THE PERCEPTUAL ANGLE

 

This blog is amid a series of postings.  To date there has been “Early On,” “Representations of Reality,” and “The TV Effect,”[1] that address Americans’ proclivity toward deviant behaviors, at least as compared to people of other societies.  To summarize, these postings have reviewed the nation’s targeted history that has glorified the individual in his/her quest to obtain economic wellbeing. 

The postings have also described a national philosophy that has taken hold which demeans thought and reflection and has made the here and now all important.  Added to this mix is a generally accepted psychological school of thought that lends itself to the idea that all of these biases are natural and amply ensconced in human nature.

          Basing its propositions on studies primarily done with clinical patients, the perceptual/humanist psychological approach (referred to here as perceptual psychology) promotes that clinical techniques be adopted and applied by those who run helping services, such as education.  Relying on the ideas of two leading perceptual theorists, the late Carl Rogers[2] and the late Arthur Combs,[3] their main argument was that behavior is a product of perceptions; that dysfunctional people in American society act deficiently because they have low self-regard for themselves.

          A healthier path for these people, according to the perceptual approach, would be to first, free themselves from social definitions of who they are or what they should be about, and second, to get these individuals to define their own standards of what is good and proper.  What is important in treating these people is not so much their psychological background, but the immediate behaviors they actuate or the feelings they express.

          The perceptual approach then, in applying this line of reason to schools, advocates a curriculum that:

 

1.     Is characterized by a warm atmosphere, in which the teacher is helper, communicates a warm positive acceptance, and demonstrates empathetic understanding.

2.     Communicates that students can always accomplish the objectives they set forth (making evaluation very problematic).

3.     Provides problems that are relevant to the student (preferably identified by the student).

4.     And encourages the student to define his own sense of morality (they speak of responsible choices, but this does not seem to be defined).[4]

 

In the last few decades, some associate the self-esteem movement in American schools as being derived from perceptual psychology.

          This blogger argues that perceptual psychology, to varying degrees, has been accepted by educational academia and school district administrators.  While its positivity can be of much help in encouraging students, its either/or approach – either one is encouraging students, or one is a negative factor in dealing with them – oversimplifies reality. 

He bases that view on his own experiences – over thirty years – as an educator.[5]  This perceptual approach lends itself to softening critiques of students’ work products and behaviors to the point of misleading students in how well or productive they are.  With its emphasis on temporal perspectives and individualism, the psychological school is highly congruent with the philosophical history of the nation as described earlier in this series of postings.

          But more to the point of this presentation, as a prevailing accepted position among educators, it has become part of the sociological forces operating in the nation.  Its effects have been to further an atmosphere of irresponsibility.  Adoption of perceptual theory does this because it neglects communal realities.  Culture and its sanctions toward improper behavior are relegated, to a meaningful degree, as having an illegitimate function.[6]

            Sanctions are seen as interfering with the development of true self.  Yesterday’s effects are cast as unimportant, and with them, their source of shame for wrongdoing is forgotten.  Americans have done away with a great deal of traditional social standards.  Yes, many should have been tossed out – for example, this blogger thinks about standards based on racist beliefs.

But with its anti-federated notions – e.g., discarding communal supports and expectations – of what is right or wrong, there has been the discarding of the very beliefs that underlie people becoming socially and politically federated; that is, generating a sense of partnership among the populous.

Statements of generally accepted notions of right and wrong behavior are seen by this perceptual approach as cumbersome and in the way.  Discipline and its demands are regularly seen as irrelevant, except as they might be useful to acquire material success (a middle-class belief that is shrinking along with the size of the middle class).

          The progressive pedagogy and its parent philosophy, pragmatism, lack a firm ethical base and this has made advocates susceptible to the perceptual argument.[7]  Peter F. Oliva identifies perceptual psychology as a main branch of progressive education.[8]  This blogger argues it is the one element of progressive education that has been extensively adopted by the nation’s schools in their practices.

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[1] See Robert Gutierrez, “Early On,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 13, 2024, accessed February 15, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/, “Representations of Reality,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 16, 2024, accessed February 17, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/, and “The TV Effect,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 16, 2024, accessed February 17, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.

