OK. If you read my blogs regularly, you know that I don’t really wander into politics. In all candor, about fifteen years ago I posted a blog that was politically controversial and my employer not only asked me to take it down, but also to not do that again. So, I didn’t. (That may be part of why this one is twice as long as usual too….sorry about that…)
Obviously I had to dance around the edges, occasionally stepping into the ring to discuss the foibles of dirty enrollment practices which have spilled over into the courts or the political landscape, or when discussing how truly impotent the accreditation process is at holding institutions accountable in ways that matter. But my focus has always been some aspect of learning and largely focused on instructors, institutions, faculty development, etc.
Today, I want to talk about the students-turned-citizens and the context they find themselves living in today. To do that, I want to talk about the political quagmire we are all watching play out on the news.
The thing that really incited me to blog on this was the talk from Dr. Michael Moore I heard when co-presenting at LSU last week. During his talk, Michael mentioned a panel of frustrated CEO’s of blue-collar workers proclaiming their frustration with students-turned-employees who had never “learned” how to manage their time, how to show up on time, how to stay loyal to the job, and more. This wasn’t even the typical “soft skills” (I hate that term) conversation about communication, project management, or basic accounting. These employers were annoyed at a lack of practical learning which explains to a student just what it means to work for an employer.
I know, I know…this has been a topic of conversation in and around high school and college education for decades. We have a nation of people who struggle with taxes, investing, public speaking, nutrition, and other life activities. We have seen decades of employers argue that employees struggle to present, communicate, leverage creativity, and be innovative. But it feels like that line of messaging is not only speeding up but getting more intense.
Before I make my point, let me add one more piece of context. Like many people (I would guess) I am taking in as much of the political news as I can handle. Sometimes that is a matter of time and sometimes it is a matter of appetite. In all honesty, after an hour of YouTube clips I sometimes feel like I’ve spent a few days in Vegas and I just need a shower. But my wife and I regularly consume clips, stories, blogs, news, and more, specific to the political conflict we now share with all Americans. And in the past three months of consuming that material, I have heard (from five unique sources) the words “civil war” stated about our country and its future…
Wow.
As I have said, I am not a politician (any more than a person who has dealt with the politics of large organizations over time, but you know what I mean). Instead, I think about, study, talk with peers, and read voraciously about the things that impact learning, at most all levels. And through my teaching-and-learning-centric lens, I want to suggest that we now find ourselves in this time of hyper, us-vs-them mentality because of a lack of learning and more importantly, a lack of learning how to learn.
In my estimation, one of the most poignant, important pieces of research performed in the past few decades has been that of Eli Pariser and his work around ‘filter bubbles.’ That conceptual framework is likely at the heart of why people are legitimately asking about the possibility of a civil war.
The basic premise of a filter bubble is not hard to understand, yet it is incredibly difficult to keep at bay. I have blogged over time about filter bubbles, but the easiest way to understand it is likely to listen to Mr. Pariser’s TED talk. So, in my own verbiage, a filter bubble is like an echo chamber. It’s surrounding one’s self with a single stream of information or topic. And important to 2020, it’s also how modern technologies learn what a person likes and then promotes only such things to their feeds, dashboards, devices, etc. In other words, when a person is in a filter bubble today, they likely only hear what they want to hear and they likely never hear what don’t want to hear, even if (especially if) what they want to hear is wrong.
In 1970, filter bubbles were not as concentrated. The newspaper was the newspaper and the tv news was what it was. You may not have liked it, but you heard differing perspectives. Fast-forward almost fifty years…
We now have reports that conservatives and liberals actually consume entirely different sources of almost all media (not just news), seeing conservatives watch, listen, and stream things that liberals have never heard of and vice-versa. Larry the Cable Guy, Joe Rogan, and other blue-collar humorists stick to jokes that make conservatives both laugh and feel good, while Kathleen Madigan, Steven Colbert, and other liberal jokesters cater to the other side. But even in the humor they seek, both sides make sure that their points of view are not pushed too much, or else it’s not viewed as funny, but instead viewed as insulting (or un-American).
