If memory serves, the professor I had for English 10 was very old. In other words, he was about the age I am now, 51. Certainly, he had taught the class countless times before. So the professor knew what to expect. He warned that "people who have pet peeves" was not an acceptable topic. But try as I might, I couldn't think of anything I had in that vast repertoire of an 18-year old brain resembling a pet peeve. So, I ignored his advice and wrote about the thing that annoyed me most, "people who have pet peeves." I had a different title, legalistically avoiding the banned topic. No matter, I think I got a C-. I should have gotten an F.
The assignment was actually rather clever. American youth culture is defined by one overriding concept, "cool." And the opposite of "cool" is having a pet peeve. To my adolescent brain at the time, having a pet peeve seemed trivial and angry. The assignment was asking me to dig, to see, to admit, and to confess an unpleasant emotion regarding something important like tartar sauce or uncooked hamburger meat. I could not stoop so low!
Occasionally, usually during long car rides or boring seminars, I re-write that freshman English paper in my mind. Truth is, I have so many peeves it is hard to figure out which one is my biggest. But I think I've narrowed all my annoyances down to one. So here goes:
Some people have already made up their minds. About everything. But mostly, they have one issue that they are especially intransigent about. And they spend the rest of their lives finding things that support what they already believe. For example, if they are politically conservative, they might spend hours reading Red State, watching Fox News, or listening to Rush Limbaugh. Or, just as likely, if they are liberals, they may pass hours reading the Daily Kos, watching MS-NBC, or listening to Jeneane Garofalo. Either way, they have made up their minds. What they believed at 18 is the same was what they will believe at 81.
Don't get me wrong. I like people who have opinions. I especially like people who can passionately defend their points of view. But I'm not impressed by people who simply call people names or slap on labels. I admire people who can state facts (even if I don't completely agree with their facts) and argue using sound reasoning from those facts. I especially like people who can respond to challenge and lively debate. I'd like to think that I meet those criteria. (Though some claim I do not.)
For me, this process started in earnest when a philosophy professor challenged the prevailing view of McCarthyism. He said, rhetorically, "No one stops to think that McCarthy was right 98% of the time." This statement was like a slap across my face. How dare he? Senator Joseph McCarthy was a bully. He blacklisted people like Robert Oppenheimer. Affronted, I remember talking about this statement during a break in the seminar. Most of the participants in the class were actually graduate students auditing the course. The guy I talked to that day was, coincidentally, also teaching English 10. He told me a story. His students were supposed to write an argumentative paper, pro or con, regarding censorship in the music industry. (This was during a congressional hearing on censorship.) The gist was that he told his 20 students that he would give them an A if they wrote a paper arguing for censorship. Well, it turned out that every single student, all 20 of them, submitted a paper arguing against censorship. The students could not even consider the pro position, not even rhetorically. As a result, the highest grade he gave was a B+, and the students were incensed. Likewise, the statement my philosophy professor made was not to defend McCarthy, but an exercise in free thinking. Something like a deBono exercise in thinking outside the box. Apparently, most of the people McCarthy accused of being communists or communist sympathizers were, in fact, communists or communist sympathizers. Even those rare few who were innocent had done something to invoke suspicion. So, the contemporary use of the word, McCarthyism, as making wild and wanton accusations, is somewhat of a misnomer. Yet this accusation is bandied about so frivolously that most people who accuse someone of McCarthyism are themselves guilty of McCarthyism (as currently understood).
Principle #1: Do not be afraid to entertain the absurd or ridiculous. It may not help you to become popular, but it will help you to be an independent thinker. And just entertaining an idea does not mean you endorse it completely.
My pet peeve extends to other subjects and whole areas of study. When I first got my master's degree and started working in the substance abuse treatment field, I had a mentor. She was a woman who had worked a number of years in the treatment field, and she was very generous with her time, resources, and experience. For that I am forever grateful. But I learned a few things rather quickly: One, she was a recovering alcoholic and, for her, AA trumped any scientific inquiry. I was an early admirer of W.R. Miller's research, and the mere mention of his name invoked hatred and disdain. Two, she was a staunch feminist, and her views on anything from abortion to divorce were etched in stone. I mentioned the book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and nearly got my head bitten off. (I know, pop psychology, but Gray did have some serious research, his doctoral dissertation, underneath his popular rendition.) Though tremendously competent and conscientious, my first mentor was dogmatic in her beliefs and practices. I did not realize it at the time, but her dogmatism would be more influential on me than anything she taught me.
