It's not the cough that carries you off/ it's the coffin they carry you off in . . .
It's the time of year when we focus on things that go bump in the night. Halloween (or as it was once known, Hallowe'en) is just a few days away, so to get in the spirit, I considered writing about superstitions. Superstitions can be a challenge for teachers of psychology because some students cling to them so ardently (e.g., avoid telling a friend you think you did really well on a test or you will "jinx" it). Of course, so do some teachers. This afternoon, for example, a friend from another department informed me that he can only write with one end of a piece of chalk. The opposite end must remain pristine, unused, and as flat as possible. He becomes unnerved when he forgets and "ruins" the "good" end. He claims that breaking a piece of chalk while writing on the board is, well, almost unthinkable. It happens, and when it does, my colleague ends up in a zombie-like state for a minute or two.
And I should also fess up about my own fallacious fumblings: When I was an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University, before I took any test, I routinely rubbed the nose of Arthur Hammerschlag for good luck. Not his real nose, of course. You see, Hammerschlag was commemorated on plaque in one of the academic buildings, Baker Hall. At some point, students began to rub the relief of his nose to improve their chances of doing well on subsequent academic trials. I confess I felt sheepish doing it, but rub his honker I did on many occasions - and I lived to tell the tale (and as many a CMU alum will tell you, superstitions aside, any port in the testing storm was welcome, indeed).
But these are not the sort of scary thoughts I elected to write about here. Instead, I decided to consider really scary thoughts, the kind that makes us pause, wrack our brains, and wonder whatever to do and sometimes how to think or feel. These sorts of thoughts are often called controversial. Examples include (but are by no means limited to) topics pertaining to human sexuality, diversity, animal research (and the ethics connected to it), the gulf between faith and science, and so on. The real challenge for teachers of psychology is to present the given topic as dispassionately as possible while also appropriately dealing with any emotional responses that erupt in the students during or outside of class (think the usual bogeymen: politics, religion, social class - the list goes on).
The goal of teaching students about such scary thoughts is not to change their minds but to open them up by exposing them to challenging issues or arguments that compel them to examine the basis for their own opinions (i.e., Are these opinions founded on fact and supporting data or supposition and mere belief?). I was thinking about controversies because I recently attended a conference called "Hot Topics: Best Practices in Teaching Controversial Issues in Psychology," which was co-sponsored by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology and Georgia Southern University. (For the record, I was a member of the planning committee.) Each year the Society for the Teaching of Psychology sponsors or co-sponsors various conferences, including this one.
This year's participants were treated to variety of interesting sessions where speakers presented tools and techniques for fairly but deliberately presenting scary, that is, controversial, thoughts in the classroom. David Myers, a social psychologist from Hope College, spoke on the "Bridging the Divide: Strengthening Marriage, Welcoming Gays," a topic he has explored in a recent book. Another prominent researcher, David Buss of the University of Texas at Austin, provided attendees with teaching tips for presenting research findings from evolutionary psychology in their classes. Laura King of the University of Missouri-Columbia rounded out the conference by speaking on "Moving Beyond Serial Killers and Their Ilk: Engaging Students without Overreliance on the Extraordinary and Abnormal." Besides these three keynotes, there were several dozen symposia and talks, as well as a poster session. Faculty from different sorts of institutions with diverse missions had many opportunities to discuss how best to encourage students to proceed from their comfort zones into scarier places (intellectually speaking, that is). Teaching about controversial matters is a great opportunity to put a stake in the heart of sloppy thoughts or, if you prefer, to drag them out into the sunlight.
And that's not whistling past the graveyard, either.