With that in mind, I can already tell you a problem with this blog. I asked you to watch Eli Pariser’s TED Talk. Knowing that my blogs are almost exclusively read by educators, the majority of which are liberal leaning, that recommendation is fine. But for a few professors who I have spoken with over time, I know that they are suspect of anything that TED presents. To some, TED is seen as a liberal, left-wing mouthpiece. After all, TED promotes videos about climate change, sexuality issues, and other things that some conservatives do not wish to hear about. So, the channel is lumped in with other such story providers, therefore reinforced by your phone or your feed that TED is not a viable source.
At the same time, Eli Pariser admits during the talk that he is not a conservative. Which means that some people will stop the video at that moment.
But that behavior is exactly my point. We are filter bubbling ourselves into warring sides of us-vs-them, intolerant of other people’s views, and ultimately actively avoiding learning.
Immediately, I realize my position may be suspect. You may be suspicious of my point of view, wondering if I am liberal or conservative. I have to say, it is disappointing to me that the conversation cannot be about the merits of the idea or the argument being asserted, but again, that is now the cultural context in which we find ourselves. Look at the impeachment hearings for example. We have veteran, lifelong government employees who have served dutifully under both Republican and Democratic administrations, yet if their testimony is not liked by one side or the other, they are automatically described as political, partisan, or otherwise having an agenda. They are then smeared by the opposition as uncredible. Essentially, all witnesses are treated as hostile by an opposing side, even if they are simply describing events or facts. We do not accept that anyone could possibly be unbiased, because we surround ourselves with bias.
So, let me help you see my perspective, at least a bit. I am (literally) a registered Independent. Like a growing movement of my generation, and more in ensuing generations, I am increasingly frustrated by the notion of party over policy. I have voted for Presidents in both parties over time. I have voted for the same regarding Governors, Mayors, Senators, etc. I look at the person, the issue, or the argument, one at a time. (Yes, I am the swing voter that politicians are looking for.)
But just as importantly, I actually embraced Eli Pariser’s information years ago. How?
I take delight in knowing that YouTube, Twitter, and my other social media platforms are unsure about what to promote to me. While I don’t use Facebook any more due to the overwhelmingly intrusive nature of the system and the cacophony of yelling which goes on there, I work hard to keep other platforms guessing. (There are far too many anonymous (fake) users on that platform and I’m sick of it.) So, what does that look like?
When I am in my car, listening to my radio, in addition to sports and comedy, I have two news channels saved. One is conservative radio and one is NPR. On Twitter, I follow both Pelosi and Trump, while I also follow John Oliver and Dennis Miller. My YouTube clip feeds include both Fox news and CNN. I purposefully go out of my way to find information all along the continuum (which unfortunately is mostly two extremes these days). Some of my favorite sources of information are the Shields and Brooks interview each week on PBS, the new conservative news outlet “The Dispatch”, and Axios. I appreciate Chris Matthews on Fox and I appreciate Anderson Cooper on CNN. So, I am not being disingenuous when I state that I do my absolute best to look at every situation, allegation, and assertion with a cautious, even critical eye. (You know, like we encourage students to approach articles and persuasive comments.)
But I also know I’m not the norm here. It’s hard work to overcome the filter bubbles that most people either ignore or actively engage in. Which leads to a tremendous amount of ignorance and misinformation being spread around, literally dividing our country more and more and more. As an example, my own grandparents got their news from two sources when they were alive. One was Rush Limbaugh and the other was conservative, Christian radio. I loved my grandparents dearly, but they were woefully uninformed about what was going on in the world, sometimes believing false information but most often simply not getting all of the pertinent information. After all, if someone has all the facts, it is harder to persuade them to think whatever you are telling them to think.
