“The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly, it deforms their thinking about themselves and their work [ ]… we alienate them from their own inner lives.
Faculty often complain that students have no regard for the gifts of insight and understanding that are the true payoff of education– they care only about short- term outcomes in the real world, “will this major get me a job?” “How will this assignment be useful in ‘real’ life?
But those are […] merely the questions they have been taught to ask… by an academic culture that distrusts and devalues inner reality. Of course our students are cynical about the inner outcomes of education: we teach them that the subjective self is irrelevant and even unreal.”
Palmer Parker, The Courage to Teach