I first started to realize this when my wife had our second child, left school, quit her job, and followed me to another state for a new job. She was burnt out from working and going to school all the time, rarely seeing our first child, and having little to show for her efforts. At least in part, she was relieved to stay at home, breastfeed, and focus on our then two children. Also, economically, her going to work prior to completing her education made little sense. We would barely break even. So the decision for her to stay at home was fairly natural. Nonetheless, a product of my education and the culture, I was curious what the science had to say about daycare. I went to the university library and did some research.
The first thing that I discovered was that it was nearly impossible to find research on daycare or any other social issues like divorce, single parents, or dual career families. In the scientific journals, there were plenty of opinion pieces, but there were almost no well-controlled scientific experiments or surveys. I had run into this before, while researching substance abuse treatment. Especially in American social science journals, opinions were plentiful, but genuine research was scarce. Eventually, though, I did run across some good research on daycare sponsored by the Scandinavians. They found the children exposed to many hours of daycare, especially boys, were less attached to their mothers and more prone to physical aggression. The effect was worse the earlier the boys started daycare and the more hours of attendance. The conclusion was that it was ideal for mothers (or perhaps fathers) to care for their children at home for the first three years of life. After that, the children could gradually transition into preschool and kindergarten.
Oddly enough, that Scandinavian research concluded the exact opposite of what is currently being forced down the throats of the American people. We are constantly bombarded with messages that children learn the most in the first three years of life, and therefore failure to enroll your child in early daycare could delay your child's intellectual development. Time out! The Scandinavians have the highest ranked schools in the world. Clearly, the Scandinavian practice of long maternity leave has not hurt their children's intellectual development. In fact, the Scandinavians start formal schooling far later than anyone else, around age 7 or 8. So if the American research about the importance of the first three years is correct, then maybe the conclusions and recommendations are wrong. Maybe the most critical way for children to learn during those first three years is at home with their moms (or dads, perhaps). And daycare from ages 3 to 7 needs to focus not on alphabets, math, and reading, but on various forms of play. This is not to say that Scandinavian women stay at home and forego a second income. Rather, most Scandinavian women take a few years off to stay with their small families, then return to work once the children are old enough. It may not be perfect. Supporting these mothers is expensive for the taxpayers, but it does seem to pay off in educational and societal functioning. Of course, the Scandinavian model is only one alternative to the status quo in America, which clearly is not functional.
Over the years, I have looked over various research (as much as I am able), and I have come to one overriding conclusion. By and large, we are living in a post-scientific era. The problem is not only various dogmatic positions taken by the APA and other organizations, but the bulk of the research is sponsored by organizations that have agendas and published in journals that foist those agendas. No American journal of daycare and development (to make up a random name) will ever publish an article critical of the daycare industry. No pharmaceutical company will ever allow publication of research that does not support the efficacy of its product. No car seat manufacturer will ever publish research suggesting that, beyond a certain age, car seats are no more effective than safety belts. No women's studies journal will ever publish research showing that women may be able to have either a career or a family, but tend to struggle with having both. No gay studies journal will ever suggest that gay marriage is any different than heterosexual marriage. And so forth. In theory, science is an objective and disinterested pursuit of the truth. If that is the definition of science, then science no longer exists.
Principle #2: Genuine scientific research is of the utmost value, but more rare than the finest jewels. The peer review process has a stranglehold on scientific progress.
Practically, scientific journals are not yet completely obsolete. A reasonable solution would be for the intellectual property rights of all scientific research to expire after five years. Then, all scientific research--the good, the bad, and the ugly--would all be published on the internet. Let the trolls and the stalkers review the literature. They cannot possibly be any worse than tenured professors.
Principle #3: There is no room for orthodoxy in the disinterested search for the truth.
The problem is not just whole areas of endeavor that are agenda driven and biased. The other problem is a scientific purism that fails to account for the existential, political, spiritual, and cultural implications of accepted science. Take, for example, the endless debate between the creation scientists and the evolutionists. If ever there were a proof of Kant's antinomies, it would be these debaters who cannot hear the other. Ironically, it is academic or intellectual science that keeps this debate alive through a narrow or purist form of epistemology. My suggestion would be to turn it over to the internet. The conflict would be solved by attrition. Sooner or later, both sides would bore themselves to death.
