Educators like me are steeped in educational jargon. Over the years, I have spent lots of time thinking about how to maximize student knowledge and learning. Metacognition is a buzzword that I use frequently. “Thinking about thinking” is something educators desire for themselves and their students. We want our students to be thinkers who do not just blindly accept information.
I have written frequently of Socrates and how to be truly educated, we must question as Socrates did, the “Socratic Method.” Question! Question! I truly believe that most people want to learn all the time, although I will say the recent “stop the steal” movement has made me question that belief.
How can anyone believe a conspiracy that is anonymous? The actual word conspiracy from the original word “conspire” connotes surreptitiousness or some form of covert action or even perhaps dishonesty. Didn’t the ongoing rejection by the courts everywhere in this country cause the “stop the steal” believers to question the legitimacy of their beliefs?
And now, Sidney Powell, the conservative attorney from North Carolina, being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion dollars for her assertions of voting fraud, is saying that “reasonable people wouldn’t have believed her assertions of fraud.” I say, “Well, duh!” Oh, well! Anyone interested in buying a Brooklyn Bridge?
Recent writing from Atlantic Magazine writer, Anne Applebaum, has provoked interesting thought; again let’s “think about thinking,” and share comments on her article whereby she indicates 30% of all people seem to prefer authoritarian leadership as opposed to democratic leadership, whereby the majority rules. Scary!
During the authoritarian reign of Adolf Hitler in Germany, this acquiescence of leadership must have been somehow significantly greater than 30%. Even German Lutheran theologian, Diederich Bonhoeffer, resisted this succumbing to authoritarian rule to the point of participating in the assassination attempt on Hitler. Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis before liberation came in the form of Allied Forces in 1945. Wonder how many theologians would go to that extreme to protect our democracy today?
Simple democratic majority rule, the “changing of the guard,” seems much more appealing that allowing 30% to rule over the 70% of us who do not aspire to authoritarian rule. It’s interesting that the figure of 30% who prefer authoritarian rule corresponds with the on-going favorability of polls for Forty-Five throughout his tenure. Ah, me! Oh, well!
Which came first? The chicken or the egg? Who knows? Russian psycholinguist Lev Vygotsky believed that language structures thought! That metacognition and interior speech help us to learn and to develop thought. Hopefully, inner speech and reason will get us past this rocky period in our democracy. Let’s hear it for majority rule and our American democracy!