--Mr. Miyagi
Well, friends, it has happened again. I go and post the Top Ten Happenings list, and what do you know? Another crucial happening pops up right away! Frustrating! I suppose there's always 2018, and of course, we can still discuss this in the interim. In any case...
Over on Sic et Non, Dr. Peterson posted a remarkably crass and insensitive entry on the issue of interviewing teens re: their sexual behaviors. Indeed, the opening line in the entry is "There's a campaign brewing," and Peterson provides a link to a story about a "former LDS bishop" who is speaking out agains the practice of interviewing teens about their sexual habits. Naturally, Dr. P. has a stout defense ready to go: in it, he makes the case that, since he himself never experienced prying sexual questions from bishops, that the criticism lacks merit:
DCP wrote:I’ve read online complaints about sex-related questions in bishops’ worthiness interviews for quite a few years now.
I have to say, though, that I never experienced anything like the “predatory” questioning — to borrow a term used in the article (by someone with whom I agree) — that’s alleged by some critics of the Church. Nor did my wife. (I just asked her, and reconfirmed what she’s told me previously.) Nor, so far as I’m aware, did any of my children.
He acknowledges that it is (at least) a remote possibility, however:
Could it happen? Of course it could. And, presumably, it has. After all, there are thousands and thousands of bishops and branch presidents and members of stake presidencies in the Church, each of them conducting scores of such interviews every year, and they’re constantly being rotated into and out of office. Any number of things can happen, given those numbers.
In fairness, he relates a one case (albeit a "mild" one) where boundaries seem to have been crossed:
In all my life, though, I’ve personally heard of one such case, told to me by a friend who’s about my age: He was living overseas about five decades ago, in a branch where he was the only young person, and, in interviews, his branch president sometimes asked him whether he had ever engaged in x . Often he’d never previously even heard of x. So he looked blank and didn’t know how to respond. So the branch president would then explain what x was.
Wholly inappropriate.
Apart from that, though, the entry is essentially a recounting of Prof. P.'s own experiences, which are then used as a counter to the "campaign" that's "brewing": since Peterson himself never experienced intrusive questions (nor did his wife, family member, or friends--save for the one guy), it must not be a problem, right?
But this is Mopologetics we're dealing with here, so things are bound to get complicated. And, in fact, in the Comments section (with nearly 500 comments), people immediately began to point out the problems in DCP's argumentation:
Jonathan Streeter wrote:For me it's not a question of whether or not any one individual has experienced trauma related to this line of questioning but rather that the policies do not prioritize protection of vulnerable children from abuse.
Another poster rather cleverly tried to position LDS teens as being on the same plane--respect and value-wise--as LDS Church money:
Ryan wrote:Solution:
Additional training where bishoprics, and stake presidencies are given the following explicit counsel:
(1) No 1:1 interviews alone with any child under age 18. If interviews must be conducted, they can be conducted with a parent in the room.
(2) No sexual questions of any nature in interviews with children under 18, even with the parents present.
Simply treat children with as much care as tithing money. NO ADULT is to be alone in a room with a child. Period. This isn't difficult.
But Dr. P. isn't having any of that, and in an apparent flip-flop, actually begins to argue that teens *should* be asked about their sex lives:
DCP wrote:I have it on good authority that many American and other children under eighteen are sexually active. Hormones are often in full flare by that time, and, moreover, the Latter-day Saint community is surrounded by a culture that favors the sexualization of children and cannot and has not escaped being affected by it.
Contrary to your implicit assumptions, sexuality doesn't transcend morality. It's not completely irrelevant to spirituality. Quite the contrary. Your suggestion is, effectively, that the Church ought to ignore sexual behavior as a moral/spiritual issue in deciding questions of admission to the temple and ordination to priesthood offices. That's flatly unacceptable.
But his real position on the issue is summarized by this comment:
Daniel Peterson wrote:If you know of an infallible system that will allow bishops to do their jobs, Cammie Vanderveur, while eliminating any possibility of human error, please share it with us.
If you simply don't think that the job bishops are called to do is a job that ought to be done, however, you probably won't be of much help.
And calling those who disagree with you "desperate" probably doesn't help much, either.
Are you interested in helping?
Well, that's not really what people are saying, is it? And solutions have been proposed: i.e., having the parents present, etc. But the real Mopologetic position here is, "Don't allow any criticism of the Church to stand." So if a few hundred teens get asked voyeuristic and inappropriate sex-related questions, that's the price they're willing to pay, so long as this criticism of Church policy is defused. Right?