I would also suggest that universities resurrect the study of rhetoric and high schools elevate the debate team to the status of the football team. This leads to the last aspect of my pet peeve. I am an opinionated and passionate person. Get over it. I have no tolerance for political correctness. I do not much care if someone finds me "offensive." I am more interested in the following: Am I correct? If not, why? And be specific. Do not just call me names or quote some supposed authority. Does my argument have merits? Is it plausible? Heck, is it well-written? I do not try to be offensive, nor do I try to avoid being offensive. Besides, perceived offense is largely a choice of the reader. I just try to tell the truth. Not my truth or your truth. Not a partial truth that does not hurt your feelings. Not an incomplete truth that enables me to avoid controversy. Not the Absolute Truth as I am not God. These are essays, in other words, attempts at the truth. But I try to take my best shot at a truth that transcends ordinary experience.
Anything less. Well, that is my pet peeve.
Occasionally, usually during long car rides or boring seminars, I re-write that freshman English paper in my mind. Truth is, I have so many peeves it is hard to figure out which one is my biggest. But I think I've narrowed all my annoyances down to one. So here goes:
Stephen Willmot
English 10, PSU
This paper is 32 years late.
My Biggest Pet Peeve (redundancy left in, for authenticity)
Don't get me wrong. I like people who have opinions. I especially like people who can passionately defend their points of view. But I'm not impressed by people who simply call people names or slap on labels. I admire people who can state facts (even if I don't completely agree with their facts) and argue using sound reasoning from those facts. I especially like people who can respond to challenge and lively debate. I'd like to think that I meet those criteria. (Though some claim I do not.)
For me, this process started in earnest when a philosophy professor challenged the prevailing view of McCarthyism. He said, rhetorically, "No one stops to think that McCarthy was right 98% of the time." This statement was like a slap across my face. How dare he? Senator Joseph McCarthy was a bully. He blacklisted people like Robert Oppenheimer. Affronted, I remember talking about this statement during a break in the seminar. Most of the participants in the class were actually graduate students auditing the course. The guy I talked to that day was, coincidentally, also teaching English 10. He told me a story. His students were supposed to write an argumentative paper, pro or con, regarding censorship in the music industry. (This was during a congressional hearing on censorship.) The gist was that he told his 20 students that he would give them an A if they wrote a paper arguing for censorship. Well, it turned out that every single student, all 20 of them, submitted a paper arguing against censorship. The students could not even consider the pro position, not even rhetorically. As a result, the highest grade he gave was a B+, and the students were incensed. Likewise, the statement my philosophy professor made was not to defend McCarthy, but an exercise in free thinking. Something like a deBono exercise in thinking outside the box. Apparently, most of the people McCarthy accused of being communists or communist sympathizers were, in fact, communists or communist sympathizers. Even those rare few who were innocent had done something to invoke suspicion. So, the contemporary use of the word, McCarthyism, as making wild and wanton accusations, is somewhat of a misnomer. Yet this accusation is bandied about so frivolously that most people who accuse someone of McCarthyism are themselves guilty of McCarthyism (as currently understood).
Principle #1: Do not be afraid to entertain the absurd or ridiculous. It may not help you to become popular, but it will help you to be an independent thinker. And just entertaining an idea does not mean you endorse it completely.
My pet peeve extends to other subjects and whole areas of study. When I first got my master's degree and started working in the substance abuse treatment field, I had a mentor. She was a woman who had worked a number of years in the treatment field, and she was very generous with her time, resources, and experience. For that I am forever grateful. But I learned a few things rather quickly: One, she was a recovering alcoholic and, for her, AA trumped any scientific inquiry. I was an early admirer of W.R. Miller's research, and the mere mention of his name invoked hatred and disdain. Two, she was a staunch feminist, and her views on anything from abortion to divorce were etched in stone. I mentioned the book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and nearly got my head bitten off. (I know, pop psychology, but Gray did have some serious research, his doctoral dissertation, underneath his popular rendition.) Though tremendously competent and conscientious, my first mentor was dogmatic in her beliefs and practices. I did not realize it at the time, but her dogmatism would be more influential on me than anything she taught me.
I first started to realize this when my wife had our second child, left school, quit her job, and followed me to another state for a new job. She was burnt out from working and going to school all the time, rarely seeing our first child, and having little to show for her efforts. At least in part, she was relieved to stay at home, breastfeed, and focus on our then two children. Also, economically, her going to work prior to completing her education made little sense. We would barely break even. So the decision for her to stay at home was fairly natural. Nonetheless, a product of my education and the culture, I was curious what the science had to say about daycare. I went to the university library and did some research.
