"Belief, like any other moving body, follows the path of least resistance."-----Samuel Butler
Indeed, individual deeds and beliefs are easily influnced by environment and others, just like intangible flowing water which flows through a path with least obstacles. Water always flows downwards becasue of gravitation; water also chooses a easy pathway because of fluid mechanics. Belief, embodied in the individual behavior, is in the same truth.
People trend to convert their deeds, even beliefs, into easy ways to obtain benefits or save troubles. In this case, they may not change their minds or thoughts, but their behaviors or words will obey the environmental resistance. When a person who is a homophobe finds that his superior is homosexual, his belief is facing challenge. He has two choice: quits the job or keeps silence. I am not sure how many people will choose to quit, but I am quite sure that there will be many people changing their position and publically declaring that they are tottally Ok with gay and lesbian stuff in company. Maybe they still hates homosexual in their heart. However, in order to avoid losing their jobs, they change their words and deeds. Similarly, in such a classroom, everyone is bad student who doesn't do homework. If there is a good student who hand in homework on time everyday, he/she will be in a danderous position. All the other students hate and exclude him/her because his/her excellence highlights the other students' defects and failure. Therefore, if this good student doesn't want to experience terrible school days and look for his/her stuffs in trash can everyday, he/she will also pretend to be a bad student like others.
Sometimes, people totally change their belief when they are persuaded and convinced. As an old Chinese idiom, many praises can cast gold and accumulated detractions can melt bones. If everyone keeps talking bad words of your neighbour, you will trust that he is a bad guy and refuse to contact with him. Maybe it is only a misunderstanding. The most obvious example is the relationship bewteen German people and Jews during WW II. When fascistic government ceaselessly incited hatred on Jews, many German people lost their saneness and became blindly hostile to Jews. Thus, when Nazi Gestapo began to arrest and slaughter Jews, few German people standed out to protect them. Although almost all the German people's benefits were not violated by Jews, and even though they used to be neighbours or friends, they still watched these innocent Jews being captured. This is the horror of people's belief following the surroundings.
As social population, human cannot avoid their belief or behaviors being challanged by others or enviornment. choosing a easy way to access the goal is always the natural truth, like birds flying to south to pass the winter and fish schooling to seek protection. However, as intelligent creatures, human have their values and morals. We cannot change our belief or behavior at will. We must evaluate whether these behavior transforming will harm others' benefits. Just like solomon's experiment, changing the answer to a incorrect one will not hurt anything. But if people accept misleading to support a injustice invading war, this will be terrible. 'Everyone is stealing' is not a excuse for people to shoplift and 'Tom is always absent' is also not a reason for students to leave school. In a word, when we change our mind, consider it for a moment first. We are not flowing water. Although water flows downwards, man still need struggle upwards.
Jesus Shaves
15 years ago
Hal,
ReplyDeleteYou give some compelling support to your argument here. I am, of course, particularly interested in your comments about students--and, by extension, educators!
All teachers struggle to exert influence and obedience, through a variety of means, over students who may be influenced by the negative behavior or attitude of other students. It can be fascinating (if not heartening) to see how one or two students who refuse to participate are suddenly creating a chain reaction in other students. Unfortunately, the allure of the removed students is often more powerful than that of the teachers.
Likewise, when teachers feel that they have no administrative support--no peer evaluation, no formal or consistent review policy, no encouragement to develop and implement new curriculum and learning strategies, it can take a tremendous effort to follow through with behaviors that would be relished and championed in a more effective working environment. If the message is: we don't care what you do and or what effort you make, it can create a dangerous vacuum.
Hal,
ReplyDeleteI forgot to recommend this book to you: Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada, translator Michael Hofmann. It's about an ordinary German couple whose son is killed fighting for the Nazis. That experience fundamentally changes them, and they begin to resist what before they had accepted/tolerated
Jess,
ReplyDeleteAs a good teacher, you are absolutely right about educators' responsibility to keep good and fair enviornment in classroom as you did in our class everyday. Here, I did overlook the roles that teachers played in classroom when I generated my example. Unfortunately, not all the teachers are as rsponsible and fair as you guys. And indeed, some bad students are even more powerful than teachers among students as you mentioned.
I had been getting through terrible school days in an elemental school where was full of bad students who have powerful parents. Even teachers cannot manage them. Because it is a school for children of staff members of the big factory, teachers always had to evaluate the positions of this kid's parents in the factory before he/she do something towards the kid. For example, one kid's father is the chairman of worker union and he can do anything he want in this school because his teacher is also one of the employees of the factory. in this case, if teachers also cannot play well their roles in classroom, the whole class will be seriously influenced. That's why I said the hornest students have to disguise themselves in a terrible classroom.