But there is more to this than the (important--not to mention disturbing) issue of questionable bishop's interviews. As the series of comments unfolds, you can see some of the old, ever-present tendencies and patterns emerging:
DCP wrote:CV: "By the way, please respond to the point about adding additional safety, I see you ignored that completely in the response above."
I was in a hurry to go to an 11 AM meeting, which was to be followed by a 12 noon class, which was to be followed immediately by a 1:30 PM class, after which I was to meet my son, my daughter-in-law, and my granddaughter, who are visiting from the east coast. I'm sorry that I saw those things as more urgent that indulging you.
I.e., the "Too Busy To Type a Real Response, So You're Getting this Response Instead" trope. Incidentally, the "CV" to whom Peterson is responding is Cammie Vanderveur, and at one point, DCP writes this:
Prof. P. wrote:Cammie Vanderveur may have tried to delete some of her posts here. Or others may have tried to vote her off the reservation.
To the extent that I'm able, I've tried to restore them.
Incidentally, if you Google "Cammie Vanderveur," there is some interesting material online.
Take his advice: if you Google "Cammie Vanderveur," some of the first few hits deal with being transgender at BYU. Why is it, do you suppose, that DCP wants his (generally very socially conservative) readers to Google this? In what sense is he using the term "interesting"?
After a while, the conversation veers around to the nature of the discussion itself:
Ryan wrote:What Tapir Dan would say as he "passes by the other side" of the wounded, half-dead man on the side of the street:
"I've never personally been in the gutter, wounded on the side of the street. I asked my wife and she said she's never been in the gutter, wounded on the side of the street. I did have a friend that told me he was once wounded in a gutter on the side of the street, but he was laughing as he told me about it. It wasn't a big deal to him, and he seemed to get over it without a problem or any lasting effects. I'm not really aware of a crisis in this town of people being in gutters wounded on the side of the street. So I won't just stand silently by while these good men passing by on the street are vilified and demonized."
A poster named Tim Dollins agrees;
Tim Dollins wrote:That's the best analogy I've seen and it does highlight Dan's dismissive attitude of it never happened to me so it can't be a problem. I think Sam Young is coming from a place of sincere concern, and that Dan has taken the wrong stance on the issue. There seems to be very little of the teachings of Christ in Dan's response- dismissing the pain and harm done to the least of these is the opposite of what the savior taught.
It's hard to disagree: in typical Mopologetic fashion, the response was highly insensitive. In response to this, DCP goes on the offensive:
Prof. P. wrote:Tim Dollins: "Dan's dismissive attitude of it never happened to me so it can't be a problem."
It sometimes occurs to me that, after all, most students in school aren't very good. They don't read carefully or accurately, and they do badly on tests.
Then it occurs to me that they probably don't become any better at reading just because they age into their thirties, forties, and beyond.
I don't know your personal history or situation, but that's certainly one possible explanation for the gross misreading of what I wrote that you offer above.
Did he post this in anger? It's hard to know for certain, but you can be sure that this was a very important slip-up--a case of the mask being removed so that the monster is revealed, and a perspicacious poster named Danny Farnsworth calls him on it:
Danny Farnsworth wrote:So, story time. I met my wife in a first year physics class with an amazing and dedicated professor who gave us very difficult homework that pushed our limits. He was well-organized, prepared for his lectures, respectful of students, etc. I regarded this professor as a friend. I took a break, went active duty military, then did some contracting, before coming back almost a decade later. When I did, while in another physics class, I made friends with an engineering student who happened to also have a separate physics class, from this first professor. My friend absolutely hated him, found him to be rude and incredibly condescending. It made zero sense to me and was entirely inconsistent with my own experience. Well, the next semester, I got to take a differential equations course from this professor. He was still dedicated to teaching rigorously, and he was still obviously very knowledgeable, but his temper had become short and his attitude toward students was much more condescending. The students may have been different people, but they weren't any dumber than my first time around. What changed? I don't know. Maybe it was burnout. Maybe it had nothing to do with the students all. But what I do know is that 1) it's obvious when professors have contempt for their students, and 2) contempt seriously undercuts students' willingness to participate, pay attention, or care. The class with my engineering friend, on the other hand, had a disorganized yet incredibly humble and dedicated professor who bent over backwards to help his students succeed. I still love him for the fact that he loved us. He inspired me to do better. And out of a class of ~200, my scores were usually near the top. 200 students, and he learned all our names, even tried to take as many as he could to lunch at the Pendulum Court to get to know them better.