The first thing that I discovered was that it was nearly impossible to find research on daycare or any other social issues like divorce, single parents, or dual career families. In the scientific journals, there were plenty of opinion pieces, but there were almost no well-controlled scientific experiments or surveys. I had run into this before, while researching substance abuse treatment. Especially in American social science journals, opinions were plentiful, but genuine research was scarce. Eventually, though, I did run across some good research on daycare sponsored by the Scandinavians. They found the children exposed to many hours of daycare, especially boys, were less attached to their mothers and more prone to physical aggression. The effect was worse the earlier the boys started daycare and the more hours of attendance. The conclusion was that it was ideal for mothers (or perhaps fathers) to care for their children at home for the first three years of life. After that, the children could gradually transition into preschool and kindergarten.
Oddly enough, that Scandinavian research concluded the exact opposite of what is currently being forced down the throats of the American people. We are constantly bombarded with messages that children learn the most in the first three years of life, and therefore failure to enroll your child in early daycare could delay your child's intellectual development. Time out! The Scandinavians have the highest ranked schools in the world. Clearly, the Scandinavian practice of long maternity leave has not hurt their children's intellectual development. In fact, the Scandinavians start formal schooling far later than anyone else, around age 7 or 8. So if the American research about the importance of the first three years is correct, then maybe the conclusions and recommendations are wrong. Maybe the most critical way for children to learn during those first three years is at home with their moms (or dads, perhaps). And daycare from ages 3 to 7 needs to focus not on alphabets, math, and reading, but on various forms of play. This is not to say that Scandinavian women stay at home and forego a second income. Rather, most Scandinavian women take a few years off to stay with their small families, then return to work once the children are old enough. It may not be perfect. Supporting these mothers is expensive for the taxpayers, but it does seem to pay off in educational and societal functioning. Of course, the Scandinavian model is only one alternative to the status quo in America, which clearly is not functional.
Over the years, I have looked over various research (as much as I am able), and I have come to one overriding conclusion. By and large, we are living in a post-scientific era. The problem is not only various dogmatic positions taken by the APA and other organizations, but the bulk of the research is sponsored by organizations that have agendas and published in journals that foist those agendas. No American journal of daycare and development (to make up a random name) will ever publish an article critical of the daycare industry. No pharmaceutical company will ever allow publication of research that does not support the efficacy of its product. No car seat manufacturer will ever publish research suggesting that, beyond a certain age, car seats are no more effective than safety belts. No women's studies journal will ever publish research showing that women may be able to have either a career or a family, but tend to struggle with having both. No gay studies journal will ever suggest that gay marriage is any different than heterosexual marriage. And so forth. In theory, science is an objective and disinterested pursuit of the truth. If that is the definition of science, then science no longer exists.
Principle #2: Genuine scientific research is of the utmost value, but more rare than the finest jewels. The peer review process has a stranglehold on scientific progress.
Practically, scientific journals are not yet completely obsolete. A reasonable solution would be for the intellectual property rights of all scientific research to expire after five years. Then, all scientific research--the good, the bad, and the ugly--would all be published on the internet. Let the trolls and the stalkers review the literature. They cannot possibly be any worse than tenured professors.
Principle #3: There is no room for orthodoxy in the disinterested search for the truth.
The problem is not just whole areas of endeavor that are agenda driven and biased. The other problem is a scientific purism that fails to account for the existential, political, spiritual, and cultural implications of accepted science. Take, for example, the endless debate between the creation scientists and the evolutionists. If ever there were a proof of Kant's antinomies, it would be these debaters who cannot hear the other. Ironically, it is academic or intellectual science that keeps this debate alive through a narrow or purist form of epistemology. My suggestion would be to turn it over to the internet. The conflict would be solved by attrition. Sooner or later, both sides would bore themselves to death.
I would also suggest that universities resurrect the study of rhetoric and high schools elevate the debate team to the status of the football team. This leads to the last aspect of my pet peeve. I am an opinionated and passionate person. Get over it. I have no tolerance for political correctness. I do not much care if someone finds me "offensive." I am more interested in the following: Am I correct? If not, why? And be specific. Do not just call me names or quote some supposed authority. Does my argument have merits? Is it plausible? Heck, is it well-written? I do not try to be offensive, nor do I try to avoid being offensive. Besides, perceived offense is largely a choice of the reader. I just try to tell the truth. Not my truth or your truth. Not a partial truth that does not hurt your feelings. Not an incomplete truth that enables me to avoid controversy. Not the Absolute Truth as I am not God. These are essays, in other words, attempts at the truth. But I try to take my best shot at a truth that transcends ordinary experience.
Anything less. Well, that is my pet peeve.