[2] Carl R. Rogers, “Learning to Be Free?” in Readings in Curriculum, edited by Glen Hass, Kimball Wiles, and Joseph Bondi (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1970), 219-239.

[3] Arthur W. Combs, “Seeing Is Behaving,” in Readings in Curriculum, edited by Glen Hass, Kimball Wiles, and Joseph Bondi (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1970), 210-219.

[4] For example, Paul Main, “What Is Carl Rogers’ Theory of Personality Development?” Structural Learning, December 2, 2022, accessed February 20, 2024, URL:  https://www.structural-learning.com/post/carl-rogers-theory#:~:text=He%20believed%20that%20children%20learn,to%20accept%20their%20children%20unconditionally.

[5] For a more scholarly critique see Kathleen O’Dwyer, “’The Quiet Revolutionary’:  A Timely Revisiting of Carl Rogers’ Visionary Contribution to Human Understanding,” International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy, 4, 1 (July 2012), 67-78, accessed February 22, 2024, URL:  https://www.meaning.ca/web/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/186-13-347-2-10-20171212.pdf.

[6] This determination falls logically from the elements of perceptual psychology, but its consequences have spurred an entire literature bemoaning the lack of community in America.  As an example see Naomi LaChance, “So Long, Neighbor,” U. S. News and World Report, August 21, 2014,  accessed February 21, 2024, URL:  https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/21/america-is-losing-its-sense-of-community-says-marc-dunkleman.

[7] To see an early attempt at establishing an ethical standard by one of John Dewey’s disciples, read Boyd H. Bode.  See “Boyd H. Bode and the Social Aims of Education,” The Free Library by Farlex (n.d.), accessed February 21, 2024, URL:  https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Boyd+H.+Bode+and+the+social+aims+of+education.-a0142385289.

[8] Peter F. Oliva, Developing the Curriculum (Boston, MA:  Little Brown and Company, 1982).

THE TV EFFECT

 

This blog has been sharing an overview of American history to provide a summary account of how the US has become a nation of people disposed to deviant behavior.  Starting with the posting, “Early On,”[1] that account has reviewed those aspects of America’s past that have encouraged too many Americans to deviate from laws or norms.  The focus of this review has been the nation’s culture.

It began by describing how in its origin, the nation struggled through the clash between Calvinism and transcendentalism.  It then described how the individualism of transcendentalism was reinforced by pragmatism as the basic ideas of William James were reviewed.  That posting, “Representations of Reality,”[2] left readers with an indication that the advent of television solidified a self-centered sense of reality among the American people.  Interested readers are encouraged to read those two prior postings if they have not done so.

On the topic of TV, this blog counts on the work of the late Neil Postman.  “I believe the epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist,”[3] wrote Postman.  Written exposition, which was the major method of communication coming into the mid-twentieth century, demands analysis and inferential thinking skills.  By way of a historical note, Postman claimed that the beginning of the end for exposition began with the invention of the photograph but surely was accomplished with the effects of TV.

By what means?  The image media of television demands passivity as the viewer is presented with a discontinuous, trivial reality.  This is highly congruent with the philosophical disposition left from the nation’s historical development.  America was ready for the worst effects of this newer media.

One can compare that to a previous time when information was expressed through written words; this previous state demands a culture which promotes a reflective and useful presentation of information in its discourse of reality.  Postman related how America was different in the nineteenth century despite its transcendental biases.  In fact, America was a book and pamphlet reading nation.

 

Public business was channeled into and expressed through print, which became the model, the metaphor and the measure of all discourse.  The resonances [defined as the power of influencing thought and action] of the lineal, analytical structure of print, and in particular, of expository prose, could be felt everywhere.[4]

 

As opposed to that level of reflection, the television culture is bombarded with a constant stream of useless, disconnected information.  This “peek-a-boo” form of messaging or discourse is ubiquitous with “only one pervasive voice – the voice of entertainment.”[5]  It also seems alive and well in the age of the cell phone. While Postman gave in his cited book many examples of the pervasiveness of this entertainment outlook, the example most relevant here is in the chapter entitled, “Teaching as an Amusing Activity.” 

