As a freshman, I admit that I have limited experience in the Princeton classroom. But the class illustrated a problem many people have noticed about discussions: Students are afraid to be direct about what they think. Others have pointed out this reluctance. The most recent Nassau Weekly printed on the back cover “Precept Bingo,” where one of the boxes was “Disclaimer about being wrong.” Last spring, Camille Framroze wrote a column asking why we feel we must apologize before disagreeing with someone. And David Brooks, in “The Organization Kid,” observed that Princeton students tend to “couch disagreement in the most civil, non-confrontational terms available.”
Since coming to Princeton one month ago, I have found myself in incredible courses. Never before have I been placed into such intellectually demanding classes, ones like Christian Ethics that ask you to question who you are. So I arrived at my first precept with anticipation, brimming with ideas and doubts, and ready to talk them through. I imagined a sort of “Dead Poets Society” setting, where with Robin Williams encouraging us, we would gather to share our incomplete thoughts on life, and with them discover a fundamental truth. However, this wasn’t what happened. No, instead people prefaced provocative statements with “I don’t know if this is right, but ... ” or opposed them saying, “Yeah, but I feel like maybe...” Nobody put an idea out there that could be shot down; everyone played it safe.
What is the point of education if we are unwilling to directly challenge each other’s ideas? Or have our own ideas challenged in return? It is easy to think you’re right when the only voice saying so is your own. We might be wrong about torture; it might be more complex than we first imagined; someone could offer a perspective that we in our lives never gained, and therefore never considered. True learning, I argue, depends on the evolution of ideas through criticism and the lens of someone else’s life. That is partly what education does for us and what being at Princeton does for us. We get the chance to present our own thoughts against others’ and understand better why we think something.
I believe that at the root of the problem there is an unwillingness to engage in confrontation. Often, when we deeply disagree with peers in class, we don’t confront their ideas immediately. Instead, we shape our response to soften the disagreement. We throw in a few “maybes” and a “perhaps” and conclude our speech with, “But I don’t know.” We don’t respond directly to their comments, but work around it, perhaps stating someone else’s viewpoint as indeed a “possibility” in the discussion.
I am not advocating the brutal and unrelenting criticism of another’s ideas. I am not suggesting we be like Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,” ruthlessly interrogating each other until someone yells, “You can’t handle the truth!” Politeness has a place in classroom discussions, and it is important to respect each other’s opinions, especially in the case of torture when we are revealing deeply held beliefs. However, if you think someone else is wrong or misinformed, you shouldn’t be afraid to challenge his or her position.
Now, most people would remark that this reluctance to argue out differences doesn’t happen in every class. Indeed, I would agree that it doesn’t. In every precept or seminar, there will be days of great discussion. My point is that the norm in responding to a comment is not to hurt anybody. And why? Because disagreeing is awkward, uncomfortable and suggestive of hostility. Or at least this is how we feel because we’re not used to it. More than once, I’ve spoken up freely only to be looked at strangely. I’ve been made to feel like I was being too aggressive or attacking someone, when that was the farthest thing from my intention. We need to be OK with people disagreeing with us and understand that a disagreement in the classroom is not a rejection of someone as a person. When we are polite to a fault, we are no longer intellectuals engaging in debate, but politicians practicing the art of offending nobody.
But I don’t know.
Doug Stuart is a freshman from Lake Forest, Ill. He can be reached at rdstuart@princeton.edu.
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