Talk Less, Listen More
In advance of the Passover holiday, prominent Rabbi David Wolpe asked journalist Douglas Murray how families should talk at the Seder to those captured by an anti-Zionist worldview. Murray gave a fantastic and deeply Talmudic response; “I’d invite them to listen, instead of talking….is to presume that there are other people who know, not just them. I do think that all wisdom starts with some kind of humility.”
Murray is right, and this wisdom is far more applicable to American society than the Passover holiday itself, which—through the parable of the Four Sons—maintains a core principle of educating others about the Jewish historical experience.
The notion of “first listen, then speak,” articulated by social scientist Gerd Gigerenzer, is a foreign concept in our current culture; many are quick to do the exact opposite and social media has only exacerbated this phenomenon. This sentiment also captures a clear failing of our higher education system, at present, where our college and university students are far too often encouraged to speak long before they have listened and understood much of anything.
After teaching for two decades, I observe students who arrive on campus being told that their lived experiences are paramount and their views are always welcomed even when they lack knowledge on a topic. This is thanks to a—now evaporating—diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) machine that promotes idiosyncratic views and identity politics over science, history, and facts. Professors regularly coddle students; I have seen so many teachers celebrate engagement over knowledge and narrow ideas that are well articulated over truth. This behavior represents a failure of faculty and has helped create the dangerous, illiberal, and ignorant environments that we have on campuses today.
The objective truth often gets in the way of “my truth.” Students with a limited understanding of a topic go unchallenged regardless of the validity of their claims. In a culture like this, all opinions hold equal weight. Yet, the irony is that many institutions claim or have a mission to pursue truth. Expertise matters and we must take into account the quality of the information we consume; everyone’s opinion is not of equal weight or value.
Students must be able to discern fact from fiction when they encounter ideas and arguments. Critical thinking should be the essence of the academic experience. By not teaching students how to evaluate opinions, views, and narratives, they are not being given a solid learning experience, and schools are essentially committing educational malpractice with the truth not residing at the center of the school’s mission.
We as teachers must do better.
Higher education must be a place to pursue knowledge and expertise. Professors must convey to students that almost all of them come to college with a limited understanding of the world but share with them that the central goal of the collegiate experience is to address this understandable ignorance. Our job is not to coddle but to elevate students and directly help them listen, learn, and start understanding truths by questioning and being skeptical. That starts with accepting and addressing Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel winning author rarely read by today’s undergraduates, recognizing our deep ignorance in For Whom the Bell Tolls: “How little we know of what there is to know…I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of.”
Imagine if teachers asked students to write about a charged topic like the Israel-Hamas conflict, an area front of mind for numerous students who have little knowledge about this history of the region and practically no direct experience with Israeli people, or Palestinians, or Hamas, for that matter. Faculty should then ask the students to write a paper in direct response and present the alternative point of view, critically examining the evidence, narratives, and authors. If every student who ignorantly yells Nakba, genocide, and colonialism toward Israel was forced to counter that by writing about Zionism, the Holocaust, regional politics, and the current pluralistic nature of Israel today, the lesson of listening more and talking less would sink in quite quickly.
To achieve such an important intellectual and cultural change, we must remember that the burden to instill this critical facet of liberal education falls on the professors and administrators. Faculty and staff must embrace and enshrine the idea of listening and learning first and then talking, and that involves pushing back on social media and years of elementary and secondary school programming, and it takes thankless time and effort. If we are going to graduate responsible citizens and productive members of society, this work must be done. Professors must rise to this challenge, for the future of our democratic republic rests on such a foundational skill.
Orginally published at AEI Ideas: https://www.aei.org/society-and-culture/talk-less-listen-more/