12.21.06
The Argument Culture: Ninth Post (Education)
This is an interesting book. I certainly agree with her assessment that schools and the culture of academia are very adversarial. I rather wish they weren’t, but that’s one of the biggest things that I dislike about our educational system, beginning to end. I was surprised when Tannen mentioned that disagreeing with something is the most common way to write a paper, and often done even when the writer does not genuinely disagree as they claim to. Such a thing has never occurred to me and few of my papers center around a disagreement with something else. I would feel too weird lying in a paper like that. I couldn’t do it. I have written papers I later came to decide were incorrect in their logic or interpretation of something, but I always wrote it honestly believing it at the time. I just can’t imagine flat out lying in a paper. I hope that I never feel the need to do that or, worse, actually do it!