March 2023
A mother once complained to me that, when her son went off to a well-regarded Lutheran college, “he lost his faith.”
But a few years later, when I asked how things now stood with her son, she chuckled, “Oh, he’s doing great. The more we talked during his college years, the more MY faith was changed.”
That’s how it goes in college – and parenthood. Bedrock certainties and trusted authorities will change and continue to evolve if education is effective.
Stages Of Intellectual and Moral Growth
William G. Perry, Jr. was the first to deeply study how students’ thinking changes over their college years. Perry tracked students’ intellectual and moral changes for over 15 years while he served as an educator, academic counselor and researcher at Harvard. At first confused by the wide swings he’d see in students’ thinking, he gradually began to notice, instead, distinctive “stages” his students were moving through.
These stages, briefly, are:
1) Dualism (“I must learn the Right Solutions and ignore all the others! The authorities exist to give us the right answer and those who do not believe as we do are wrong.”)[i]
2) Multiplicity (“Since there are clearly no 'right' answers on this question, anyone is entitled to think anything. In fact, those who argue passionately for their own views are obviously biased.”)
3) Relativism (“I’ve started to realize that my professors/political leaders/parents/pastors don’t know all the answers, and that’s making me uncomfortable. In fact, I feel betrayed by them – were they only pretending to be so certain? It seems like for every ‘truth,’ there is an opposite ‘truth’ - but no way to bring them together.”)
4) Personal Commitments in Relativism (“In the midst of these conflicting claims, I know I must make a commitment in order to live fully. Therefore, based on criteria I’ve considered and chosen carefully, I make a commitment to a set of values/ a vocation/ a person/ an ideal/ a spiritual path.”)
Parents, do you recognize your own college student in one of those stages right now? Do you recognize your own self?
Development Isn't Always "Development"
Two cautions about these stages. . .
First, we must realize that not everyone marches through four stages in their four years of college. Stages 3 and 4 may not even occur during college years. In fact, many “stall out” at a lower stage for the rest of their lives. And, to make things more complicated – but real -- we may be at Stage 2 in one part of our lives (say, our view of politics), but Stage 3 in another (say, our professional lives).
Second, as much as you might want to ascend to Stage 3, it is emotionally troubling and unstable. Indeed, some Stage 3 people actually retreat to Stage 2 dualism. But now that adult regression may also come with a strident “moralistic righteousness and hatred of otherness.”[ii]
Students Are Not Sponges
In short, whatever a student may learn from the professor’s lectern or the dormitory hall will be deeply re-shaped by the student’s own learning stage. Students do NOT passively absorb information and regurgitate it for their professors’ tests or social acceptance in the dorm. Students process what’s being taught: they filter, retain and evaluate what’s taught, based on their stage of development.
That’s what troubles me in the “war against woke” now being waged in Idaho and Florida. Anti-woke activists are scrutinizing course titles, assigned books, professors and guest speakers – but they are not looking at actual, living students. They have not asked, “What sense will our students make of this course or professor or book?”
Real students are not inanimate sponges absorbing exactly what’s taught. For one student, the professor’s lectures may sound like Truth-from-on-High, but for another, “That’s just her opinion.” And yet for another, that professor’s teaching may be inspiring but not the final word – that final word must come from the student, in an act of considered commitment.
Isn’t that what we want for our college students?
[i] These student phrases are adapted from an article published online at James Madison University –author not cited.
[ii] Ibid.