriate behavior differs greatly by how we define what is human.
And whatever propensity for evil we experience is related to our theories of who we are and who others are. For example, when we are taught to believe we are a totally distinct self, independent and isolated from others and our world, with a personality that persists from situation to situation, we perpetuate a distorted view of who we are. We make possible a distorted and hurtful way of acting in the world, a way that makes all sorts of horrors possible.
**Also, you might be interested in a recent NPR, Invisibilia, program called “The Personality Myth,” which added another and very interesting perspective to the questions raised in this post.
This summer has been one of the most disturbing and anger producing I remember. I am sure many of you feel as I do. Between the killing of African-Americans by police, police being targeted and killed, the killings in Orlando, Nice, Belgium, Afghanistan, etc. and etc. and Turkey, Brexit. Then you add the weather and droughts, all topped off by Republicans chanting for the arrest or execution of Hillary and Trump’s incitement to violence, racism, etc. and attack on almost everything I consider truthful—What do you make of this?
It feels to me that too much and too many have been denied for too long. The last thirty years of increasing social-class inequity, concentration of wealth, and increasing environmental problems are fueling this state of affairs. The suffering from inequity between classes and nations has come front and center transmuted into religious warfare and nationalism. As one article in The Globe put it, too many people feel like they are losing out in this economic-political system that seems to favor the very few over the many and so are retreating into fear, anger, and a sort of tribalism.
I grew up hearing not only about the bomb and the Red Tide of Communism, but the menace of the Nazis, and was determined to do what I could so it would never happen again. Well, it is hard to believe but I feel like it might be happening again, and it’s time to put aside differences and oppose the menace.
This is a moment of challenge for all of us, to wake up to the threats we face and the necessity to greet it not so much with fear (although I feel fearful) but with awareness, understanding, compassion and some righteous determination, even anger. To resist, act and vote against not only the words and deeds of people like Trump, but the institutional forces that would separate us, send us into little camps of like-minded close-mindedness, where we can withdraw into our beliefs and build walls religious or otherwise. We must continuously praise our shared humanity even when we feel like kicking the “stupid example of humanity” standing next to us.
And what can we do to help our children and students deal with all of this in a way that is both healthy and mind-strengthening? Think about that. Do you want your children to see you as a perpetrator of hate? Or as running scared from a challenge, as awful as it may be? No way.
And keep this in mind, too: one aspect of the 1960’s rebellion was humor. Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the Yippies, street theatre, etc.. We need people like Stephen Colbert as well as Bernie Sanders. When the situation is so serious, it’s difficult to find humor or enjoyment in life, and to feel the positive aspect of love as well as the fear and hurt of loss. But a little joy and love can help you see straight and resist the mind-numbing quality of fear and depression. When the world feels most scary, that is a time when all those lessons about the necessity for kindness most need to be remembered and acted upon.
