Intense classroom arguments are some of the most exciting exchanges in college. I enjoy professors who provoke discussion that inevitably places someone’s neck on the chopping block. My only complaint is that most students seem too easily intimidated by the professors’ aura of superior intellect to openly challenge them. And the problem isn’t with professors who lay claim to special knowledge but with students who haven’t the confidence to engage them.
Though crude and generally deconstructive, the popular late-night TV program, South Park, occasionally offers sound social critique. In an episode titled “Die, Hippie Die,” the characters Stan, Kyle and Kenny are admonished for selling magazine subscriptions by a group of hopelessly idle, college “know-it-all” hippies: “The corporations run the entire world, and now they’ve fooled you into working for them.” “Are you serious, we never heard that!” replies Stan. Another hippie calmly explains, “We just spent our first semester at college, our professors opened our eyes.”
The obvious edge of satire lies in the hippies’ unquestioning acceptance of their professors’ views. Though ludicrous to many on the “outside,” since their professors say it’s true, they’re convinced. This, though an exaggeration of the truth, is still quite meaningfully descriptive of many college students.
College professors are assumed to be extraordinarily intelligent. While that’s often true, it doesn’t follow that their views on matters outside their disciplines are inherently any less biased or more informed than the average student’s. I would even argue that professors are more susceptible to bias inasmuch as they are inclined to funnel every issue into and through the medium of their own discipline. Science professors often discuss politics in terms of the impact upon scientific research, and cultural anthropologists might rely upon case studies of sociocultural trends to explain their ideological positions. When an argument is framed around a professor’s specialization, the students are obviously at a grave disadvantage.
To their credit, professors are almost always older and more mature than the students whom they unintentionally intimidate. With age comes a larger vista of life experiences and a more sober approach towards issues. But this proves less than one might expect. Students are often younger and more actively engaged in forming their own views of the world around them — their academic studies being only a subroutine of their burgeoning self-redefinition. As such, they are more likely to challenge the foundations of traditional views, to poke and prod the assumptions unloaded upon them by American culture, their parents, and their own self-servingly isolated, youthful rationalization. If this is true, then students and professors can undoubtedly share valuable insight with one another.
Imagine a visual network as representative of a human’s knowledge. As the network grows and expands, the amount of ground to cover in order to continually increase the size of the network uniformly in all directions increases exponentially. Analogously, it is far more realistic to have a balanced, moderate understanding of many areas of life than to have a deep, intimate knowledge of even half of the major areas. When professors pursue their discipline, their “intellectual network” bounds forward in that specific area, but the entirety of their human understanding doesn’t explosively increase.
To be experts in life, we need not obtain a doctorate nor accomplish awe-inspiring feats. We simply need to live in the company of society. Students spend the majority of their time mingling with their peers, while professors tirelessly slave over books and data. Why then do students consider a professor’s views sacrosanct? Intimidation.
The lesson here is not that professors are pugnacious, intellectual powerhouses seeking to devour the unlearned student, but that students should attribute more validity to their own life experiences and overcome the fear of “losing” an argument. When a professor prompts a classroom discussion, he or she actually does want student participation. There’s no reason to be intimidated. Simply introduce a healthy dose of skepticism, common sense and your personal experiences. Challenge their assumptions and don’t let them jump from one issue to the next to evade your probing questions. If they disavow your experiences, then feel free to disavow their research. And just because a professor may seem to have “won” an argument, you shouldn’t necessarily change your mind. Most professors will only discuss issues relevant to the course material. Consequently, the cards are stacked in their favor.