I suspect that the problem is less that "most students in school aren't very good," but that contempt breeds contempt and shuts down any incentive to be invested, even if they are paying tuition for it. Your experience is less likely a reflection of the students than it is of your attitude toward them. I'm sorry to hear it. I know Rate My Professor isn't exactly a scientific survey, and that you probably get much more detailed feedback from the student course evaluations, but your contempt for students is reflected in the comments on the website, so what I'm observing here is consistent with what others observed in your class.
You're obviously intelligent. But having had a variety of teachers and my own variety of successes and failures, I can tell you that intelligence is not mutually exclusive with humility and kindness. If they were, I'd take humility and kindness any day, for the long-term and inspiring impact. People forget calculus and Arabic and the nuances of Shi'ite beliefs in the return of the 12th Imam and how that influences some extremists' decision-making. They sometimes forget the people who treated them with scorn. But they never forget those who were kind. At least, I don't. That's what I take with me, and that's who inspires me to become better. Judging by your reputation (from FARMS and Maxwell Institute and your public response to your disaffiliation from the same), I doubt you'll take any of this seriously, and will instead come up with some witty sarcastic retort. It needed to be said, regardless.
Wow! Utterly devastating! Of course, Dr. Peterson is (one assumes) a "teacher" by trade, meaning that his main function is to educate students. That said, critics have noted repeatedly that the Mopologists seems to harbor a deep contempt for their readership: to assume that most of their readers are "dumb hicks" or "sisters in Parowan" who've failed to educate themselves using the tools that classic-FARMS and Interpreter have been providing for them.
But Farnsworth's comment clearly hit close to home, and Dr. P. immediately erupts:
DCP wrote:DF: "what I do know is that 1) it's obvious when professors have contempt for their students, and 2) contempt seriously undercuts students' willingness to participate, pay attention, or care."
And you're absolutely welcome, DF, to inquire whether I have a reputation for holding my students in contempt. If you would like, I can perhaps put you in contact with some of them. Seriously. If you're in the area, come and visit one of my classes. Or linger around just before or just after one or two of them and ask the students.
DF: "I suspect that the problem is less that 'most students in school aren't very good,' but that contempt breeds contempt and shuts down any incentive to be invested, even if they are paying tuition for it."
Your suspicion is without merit, without any basis in fact, and completely unjustified.
And the problem is precisely what I said it was. You just don't understand what I was talking about.
DF: "Your experience is less likely a reflection of the students than it is of your attitude toward them."
My students do fine, and I don't hold them in contempt.
DF: "I'm sorry to hear it."
I'm sorry to see how completely you missed my point.
Candidly, I'm astonished by your comment. I never saw it coming, it's so remarkably tangential, gratuitous, and weird.
DF: "I know Rate My Professor isn't exactly a scientific survey, and that you probably get much more detailed feedback from the student course evaluations, but your contempt for students is reflected in the comments on the website, so what I'm observing here is consistent with what others observed in your class."
You're right. It's not scientific.
I would never use "Rate My Professor" as a weapon against an academic with whom I differed. It would be rather like using comments on Amazon.com as if they constituted a scientific sample.
My BYU student evaluations are generally at or near, and often above, department, college, and university averages.
DF: "You're obviously intelligent. But having had a variety of teachers and my own variety of successes and failures, I can tell you that intelligence is not mutually exclusive with humility and kindness."
Obviously.
You misread and misrepresent me in the deepest and most offensive possible way.
DF: "If they were, I'd take humility and kindness any day, for the long-term and inspiring impact. People forget calculus and Arabic and the nuances of Shi'ite beliefs in the return of the 12th Imam and how that influences some extremists' decision-making. They sometimes forget the people who treated them with scorn. But they never forget those who were kind."
And you believe that you're justified in accusing me of being scornful and unkind toward my students and others.
Good grief.
DY: "At least, I don't. That's what I take with me, and that's who inspires me to become better. Judging by your reputation (from FARMS and Maxwell Institute and your public response to your disaffiliation from the same), I doubt you'll take any of this seriously, and will instead come up with some witty sarcastic retort."
Another scientific sample, no doubt.
DY: " It needed to be said, regardless."
No, it didn't. Your personal attack is off -target and irrelevant, completely unwarranted, and extraordinarily unkind.
And you missed my point.
