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Don't forget the substance

In her recent column, Tehila Wenger lamented the proliferation of “verbal vagueness” in precept. And though I do wholeheartedly agree that our precepts are often seriously lacking in intellectual rigor and substantive discussion, I disagree with her analysis of where this comes from. For Wenger, the problem lies in how we preface what we say: She objects to starting a comment with “I find it interesting that” or “I feel like” because they inherently prevent counterarguments — there’s no way to say “no, that’s not interesting” or “no, you don’t really feel that way.” However, in my opinion, the problem doesn’t lie in how we preface our statements, but in what we say in the meat of our comment, a problem that needs to be solved by students and preceptors alike.

In a perfectly logical world where our thoughts mapped one-to-one onto our speech, we might simply dive into the content of what we want to say instead of couching it in an introduction. However, language is very much a social interaction, which is why, in most instances, we say, “Is there any chance that I can borrow your stapler?” instead of “I want to borrow your stapler.” They both convey to the listener the fact that the speaker wants his or her stapler, but the first is often preferred because it is less jarring and seemingly more polite.

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This is what I think is happening in precept when we preface our statements with markers such as “I get the sense that.” What is more important, then, is to look at what the person is actually saying. For example, someone might easily say, “I find it interesting that X, but yet Y, which might suggest Z,” a sentence that could be extremely substantive and helpful to a discussion. Many people might simply find that certain turns of phrase are more comfortable and allow them to be less blunt, in the same way that one doesn’t come out and say “I want your stapler.”

But do not confuse this desire to verbally ease into a thought for intellectual laziness, for a deliberate move to distance oneself from the point so that the speaker doesn’t have to defend it. Often, it is just a sign that a person hasn’t quite come to a conclusion about the issue and wants to keep an open mind. Many people may not want to wed themselves to the claim that “Kant is wrong” and instead use their comments to navigate the murky waters of deontological ethics.

On the other hand, there are of course those who are using such constructions not in an attempt to engage with the material but rather to make comments without real substance. Often, they are simply saying “I find it interesting that X,” where X is just something that happened in the readings. This, as Wenger points out, is rather contentless and usually not helpful to a discussion. But we shouldn’t entirely blame the students — often times the power to bring about actual intellectual discussion lies with the preceptor.

Any preceptor worth his or her salt can tell the difference between comments that add analysis to the text and comments that don’t. In the case of the ones that don’t, I would implore preceptors to push back a little. Ask why the student thought something was interesting, ask them to make connections to previous works in the course. This is not to say that precept should be extremely uncomfortable and that students should feel embarrassed if they cannot come up with interesting analysis. However, it is the preceptor’s job to provide structure to the precept and to challenge the students to exercise their critical thinking capacities. They can change the system so it incentivizes not any old comment but rather thoughtful and intelligent ones.

In of the best precepts that I ever had, the preceptor would ask intense follow-up questions. I commented that Lenin was advocating temporarily consolidating power in a vanguard party; she asked me how that contradicted the previous week’s readings on Gramsci. I said that Guy Debord claims religion is used to prevent society from achieving consciousness; she asked how that related to the rest of the work. I was always hesitant to say something because I knew I would have to defend it, but that meant that I always did all the readings and came to class prepared to engage with them. Eventually I learned to make substantive, worthwhile comments from the start.

So yes, the obsessive couching of one’s thoughts does make it easier to say nothing at all, but it does not make it any more difficult to recognize that someone hasn’t actually said anything or to push them to fully engage their half-formed thoughts. So let us not be afraid to bring our interests, inclinations, feelings, whims, senses and impulses to the table of discussion, but let us also not fool ourselves into thinking that the pursuit of knowledge stops there.

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Luke Massa is a philosphy major from Ridley Park, Pa. He can be reached at lmassa@princeton.edu.

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