I'm wondering to what extent this might also be related to Southern US culture. Obviously there are many causes (as we've already discussed) and students and faculty at Southern schools are not necessary from the South. However, I found when I taught at a Southern US school that there was much more concern about people having to be "nice" (women in particular had to be nice). This was true both in and out of class (students very often very uncomfortable with formal class debates) and among the faulty as well. The school culture clearly emphasized avoiding any type of conflict or disagreement. Perhaps one (you!) can also engage your students more broadly in a conversation about culture and the cultural settings in which being critical is exactly appropriate/expected and in which cultural settings it is not. Students might come to realize that there are of course different norms for conflict in different settings. Marie
Scott Lilienfeld wrote:
Deb: Yes, we certainly do, but many of the graduate students find the questions raised routinely at these colloquia and intradepartment talks to be extremely threatening and challening as well. As for Gerald Patterson's suggestions, ironically we did use the Dawes book a number of years ago in precisely this setting. But most of the clinical graduate students reacted to it extremely negatively, expressing the view that they found Dawes to be overly harsh, pugnacious, and critical. Again, I most certainly do not share this view, but this goes to show that the problem we confront isn't easily remedied by assigning readings, although I agree that this might be a useful way to start in some cases. ...Scott
-- ********************************************* Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Dickinson College, P.O. Box 1773 Carlisle, PA 17013 Office: (717) 245-1562, Fax: (717) 245-1971 Webpage: www.dickinson.edu/~helwegm *********************************************
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