As elsewhere, the character of the media in classrooms determines the character of the activity.  In terms of schooling, that is, the activity is formulating the curriculum.  What is most frightening about Postman’s argument is that the cited dangers seem to be accepted as innovative education.  He argued that educational television follows TV’s commandments:  no prerequisites, no perplexity, and avoidance of exposition. 

More generally, within that media, this approach renders it impossible for any instructional messaging to look at any issue responsibly either within classrooms, or at home.  There are the cable channel news networks, such as Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, but their viewership is best measured in the hundreds of thousands of viewers (Fox leads with over 2 million), [6] a fraction of the adult population.

To the argument that TV allows educators the ability to present studied materials dramatically, Postman cited research that questions the notion of that advantage – that is that learning takes place when material is presented in dramatic style.  He summed up the effect of curriculum based on TV as follows:

 

And, in the end, what will the students have learned?  They will … have learned something about [the subject matter].  Mainly, they will have learned that learning is a form of entertainment or, more precisely, that anything worth learning can take the form of an entertainment, and ought to.[7]

 

This blogger can only add that during the course of his career (1972-2007), his experience demonstrated an ever-shorter tolerance among students to engage with plain verbal communication.  And in addition, the prevailing disposition that students expressed seemed to be, as they walked into the classroom, “entertain me or what you have to do or say is illegitimate.”

By illegitimate this blogger does not mean only boring, but that the experience is an unjustified waste of their time.  And of course, the relevant standard of entertainment is defined by the prevailing media forms, such as TV, which are multi-million-dollar media productions. 

At best, only a relative handful of individual teachers, in the multitude of classrooms across the nation, can compete with that level of entertainment.  And that is to say nothing about whether those teachers who can are actually teaching anything of worth.  One can suppose the answer is no, given the general estimation as to how effective American schools are – mediocre at best.[8]

But TV is not the only agent legitimizing this dysfunctional cultural bias.  Educators themselves have adopted certain concepts and paradigms that further complicate the situation and compound the prevailing individualism, anti-intellectualism, and temporal view of the American people.  Educators have not been immune from the above-described historical forces.  And to boot, these forces met their “scientific” foundation in perceptual/humanistic psychology, a turn which this blog will next address.

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[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Early On,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 13, 2024, accessed February 15, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “Representations of Reality,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 16, 2024, accessed February 17, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.

[3] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1985), 27.

[4] Ibid., 41.

[5] Ibid., 80.

[6] “Dominick Mastrangelo, “Fox News Top-Rated Cable Channel for Eighth Straight Year,” The Hill, December 14, 2023, accessed February 17, 2024, URL:  https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4360708-fox-news-top-rated-cable-news-channel/#:~:text=Fox%20News%20took%20the%20crown,to%20Nielsen%20Media%20Research%20data.

[7] Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 154.  Emphasis added.

[8] Julia Ryan, “American Schools vs. the World:  Expensive, Unequal, Bad at Math,” The Atlantic, December 3, 2013, accessed February 19, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/american-schools-vs-the-world-expensive-unequal-bad-at-math/281983/.

REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY

 

The last posting, “Early On,”[1] initiated a series of upcoming postings that addresses American history and how levels of deviance Americans have experienced, either as perpetrators or as victims, developed.  That posting reviewed the early clash of ideas – and feelings – they struggled through, that being between Calvinism (fire and brimstone) and transcendentalism (the genteel tradition). 

That review depended on the work of George Santayana[2] who wrote during the early years of 1900s of this clash.  The posting ended with a reference to the contribution of William James.  James is considered an early advocate of pragmatism.  Santayana shared his thoughts on this construct, a philosophy that sinks its creeds and theories over various estimates that were characterized as being a “local and temporary grammar of action.”[3] 

That is, while maintaining the spotlight on the individual, as in transcendentalism, pragmatism judges the individual not as a maker of meaning, but an extraordinary observer (known as “radical empiricism”) and a possessor of great affect (known as “radical romanticism”):  People, according to pragmatist ideals should be about compassionately interacting with things, not with books and idealized generalities.  Realities, for pragmatists, will change over time, leaving a person relying on “book knowledge” with dysfunctional intellectualized principles.