Perhaps your high school was different from mine, but not everybody in my graduating class went on to college, let alone to top universities. Many were relatively bad at things like English and math. I don't think that my supposed contempt for them had even the slightest effect in that regard.
Not everybody in my undergraduate university classes did extremely well, either. Some didn't get A's. Some wrote bad papers. Some misunderstood textbooks. Some just didn't work very hard. I suppose that my alleged contempt might have been a factor, but I doubt it. I didn't know most of them, and they didn't know me.
In my classes today, not everybody gets an A. But many do. Some of the papers that I read are quite good. Some aren't. Sometimes, the logic is poor. Sometimes people get bad scores on final exams.
I was simply pointing out that people who who weren't careful readers or rigorous thinkers as college freshmen or as high school students don't necessarily become better readers or more rigorously logical simply because they age into their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond.
I think about this from time to time when, for example, I read really poorly-reasoned letters to the editor. I think about it, too, when I read some of the comments on my blog.
Finally, let me say once again that I deeply resent your unwarranted personal attack on me. I'm quite confident that, if you were to speak with people who actually know me well, and even with a representative sample of my current or former students, you won't find "scorn," arrogance, "contempt," "unkindness," or "rudeness" among my most prominent characteristics.
Your slanderous public assault on my character was irrelevant and wholly without justification. How dare you? Really. How dare you?
One of Dr. P.'s fans comes to his defense:
Jared wrote:It's hard to believe his claim that what he values most is "humility and kindness" when his off-topic rant about you included neither humility or kindness.
And Farnsworth replies:
Danny Farnsworth wrote:Jared,
Perhaps you and I have different understandings of what those terms mean. I consider it an unkindness when people, in the name of being polite, refuse to point out a deficiency I don't recognize myself, giving me no opportunity to examine it or rectify it. As for humility, I define the term to be a willingness to recognize and speak truth about oneself and others, both good and bad, coupled with a willingness to be wrong, instead of trying to control image, appearance, and reputation, which is the core of pride. I did so here, in describing myself, in describing the professors I worked with, in describing the positive and negative impacts different professors had, and in emphasizing what the most valuable lessons students take with them are. So, yes, I do value these attributes very much, whether you believe me or not.
Meanwhile, Peterson continues with his tirade:
DCP wrote:Despite your ignorance and your complete failure to grasp my actual point, Danny Farnsworth, you presumptuously arrogated to yourself the right to pronounce public judgment on my offline character and to slander my professional life.
That's neither kind nor humble, whatever self-congratulatory praise you may generously award to Danny Farnsworth. Shame on you.
Danny Farnsworth wrote:Dan, I didn't miss your point. Your point was that Tim and Ryan misunderstood your original post. I agree that they didn't understand. There was nothing in your original post to support a claim that you were dismissive of Sam Young's crusade. If anything, you were only saying that you hadn't observed the problem yourself and were therefore unsure as to how much actual policy correction was necessary. I was responding to the way you made your point:
"It sometimes occurs to me that, after all, most students in school aren't very good. They don't read carefully or accurately, and they do badly on tests. Then it occurs to me that they probably don't become any better at reading just because they age into their thirties, forties, and beyond. I don't know your personal history or situation, but that's certainly one possible explanation for the gross misreading of what I wrote that you offer above."
It wasn't enough to simply say, "You misunderstood, let me clarify," or, "please re-read and support your statement." You went, if subtly, for the jugular, declaring that most students aren't very good and that their reading comprehension perhaps doesn't improve with age, which might explain their lack of reading comprehension now. Why make it personal, speculating aloud that maybe their deficiency was immutable and inherent? Translated less subtly: "I suppose it's not your fault you're stupid, poor dear." And who did you use as support for the idea that most people are comprehension-deficient? Your own students, most of whom aren't very good, by your own statement. You were NOT simply pointing out some tangential observation "that people who who weren't careful readers or rigorous thinkers as college freshmen or as high school students don't necessarily become better readers or more rigorously logical simply because they age into their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond." It was impossible that you used the logical link you did between poor students and these two commenters without intending to communicate your contempt for their lack of comprehension.
Even if it's tautologically true (after all, 84% of students will be below the mean or within one standard deviation of it), you used your students as the starting point for speculating about why other readers are, similarly, incapable of comprehension. Most of your comments in this whole discussion have been to the point and very clear, but your snark and mockery comes out in a few places, and then this reply, unkind to Tim and Ryan as well as your students, threw a huge red flag for me. Having recently been a student (with mixed performance independent of my reading comprehension), with professors on both ends of the condescension/contempt spectrum, it's something that has been important to me. I looked to see if I was alone in seeing this. Perhaps I had simply misread you. Having no access to the broader surveys the university conducts, I turned to the distant second place, where the first two comments are from Winter 2017:
"The class is easy, the most difficult part is staying awake and not getting riled up by his offensive comments and logical inconsistencies."
