The author asks his old professor about the purpose of college. She says,
- It is for developing the muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in life and will also show what it means to be fully human.
I wonder about how one becomes thoughtful. Can thoughtfulness be taught? I think so - I hope so. Hence, I believe questions are more important than answers. Questions invite thoughtfulness; answers deny it.
Did I learn thoughtfulness in school -- any of the schools from kindergarten to graduate school? Or did I learn thoughtfulness growing up in a family that asked questions. For example, when my older siblings and I were growing up, my father would ask each of us at mealtime: What did you do today for the benefit of humanity?
Yes, I think it further education does teach thoughtfulness. I think it inheres in the structure of education. As you get to higher and higher levels, you are given more and more freedom. This helps by gently nurturing a student into a natural state of being where they can successfully navigate a subject area on their own. They come to rely less and less on the instruction of someone else to motivate them to explore what there is to learn. They come to know, through experience, the process of self-motivated study from beginning to wherever they find themselves, because there is no end (except the inevitable end, of course). Furthermore, as you naturally start to specialice and hone in on your specific interests, you get that experience of the learning never ceasing. Even when you feel like you've specilaised, you find there's more scope than you ever imagined. This promotes thoughtfulness as one is never prone to resting on their laurels. Your perception towards your study area can change with one question or a whole new realm of thought can be opened to you by the single sentence of a wiser person. If you've experienced that, it helps teach you to always keep your mind open and active when approaching any subject area or experience. One becomes thoughtful, and one's thoughtfulness is shaped, through experience. I guess you could kind of relate it to what I perceive as my consciousness growing. Sometimes when I see children playing on doing whatever they happen to be doing, I question what's going on in there head? What was going on in my head when I was that age, doing those things? And through that reflection you come to realise how much questioning, considerations, and inter-dependencies have come together to shape your current thought processes. That model of reality is directly molded by you experiencing your existence growing. In the ideal word, when that growing is shaped and nurtured by education, one comes to a position where they can step back and question themselves with skill. Step back from what they're doing, learning, or experiencing, and draw on their experience to tactfully navigate their thought patterns and ultimately their life. I guess that's generally from quite a idealised perspective. However, I am a bit high at the moment, so if it sounds a tad floaty then so be it.
Most people know what it is to be thoughtful, at least that is my take on it. The problem is that most places don't expect "thoughtfulness" of us. Even much of higher learning these days is dominated by a "finish line" mentality that doesn't promote thoughtfulness or genuine accomplishment as much as it promotes task oriented behaviors and accreditation. Can thoughtfulness be taught
Sure it can, but most adults have already learned this lesson. Case in point, way back, several reddit migrations ago, we had a number of users come in on a "circle-jerk" wave. Most of them hightailed it out of here, but I noticed that some of them stayed. The ones that stayed, started off acting like jackasses, but once they realized that Hubski (the community) asked more of them, they rose to the occasion. The most thoughtful people can be assclowns, if they're in an environment that begs for assclownery, and vice versa.
Here's a debate I've been having with the professor of my capstone course. We're doing chemical processes related to oil and carbon chain cracking and all of that fun stuff, and it's very similar to what we did last semester for our Design with Constraint course so far. Granted, in 5ish weeks it's going to transition to in-depth design but right now it's the same exact kind of thing we did last semester. My argument is that there is a lack of soul and thought provoking situations in making us spend half the semester doing the same thing we spent an entire semester doing, his argument is that practice makes perfect. I believe that both of us are right but there's a more interesting underlying point, and it's what you've brought up. This is entirely a task oriented project, there is no thinking outside of the box, there is no applying principles outside of humanity or trying to imbue a sense of yourself into what you're trying to accomplish. And I think that's why I don't like engineering so much, because it strips away the soul and leaves you a problem solving machine that is there to fix issues for somebody else or improve an existing process. There's not much room for creativity, there's not much room to leave a piece of yourself in the project, and there's certainly not enough to risk anything in the end. This was rambling, I just feel that most of "classical" (mechanical, electrical, chemical) engineering suffers greatly from the "finish line" mentality. There's actually a question here and that's does the pursuit of systems optimization and engineering result in a reduction of soul and creative solutions? Does it remove the "thoughtfulness" from any perspective that is not analytical? Am I right, is my professor right, or are we both right in our own ways?Most people know what it is to be thoughtful, at least that is my take on it. The problem is that most places don't expect "thoughtfulness" of us. Even much of higher learning these days is dominated by a "finish line" mentality that doesn't promote thoughtfulness or genuine accomplishment as much as it promotes task oriented behaviors and accreditation.
One of the books in my teacher-training program was called "Teaching for Thinking" by Louis Raths and Selma Wasserman. This book suggested that there were different types of thinking. Some thinking activities were considered more advanced or more complex than others. The book said that, in schools, often simpler thinking skills such as memorizing and regurgitating memorized material were rewarded while more complicated forms of thoughtfulness, such as searching for relevant material, classifying information, analyzing data, comparing alternatives, drawing conclusions, and a whole list of other thinking skills needed attention. I imagine that is still true in some classrooms. To me, thoughtfulness involves much more than having opinions. In particular, thoughtfulness involves looking for and questioning underlying assumptions, especially our own.Most people know what it is to be thoughtful
That's true, of course, because humans have thoughts. Our heads are thought-full. The problem with my original questions in this post is that I did not define "thoughtful," but I know I mean more that full of thoughts.
I think being around thoughtful people makes it easier to be in a thoughtful frame of mind. We all have complicated lives and thoughtfulness has to be a deliberate choice, at least for me it doesn't just happen. That's what brought me here to hubski, looking for a community of thoughtful people.
I love the goal of thoughtfulness, but as someone entering into college, it seems naive to want to spend so much money on developing a, "muscle," with no specific end other than said development. I love the idea of developing the mind, but nowadays that seems to be a byproduct of honing a particular skill by collaborating with and learning from experts, and I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. The article you link to outlines some negative behavior as perceived by the professor, but I think that they're taking a very high-minded view of what education ought to be. For example, take this quote: They're painting it in a negative light, and although I think their criticisms about the academic rigor expected in college have some basis, they're too eager to pretend that students who are thinking in a way they disagree with aren't learning to be thoughtful, or that somehow they've developed in the wrong way. Additionally, we have to think about the fact that college might not be the route for everyone. I think it's an inherently privileged mindset that thinks that the only way to obtain higher understanding or thoughtfulness is by putting in the time and money to at a university. I'd argue that thoughtfulness comes from many factors, and people are going to develop it differently--and most people will develop it as a product of aging and encountering new experiences.Not long ago, she said, she asked students to try to go for an entire class without letting the word “like” drop needlessly — part conjunction, part stutter — into their speech. One of them responded that Hall was a “cultural capitalist” defending her particular “cultural capital.