Santayana adequately shares a basis for this American philosophy.  He describes a development that enshrines the individual through transcendentalism, and now, in the 1800s, pragmatism.  Along the way, Americans institutionalized processes based on the assumptions that hold action, temporal concerns, and self-initiative as implicit ideals.  But Santayana could still write of an American people light of heart and comporting themselves, for the most part, in civil modes of behavior.

This cultural foundation, though, would encounter a fundamental institutional change some years later that would have profound sociological and psychological consequences.  Without the sobering influence of Calvinism, to a meaningful degree, the demystified philosophic core of American culture only needed a newer standard of temporal goodness to set off a chain of institutional changes. 

That occurred, resulting in creating within America a pervasive incivility – the higher level of deviance for which Americans are known as suffering through today.  And that turn brings this account into the twentieth century.  That is, to this view of the temporal and action orientation came an invention that would greatly cement and further the biases of pragmatist thought. 

And to explain the effect of that invention – television – this blogger is well advised to borrow from the very psychology that he sees as a product of its influence.  To explain:  Neil Postman argues that a society’s basic mode of communication governs its epistemology (its origins and natures of knowledge).  He observes:

 

Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible and convenient to employ.  We do not see nature as “it” is but only as our languages are.  And our languages are our media.  Our media are our metaphors.  Our metaphors create the control of our culture.[4]

 

Surely, the effects of TV might have well been eclipsed to some degree since Postman wrote these words – there has been the rise of social media – but the main point is still valid.

Media defines the languages a people employ in the current advanced world. That is, a people’s metaphors dictate how they see reality and define their expectations of reality.  This blogger hesitates using Postman’s views because those views seem to support what is argued to be part of the problem.  Postman, as the description in the next posting will attest, bases his argument on mental processes as opposed to reality, and the position here is that Americans need to find ways to deal with the real.

          To be clear, it is not claimed here that how a people view that reality has no effect on how they interact with it, but what American culture, at least, has done is to glorify image over reality and that is what the blogger sees as Postman helping his readers understand.  This blog will next compare the epistemology created by television and that of the printed word.  It is in this analysis that Postman makes his most meaningful contribution from his cited book, and this blogger believes it sheds powerful insights into what ails the current condition in American culture.

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[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Early On,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 13, 2024, accessed February 15, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.

[2] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in America” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), 277-288.

[3] Ibid., 285.

[4] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1985), 15.

EARLY ON

 

One recurring concern among observers of American society is the level of deviance that society experiences.  At times deviance can be simple actions that counter norms affecting few if anyone other than the perpetrators of such behaviors.  On the other hand, there are examples that cross legal bounds or central norms and are deemed serious and antisocial.  Here is a general comment of current thought over this subject:

 

Deviance in American society is more prevalent unlike in other countries of the world. … The American dream had a main theme of freedom for the Americans, something that has been wrongly perceived as being free from the laws and regulations of the society. This perception has made most people in America disobey the societal norms in the name of achieving [their] dream[s]. The dream talks of people being committed to the success of material goals under circumstances that are open with individual competition …

To begin with is the fact that most Americans want to be richer than they are despite their current income level, what is referred to as maximization in the dream. …

Another issue of concern is greed among most Americans which is also justified in the dream leading to a type of deviance known as elite deviance committed by the powerful and wealthy people of the society because of greed. From the above discussion, it is seen that the concept of the American dream contributes so much to deviance and criminality in American society.[1]

 

This quote is not offered as the last word on deviance or even an authoritative one, but a reflection of how people in general view deviance.  And given that Americans are judged as being on the high end on this mode of behavior, one can ask why.

          More specifically:  How did Americans get to be judged to be highly deviant?  Unfortunately, the trends toward excessive deviance are not of recent origin.  They are instead the product of a slow development that can be traced to the nation’s beginnings.  What follows, and in upcoming postings, is the product of research this blogger conducted a few decades ago.  Upon reviewing earlier work, he feels it would be helpful to share this work in understanding the main aim of this blog, i.e., to promote federation theory.

          Given that context, this review begins with the contribution of George Santayana.[2]  He wrote, in the earlier part of the last century, an insightful view of the philosophical development of Americans up to his time.  He characterized the early philosophical development as a two-sided Christian view:  one was a harsh fire and brimstone Calvinism that emphasized the dangers of sin and the impression of an “agonized conscience,” and, on the other side, a gentler view, social transcendentalism (more formally developed during the 18^th century).