"Honestly, he's kind of a scornful jerk who doesn't seem to want anyone to succeed. He seems to find pleasure in tricking students and in watching them fail. I never ever felt uplifted in his class."
Older reviews are less harsh, and some are downright glowing. How dare I? That's how I dare. You used your students as the basis for simultaneously insulting the intelligence of two commenters while implying that, for similar immutable reasons, there's not much to be helped about it. That's contempt for everybody in the comparison. My "slanderous public assault on" your character, as you put it, was an observation based on what you publicly wrote and the contempt which was necessarily implied by it. I did some searching and found I wasn't alone in my conclusion. I did some more searching and found you'd been released, rather unceremoniously, from your position at the Maxwell Institute for trying to publish a 100-page treatise described as full of ad-hominem and slander, even if your target was somebody I also find insidious and completely unworthy of trust.
So, resent away. I'll note that, unlike your responses to other attacks, you "deeply resent" my comment and feedback. Plenty of people said offensive things, but you brushed them off handily. Something resonated here in a way other comments didn't. People generally aren't deeply offended except by the suggestion of things they fear might be true. Whether you have some good students (but not most) is besides the point that you use comparisons to the not-so-good students to speculate about why other commenters might be incapable of reason. If what I said had no basis in observable reality, then you'd laugh it off like everything else. If what I said does have some basis in reality, it seems wiser to replace your indignation with introspection and genuinely ask yourself if my observations are correct.
I'm never going to be a student of yours. I may continue to be a reader. As I said, you are intelligent. You have interesting and informative commentary. But, really, I had nothing to personally gain and no motive except the understanding that you will continue to have students, and they will benefit more from a Dr. Peterson who has less contempt for his students than the one I observed. Perhaps this explanation of my motive will help it seem less weird and tangential. Of course, based on this indignant response, I doubt I've helped any of your future students or prompted any genuine reflection about whether there's merit to my observation. In which case, there was nothing to be gained by anybody, and I'm sorry (to myself, most of all) for having put the energy into communicating an idea that I found to be crucially important to my experience at BYU.
And, naturally, Dr. Peterson insists on having the last word:
DCP wrote:You have no genuine basis for your offensive public personal attack on me, Danny Farnsworth.
And you have no business attacking me professionally.
I've taught hundreds if not thousands of students over decades, and you're hanging an awful lot on the negative comments of one of them. (Can we even know for certain whether the commenter was really a student of mine? I have no idea.)
Why do I resent your comment? Not because I fear that it might be true but, rather, because -- on the basis of no actual knowledge of me -- your false but very personal assault goes so deeply to the very core of who I am and who people actually acquainted with me know me to be. And because, based on at best flimsy speculation, you've chosen to malign me in my career and employment, which crosses a line that absolutely should not be crossed.
Your observations aren't correct. They're not even close. You don't know me. But you don't mind making them. You don't mind impugning my character. Publicly. You don't mind attacking my professional life. Publicly.
Shame on you. Shame on you.
This last comment is remarkable: "your false but very personal assault goes so deeply to the very core of who I am." The thing is: Dr. Peterson never really disputed Farnsworth's original observation, which was a response to Prof. P's comment that "most students in school aren't very good." He (DCP) didn't provide a single counter, qualification, or alteration to the initial comment, which means that he probably stands by it and thinks it's true: he really does "hold students in contempt." What makes this Comments thread fascinating--a watershed moment, even--is how nakedly transparent the whole thing was: how sharply the reality of it was put on display, what with Danny Farnsworth's analysis, along with Peterson's rage-fueled response.
So Peterson's response is accurate: "your...very personal assault goes so deeply to the very core of who I am," since that "core" consists of an ethos that views the vast bulk of humanity as a bunch of stupid rubes who "don't read carefully and accurately and...do badly on tests." Accusations of "condescension" and "arrogance" have beleaguered the Mopologists for decades; what's rare, though, is to see them admit to it so openly, and to go into Chernobyl-like meltdown episodes when they are called on it.
Suffice it to say, if this is any indication of what 2018 is going to be like, it will be very interesting to watch!