Responding to "Student Relativism"
James Rhem, Executive Editor

Philosophy may rightly boast the oldest "scholarship of teaching and learning" of any field of study. Since at least the time of Socrates, philosophers have examined how we know, how we learn, and how we frame and solve problems. In the last several decades teachers of philosophy have returned with some frequency to the pedagogical problem of "student relativism" seen most often in statements such as "That might be true for you, but not for me," or "Who's to say what's right or wrong?" FORUM readers familiar with William Perry's work on students' intellectual development know student relativism as "level" or "position four" Late Multiplicity, or "everyone has a right to his own opinion."

Working with students caught in this frame of mind can be frustrating. Moreover, the very ideas of democracy and tolerance may seem to encourage a relativistic posture, and in a sinister way, so can a shallow understanding of collaborative learning, where "community" and "consensus" become the source of truth-making authority. These influences, combined with youthful idealism and energy, can pose a daunting challenge for teachers in most any discipline. Indeed, student relativism actually poses a variety of challenges, since it represents students' confrontation with ambiguity, and responses to ambiguity vary widely. Some students drop out of college altogether. Others retreat from fields like literature and philosophy to major in math or science where concrete answers seem easier to come by. Still others simply come to see critical thinking and logic not as reliable tools of inquiry or paths to deeper understanding, but as mere academic parlor games. As Gerald Erion writes in his overview of philosophy's pedagogical responses to the problem ("Engaging Student Relativism," Discourse: Learning and Teaching in Philosophical and Religious Studies, V5N1, Autumn, 2005), "their work takes on a distressing character aimed at simply learning the rules of the game, not at using these rules to advance their own understanding."

Erion, who also presented research on this topic at the October 2005 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning meeting in Vancouver, first became aware of it as a pedagogical problem while a graduate student teaching his first course in critical thinking. "There was quite a bit of logic in the course, and many students were learning to ‘play the game,' but not applying their logic skills in their actual thinking," he recalls. How did he handle his first encounters with student relativism as a beginning teacher? "Probably not all that well," he admits, though many might envy the approach he was able to take: because the class was relatively small, Erion was able to talk to students individually about their relativistic postures, employing what he now calls the "traditional approach."

The Traditional Approach

The traditional approach to confronting student relativism in philosophy classes lies in framing the response as a philosophical one and then rebutting it as if it were a genuine philosophical position. The approach begins by presenting or eliciting the claim, articulating it precisely, then analyzing it, and finally criticizing it with classic counter arguments. Students who take a relativistic position quickly see that, if relativism is true, then statements such as 2+2=4 and "The earth moves around the sun" are not objectively true. Indeed, within the context of philosophy courses, assertions such as "all truth is relative" can quickly demonstrate their own inadequacy. As Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn write in their useful text How To Think About Weird Things: "If the proposition ‘All truth is relative' is an objective truth, it refutes itself because it serves as its own counter example. So if the statement ‘All truth is relative' is objectively true, it's objectively false."

Unfortunately, however tidy relativism may appear as a philosophical problem, it proves much stickier as a teaching challenge, as Erion has come to realize as a more experienced teacher. "The overall design of our philosophy courses may . . . inadvertently encourage student relativism," he writes. "For instance, students who are forced to march through a series of radically opposed positions on fundamental philosophical issues without pausing to consider the implications of this sort of disagreement may see no hope for intellectual reconciliation but relativism."

Suit of Armor

Erion's investigation of the problem of student relativism as a knotty teaching problem led him to a valuable review of what other teachers of philosophy have had to say about it. For instance, in a somewhat surly article in 1986, Stephen Satris argues that student relativism is not a philosophical position at all, but rather "a method of protection, a suit of armor" that students invoke as a means of avoiding critical engagement, especially when doing so might challenge the student's personal (albeit unexamined) beliefs. Despite his obvious irritation at having to deal with student relativism, a seasoned teacher's compassion emerges as Satris moves toward suggesting means of removing student armor.

In general, Satris promotes an approach that puts how we examine questions at the center of the discussion rather than the presumption of coming to right or wrong answers. One approach offered five years earlier by fellow philosopher Michael Goldman begins by having students address the question of why relativism is such a pervasive feature in contemporary American culture. In this approach, writes Satris "the tables are cleverly turned: [student relativism] cannot so effectively be used as a conversation stopper when the conversation is precisely about [student relativism]." But Satris cites this suggestion in passing before moving on to Goldman's primary suggestion and his improvement on it.

Advocacy

"The best pedagogical device against student relativism," says Goldman, is a method he calls advocacy. Basically, Goldman suggests the teacher take a philosophical position, articulate it and its proof as an example to students of the mode of thinking being taught. Satris suggests the same thing except that Satris emphasizes putting the method (rather than a particular position) in the spotlight. "One need not focus on the direct advocacy of particular conclusions," says Satris.