          This latter view was a European based philosophy.  It was quite sophisticated for an early American society given that society’s inexperience as a new nation.  Santayana points out that Calvinism, while providing the necessary discipline to prosper in the frontier environment, succumbed to the very prosperity it helped produce. 

This left a “genteel tradition” as the prominent view, that being transcendentalism.  Transcendentalists, especially as their beliefs were defined in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, became the prominent perspective among the population and began Americans on their ever-increasing movement toward an individualism second to none.  Emerson captured this reason-based tradition – what Santayana describes as Kantian – of systematic subjectivism. 

Here, one can start seeing extreme individualism taking hold.  Under a call for honestly expressed self-initiative, romanticized in old Yankee lore, the transcendentalists emphasized present needs and the function of will over intellect.  This train of thought harbored a certain blindness to the evil this entailed individualism could encourage Americans to adopt.  It also promoted an “upbeat-ness” in what Emerson’s called a “self-trust” which this newer philosophy supported. 

Stated succinctly, it called for a sense of reality, as a base, which had individuals transcending to what they, themselves, defined as worthy to pursue and relied on what was intuitive in those same people:  “the perspective of knowledge as [it] radiate[s] from the self.”[3]  One can see the origins of a “ME society” developing.

But with diminishing the contextual foundation of Calvinism, this form of individualism had its influence without any internal check and balance.  Instead, individualism, through the years, became stronger as Calvinism became weaker.  It became more legitimate to be deviant as expressions of the self and that self-centeredness took the status of being an ideal.

          And that transition has its own story.  Each century that follows – 19^th and 20^th – add to the story in particular ways.  The 1800s sees the advent and growth of an industrial society and the 1900s as the growth of a consumer-based economy.  Santayana adds his thoughts to the changes the first of these periods had on American thought and dispositions. 

That is, up against this abstract, outer worldly intellectualizing, i.e., Calvinism vs. transcendentalism, Santayana describes the increasing hum of growing industry having its effect on Americans during the first of these centuries.  In doing so, the demand for objectivity and empiricism hacks away at the genteel tradition.  This leads, finally, to William James’ articulation of a rebellious message against intellectualism and its pedantic rule making.  The next posting will address James’ contribution and how it encouraged the nation to consider pragmatism.

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[1] “Deviance Issue in the American Society/The ‘American Dream’ Contribution to the Frequency of Deviance,’” Study Corgi (n.d.), accessed February 10, 2024, URL:  https://studycorgi.com/deviance-issue-in-the-american-society/.

[2] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in America” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), 277-288.

[3] Ibid., 281.

AN “INCREMENTAL” ETHOS

 

Of late, this blog reported on a distinction that psychologist Carol S. Dweck has made in how people view intelligence.  People tend to see intelligence as a given trait in terms of how much they have – entity theory – or as a malleable trait one can work on and increase – incremental theory.[1]  The last posting suggested that this basic distinction – how people see intelligence – can and does influence how people approach civic concerns.

          That posting, in passing, suggested that people who adopt an entity view might very easily attribute intelligence levels to inherited biological factors and further be attributed to such conditions of birth such as race, nationality, gender, or similar factors.  One should be clear here; there is no evidence to support such general attributions people make in their efforts to cast people they don’t like as “them” as opposed to “us.”  And included in such castigation is that “they” are not smart enough.

            This sort of thinking, in whatever guise it takes, hits directly, in a negative way, on federation theory in that it questions equality.  Here is a definition one can use for equality:  Equality is a social quality based on the belief that despite inequality in talent, wealth, health or other assets, it calls for equal consideration of all persons’ well-being, that all have an equal right to maintain their dignity and integrity as individual persons.  

What Dweck offers is an argument that varying levels of intelligence are mostly not determinant.  Sure, some people are blessed with exceptional intelligence.  Surely this blogger is not in Albert Einstein’s league when it comes to physics, or Pablo Picasso’s when it comes to art, or Chris Rock’s when it comes to humor, etc.  But he and most people are within ranges of intelligence that allow for meaningful interaction when it comes to governance and politics.