I not only know this from reading about the divisions more and more, but I literally hear them. I hear people call into Hannity’s show lauding him for being the only great American or the ultimate purveyor of truth. Sorry, but that’s patently untrue. He is an entertainer, not a journalist, and the stuff he promotes is so under-qualified and awash with propaganda, to say it is news would be laughable. Similarly, I hear people call into NPR shows talking about how ignorant conservatives are or how they wished the Republicans would educate themselves to what the NPR hosts know so well. Again, these are shows with an agenda.
Paul Tong 2012
But agendas are what we seem to seek these days. Journalists have largely been replaced by opinion journalists. Editorials spill over into what used to be legitimate, unbiased articles. But you can even see it in the late night shows. I remember watching Johnny Carson make fun of every sitting President, but I don’t recall ever seeing him call a sitting President “stupid”. (Yes, I know the context here – the current President attacked those hosts, likely showing that all bets were off. And I can also appreciate the notion that anything can be made funny…)
But agendas are replacing facts and opinions are replacing reason these days. When you hear people saying that this impeachment is a “sham” or far, FAR worse: a “coup”, we now teeter on the edge of what is correct for what is believed. When people say that the sixth amendment is being ignored or that this impeachment is an assault on the Constitution, they could not be more incorrect. Just as people cannot correctly say that the current President was elected improperly as he only had 46% of the American vote. I get that they feel that way, but it is simply not accurate. While we can talk about whether the Dems are making a mistake politically, it’s not anti-American nor is it unconstitutional. And the President’s election was completely legal as his team worked the electoral college because that is the way the game is played. But the anti-opponent rhetoric used to be solely the job of a party’s propaganda machine, not news outlets as we see today.
Which brings me back to the ultimate point. In education, we tell students (far more than we hold them accountable) to find credible citations. When I was writing my master’s thesis and ultimately my Dissertation, I heard (more than once) the term source saturation. My job, as the writer of an objective, unbiased study, was to seek as much of the literature as possible which shored up my findings as accurate or not accurate. But strangely, that kind of rigor was not promoted in almost any other class for any other paper. Which is also my experience as a faculty developer.
I have heard over and over again the, “it’s not my job” argument from professors. STEM faculty say it’s not their job to worry about teaching writing, grammar, etc. It’s not an English profs job to worry about content accuracy for a subject matter in science. And faculty just don’t have time to push students to create source saturation. So, they give students a requirement of 3 or 5 or 10 citations, and call it a day.
And where do students go for their citations? Likely Google. And likely the first page of citations which comes up. Done and done.
Do students end up seeing the dozen articles out there which tell them that their argument is wrong? No. Do students see the value in really examining an assertion from all angles? Again, no. They practice creating a small filter bubble.
At the same time, filter bubbles are modeled like crazy in education. We promote specialization as early and often as possible (which is another bad practice…check out Epstein’s book Range) which typically means surrounding one’s self with subject matter information and nothing else. But this is often done by finding like-minded subject matter experts and colleagues who don’t promote verbal sparring, instead seeking an echo chamber. So, researchers are in the dangerous predicament of taking an already myopic view of the world and curating it even further.
And now, with students-turned-citizens who don’t seek another opinion or perspective and could care less about source saturation, we find ourselves in a position where the term ‘civil war’ is being brought up. We surround ourselves with people who believe only what we believe (or what supports what we already believe). If someone believes differently than us, they should be jailed, banned, or worse. If we disagree with another’s belief, we attack them as people, rather than confronting the idea. We click on ads of banter “owning” another person’s argument, “crippling” another person’s idea, or “slaying” a person to the core. (All of which are ridiculous…those videos never show anyone changing their mind. Ever.) But we never, ever seek out ‘the truth’ or the contrarian position, to better inform our belief in the first place. We put on one channel, go to one website, or follow one outlet and start absorbing. We are the choir in search of a preacher who will give us plenty of chances to say, “Amen!”
It’s time to rethink filter bubbles, source saturation, and the importance of learning after class. If we don’t, we may be in some real trouble. Let’s stop talking about civil war and let’s start talking to each other about ideas again. Let’s explore what is right, whether or not it is what we start out believing.
Good luck and good learning.