Re: classroom ridicule

Louise,

Your story resonates with another one, that happened to a colleague of mine
at Berea College who was teaching a course in Anatomy. The class happened
to be in a lab, which was equipped with a male and a female skeleton. A
male student said that males have one less rib, because Eve was created from
a rib of Adam. The professor, Ron Rosen, without any sort of commentary
that would have disparaged the student's belief, invited him to go up to the
male skeleton and count the number of ribs. He counted, and came up one
short. Ron asked him to count them again. He still came up one short, and
again Ron quietly asked him to count again. This time he got the number
right. He was so certain that the male skeleton would be one rib fewer that
it took three counts for him to realize that he was mistaken and had been
wrongly taught about this matter. Ron said no more.

As a psychologist you no doubt understand the mechanism operating in this
student's mind.

Bob Schneider

----- Original Message -----
From: "Freeman, Louise Margaret" <lfreeman@mbc.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 12:57 PM
Subject: classroom ridicule

> In light of our recent discussions, I want to share an story from earlier
> this semester.
>
> I had a incident in my psych 101 class; the topic was sexual
> differentiation, so I introduced it by having the students list the major
> differences between men and women. After a few obvious ones were named, a
> student raised her hand and told me men had fewer ribs. I said, in what I
> hoped was a pleasant and non-derogatory manner, no, that that was not
> true,
> men and women have the same number of ribs and we can show this
> empirically
> by counting them. This actually fit in quite nicely with my earlier
> lecture
> on what science is and the importance of empirical data; I had used the
> example of frequently cited misconception that more people commit suicide
> around Christmas than any other time of the year. It's not true, suicides
> actually peak in mid-summer; we can show this by going to the death
> records
> and counting them.
>
> Obviously, the student held this belief about ribs because of a literal
> Genesis reading. She didn't actually bring up the Bible (and neither did
> I)
> , but everyone knew it; where else would such a belief have come from? It
> certainly never occurred to me to add "Only an idiotic Christian would
> believe such a thing!" and I can't imagine that of any other teacher I
> know,
> regardless of faith.
>
> But, I do wonder, did this student perceive my correction, as mild as it
> was, as "ridiculing" her religious beliefs? Were in in a public high
> school
> instead of a college, would the principal have gotten an irate call from a
> parent? Is she even now telling her friends that my classroom is hostile
> to
> the Christian faith? (Oblivious to the fact that I'm a Southern Baptist
> Sunday School teacher!) Why is it I can imagine that scenario so much more
> easily?
> __
> Louise M. Freeman, PhD
> Psychology Dept
> Mary Baldwin College
> Staunton, VA 24401
> 540-887-7326
> FAX 540-887-7121
>
>
>
Received on Wed Apr 5 13:21:04 2006