And this would be further enhanced by a population that believes intelligence is not a given trait in terms of how much one has, but a trait that one can improve on to meet the challenges one faces either individually or as a member of a political association.  The trick is to find out how that improvement occurs. 

Unfortunately, for the purposes here, those “hows” vary according to the challenges one faces.  Therefore, there is no set pattern in how to approach these efforts, but there are general modes of problem solving or investigation one can learn that, given the challenge, can be utilized to advance one’s intelligence given a particular area of concern.

So, for example, such instructional models, usually denoted as inquiry models, can be employed and they lend themselves to an incremental approach to intelligence.  These models are usually forms of the scientific method[2] or some process in which students apply a more logic-based activity such as the jurisprudential inquiry approach.[3] 

But short of those models, essentialist instruction (usually associated with recall objectives) can also be more friendly to this incremental view.  For example, Robert M. Gagne’s model, while essentialist in nature, strives for students to reflect on the material teachers present.

This deserves a bit more explanation.  In summary, here is what Robert Gagne called conditions of learning – five of them – and nine progressive levels or “steps” in which students can advance and engage with school subject content.  The conditions are: 

 

·       Verbal information which consists of knowledge claims one finds among various sources of subject information and can be interrelated with other information in meaningful ways. 

·       Intellectual skills are those abilities students can develop by which they process knowledge such as forming hierarchies, contextualizing relevant, new information, or acquiring information that adds distinctive attributes to what is being studied among other skills. 

·       Cognitive strategies consist of analytic abilities in which students can break down sets of information that assist in exposing problems, the problems themselves, or the information needed to solve those problems. 

·       Motor skills are those behavioral steps that students develop and, through practice, improve upon in which they tackle challenging academic issues. 

·       Attitudes are those sentiments students need to motivate themselves to address the material that classroom instruction presents to them.

 

Hopefully, readers can appreciate how these concerns draw educators beyond just seeing teaching as presenting content for the sake of students to recall that content.

And as for the levels or steps, they are: 

 

Level 1:  Reception (or capturing the attention of students),

Level 2:  Setting expectations (or students being informed about what they are to learn and why they are to learn it),

Level 3:  Relevant retrieval (or calling on students to recall what they know and is helpful in meeting a lesson’s objectives),

Level 4:  Targeted or selective perception (or presenting new information that students are to learn with an array of aids such as visuals, examples, discussions),

Level 5:  Verbal encoding (or presentation of the new information in a variety of language presentations such as graphics or case studies),

Level 6:  Responding (or student presentation of new information in various communicative approaches such as tests, demonstrations, interpretations – perhaps artistic productions),

Level 7:  Evaluative reinforcement (or teaching agents providing students with feedback as to the proficiency students demonstrate with the goal to improve on student performance),

Level 8:  Evaluative assessment (or determination of how well students have learned the content), and

Level 9:  Enriching the retained information (or have students transfer learned content to novel or real-life situations that do not totally match information learned but need to be adjusted or nuanced to be applicable).[4]

 

This is a far cry from a teacher presenting information and students committing information to memory, which is how essentialist instruction usually transpires.

          The point is that incremental approaches are out there and Dweck offers data that supports the belief that this view of intelligence is the more accurate way to view student potential.  Hopefully, for the sake of students and for the sake of approaching governance and politics from a federalist perspective, teachers will opt for strategies reflecting incremental understanding of intelligence, leaving behind strategies that entity theory encourages.

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[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] For example, see Molly S. Bolger, Jordan B. Osness, Julia S. Gouvea, and Alexandra C. Cooper, Jennifer Momsen, “Supporting Scientific Practice through Model-Based Inquiry:  A Students’-Eye View of Grappling with Data, Uncertainty, and Community in a Laboratory Experience,” ASCB/Life Science Education, October 22, 2021, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0128.

[3] For example, see Muhammad Japar and Dimi Nur Fadhillah, “Do We Need to Learn about Human Rights Values?,” Atlantis Press, 2018, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  25891038.pdf.

[4] For example, see “Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction,” Information Technology/University of Florida (n.d.), accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://citt.ufl.edu/resources/the-learning-process/designing-the-learning-experience/gagnes-9-events-of-instruction/.