Certainly, the move toward "showing" and away from "telling" seems a wise one in responding to objections to authority. But how to do it? How to practice philosophy (or any humanities discipline) in front of students with anything like the authority of a math teacher working a problem? Perhaps an answer lies in making students work the problems.

One twist on the advocacy approach involves subtly reassigning roles and moving students into the position of active critics, readers, and judges, bringing their critical resources to bear rather than casting them as passive receivers of the teacher's authoritative statements. Satris suggests collecting students' written responses to questions and then distributing anonymous duplicated copies for the class to discuss critically. In this way students come to see that some responses miss the point or are obviously mistaken; that some are well-written and well-argued and that others aren't. Thus, they begin to learn critical thinking without having their own armor assailed.

Young (Naïve) Philosophers?

As an interview with Erion moves along, two things become clear: first, teachers of philosophy were producing a rich "scholarship of teaching and learning" long before anyone coined the phrase, and second, that a teacher's careful consideration of the problem of student relativism can produce the deepening of understanding that student relativism seeks to block. While impatience pleads for "the answer" to the problem, mature discourse finds a variety of them and Erion feels sympathy for and sees utility in most all of them.

For example, says Erion, not everyone sees students' insistence on relativism as a psychological armor. Erion points to a short article by Roger Paden that takes a very different view. Faced with students who hold tenaciously to relativistic positions almost against their will, Paden comes to see the position as a kind of "first-order ethical belief," a seemingly ­unshakable conviction in the value of tolerance, a conviction some students hold even though they don't always like it. This behavior leads Paden to begin regarding his students as "young philosophers, who hold strong, albeit somewhat odd, beliefs about the world." That view has two implications. First, Paden concludes that student relativism must be taken seriously and treated with respect, since it forms a deep and serious part of the students' identities as young adults. Second, since these students have little experience in framing formal arguments, Paden recommends coaxing an argument from them that all could regard as a fair representation of student relativism.

Over time (and Paden and the others Erion examines all acknowledge how much patience and time is required to confront student relativism effectively), Paden evolved the following argument that most students will accept as a fair representation of their relativism.

1)   Respect for persons requires that everyone has a right to his or her own opinion.

2)   Therefore, it is wrong (i.e., impermissible) to try to
force anyone to change his or her opinion.

3)   Arguments can force someone to change his or her opinion.

4)   Therefore, it is not morally possible (i.e., is imper­miss­ible) to argue against someone's opinion.

5)   If it is not possible to argue against an opinion, it must be true.

6)   Therefore, if someone holds some belief, then due respect for that person compels us to say that belief is true for that person (even though it is not true for me.)

Carefully creating this sort of collective argument to serve as an objective construct to be discussed works to separate students from their emotional commitment to relativism. This comfortable distance then allows students to bring their latent capacities for reason to the fore, just as Goldman's posing a general question about relativism in society and Satris's anonymous critique of student papers do.

Respect and Force

Paden's approach quickly brings the concept of respect up for review, since it lies behind the entire argument students have constructed. Leading students to see that respect for others does not require us to insulate them from our beliefs is crucial. Demonstrations of this point are easy to come by since students, as a rule, readily agree that scientists' (for example) rigorously testing each other's ideas reflects their respect for each other's work. Led by such an objectivist case, they usually come to see that ideas deserve the same respect as scientific insights. Under the umbrella of "tolerance," "ideas" and "beliefs" seem to overlap and get mixed up in students' minds, and they begin to object to "forcing" people to change their minds. Again, it becomes at least possible at this point to demonstrate the difference between coercion (as in the case of a dictator's fiat) and persuasion. And if the ethos of civil argument has been carefully laid, students can easily see that, in Paden's words, "reason compels only those who voluntarily submit to its authority." People who change their minds in the face of rational argument have only proved themselves to be rational, not lacking in conviction or power.

Getting Out In Front

"Student relativism shows up in nearly every class I teach," says Erion. "I try to get out in front of it, and so I typically introduce a unit on it early in the semester. . . . I find myself using all of the approaches that I survey in my article, so that I can tailor my response to the students who I actually have with me in the class. Many of them do arrive with the armor Satris writes about, and that certainly can be difficult to deal with, but it's important to do so because our students need a deep understanding of the tools of critical thinking if they are going to get lasting value out of their college experiences."

Though he attempts to address student relativism early in the semester, Erion reports that, like Rasputin, it keeps reappearing. "We have to revisit the issue throughout the semester," he says. "Student relativism can come up in discussions of most any philosophical topic, but at least they've had some boot camp, some basic training early, and I think that helps. What worries me is whether or not the thinking skills they begin to learn in my classes carry over and get reinforced in their other classes or whether, under the thoughtless cultural pressure for relativism we all experience, they sink back into ‘Who's to say what's right or wrong?'" 

Contact:
Gerald J. Erion, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Humanities Department
Medaille College
18 Agassiz Circle
Buffalo, NY 14214-2601
Telephone: (716) 880-2174
E-mail: gerion@medaille.edu
Web: www.medaille.edu/gerion/