Play Nice or Not at All

Some recent replies calling me ‘evil’ from a local blogger on my post on Tony Palmeri and his opposition to Dave Omachinski reminded me of how I describe what I do to folks not in higher education.

Way back when, in meeting neighbors or individuals in social situations, the subject of employment inevitably would come up. When mine was discussed, the reaction always was along the line of ‘you teach college’. I’d always explain that I’m not a teacher but rather, I facilitate learning at a university. Young children are taught. Don’t touch the stove because it is hot and it will burn you, etc. They remember lessons by rote.

It isn’t until later, that children begin to learn by making discoveries and thus at the post secondary level, we don’t teach our students but we learn ‘em. I present topics and ideas, and students research and form opinions and come to formulate their own ideas in my area.

Often times at this level, our learning ‘em improves on the rote learning of their youth. Finally, I’m getting to make my point.

As a child, one is taught to not call others bad names; it is not nice. As the child grows and matures the child learns, hopefully, that calling names also isn’t productive to rational discourse. Calling someone a derogatory name or assigning them uncomplimentary character traits isn’t a way to win an argument. So as I make my point (see first paragraph) on the postings of “working to make a living” I’m guessing that as a child he/she wasn’t taught as a child not to call others names and as a young adult, he/she hasn’t yet learned that name calling doesn’t lead to swaying the opinions of others.

So, play nice and post nice is my motto. Rational discourse is good, name calling is bad. I ask “working to make a living” to save the name calling for the street rallies ‘cause if you do it again, I got the big ol’ delete key ready and waiting.