>> to focus our attention – by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements,
I did this with some lectures (law, but to undergrad forensics class) and ran into a cultural limitation. A large subset of my students were Asian, kids of Asian immigrants. They had significant issues with speaking up when they disagreed with the obvious lies I told. They internalized the conflict and assumed that they were misunderstanding the lesson. Or they thought that I was making a mistake and didn't want to embarrass me by pointing it out. Then when someone else was brave enough to challenge me by pointing out the absurdity, these students felt left out. I really noticed this cultural limitation while talking about a historical US supreme court case. I said that the judges were wrong, that they were showing an improper bias. Then one kid challenged me saying basically "who are you to criticize a Judge!" He was genuinely offended and more than a little scared that I would so casually "disrespect" a legal authority. It had taken him a while to build up the courage to say what he did. That is when I realized teaching techniques reliant upon students challenging authority might not be the best idea for all students.
(I did explain that cases at the supreme court only gets there because someone openly disagreed with the decisions of lower courts. The western legal system is based on constantly challenging authority.)
>> teaching techniques reliant upon students challenging authority might not be the best idea for all students.
That depends. Do you just want to teach the material? For some people the cultural thing is so strong they won't ask questions because it may imply that you're a bad teacher and offend you. You have to at least address it that much or you're not going to be able to teach the material effectively.
I don't feel like that's a show-stopper. With some work, preferably in the first two lectures, you could train them out of the habit, perhaps by reframing it in a way that doesn't offend their habits e.g. ask them to say, "I have solved your challenge" rather than "this is wrong/a lie" which they have a revulsion to.
No, I think it’s possible he may he have to resort to reframing tricks that have the same functional outcome, which is why I suggested them in the other part of that sentence.
I really hope you didn't stop teaching them about lies and to challeng authority. That's extremely valuable, especially to people from countries with dictators.
Actually, I did stop. This was a lecture series about law taught within a forensics program, which is not the place for political grandstanding. When teaching law you always have to be very careful else every lecture devolve into debates re big/small government and freedoms of the people. Iirc the case I was discussing dealt with the search and seizure of laptops at airports. We needed to cover jurisdiction and encryption issues, not the rights of a democratic people to be free from tyranny.
Sounds like the right decision - as anyone knows you're only supposed to teach "challenging authority" when the authority is one of the "accepted to challenge".
Are you saying you implemented the exact same game of telling a single lie per lecture and explicitly described the game ahead of time to the students?
I wouldn't say explicitly, but that is basically how most law lectures happen. You generally start with a basic rule such as the definition of a crime. Then you proceed to discussions of case law that explain nuances behind that rule. Rule: murder is killing people. Nuances: All these cases where killing people isn't murder. By starting with a simple rule, then proving that the rule is not simple, every lecture revolves around a single lie. That perspective on how every simple rule can in practice be expansive and difficult is probably the biggest and most useful takeaway of law school.
So the impression you got while teaching was that Asian students struggled to follow lectures that took the form of stating a generalization and then contradicting the generalization with non-central examples? E.g.:
Teacher: Murder is illegal.
Students: take notes
Teacher: A man kills another who was threatening him with a deadly weapon. Was this illegal?
Asian Students: silently unwilling to contradict the earlier statement from the classroom authority
I don't think that's an accurate generalization of Asian or any other culture. From what you've described, it sounds like you ran into was a very specific circumstance where you voiced an opinion about a real court decision which a student disagreed with, and they challenged you to justify that disagreement.
I wonder what OP's professor's experience was with various cultures. I would bet that nobody struggled to catch on to the game, even those raised with a relatively high default respect for authority who would usually be unwilling to challenge it.
I said asian, children of asian immigrants. Both aspects, culture and recent immigration, are factors. That isn't all Asians ... whatever definition of "asian" you mean by that.
Okay, but whatever the geographical/cultural/racial criteria is, it would be extremely surprising to me if a college-age population was stymied by contradiction of authority in a totally abstract, gamified context like OP describes. The whole "study hard to find the lie in the lecture" thing does not seem like some radical Western counter culture teaching method. Adult students will understand the intent and play along, yes, even first generation immigrants from Asia.
I think what you've described in your anecdote is a clash over a contradiction of real authority, opining that a judge was incorrect. I wouldn't be surprised if upbringing was a good predictor of the likelihood that a student question a teacher who questions somebody perceived as an even higher authority.
> I wouldn't say explicitly, but that is basically how most law lectures happen.
That's a qualitative difference.
For OP's prof, the students know from the beginning that if they catch the prof in a lie they "win the prize" per the explicit protocol. Even for a student like me who is reluctant to participate in such a lecture, I'd feel both a responsibility and a measure of safety in blurting out that I caught the prof in a lie!
For you, a critical mass of undergrads almost certainly didn't know how most law lectures happen. Maybe "arguing" with you gets them "the prize," but maybe it gets them in trouble, or just brings them more confusion, frustration, etc.
Or maybe-- just maybe-- this undefined behavior leads to a clever optimization that ends up deleting all their harddrives. (Sorry, I couldn't resist an undefined behavior joke.)
I did this with some lectures (law, but to undergrad forensics class) and ran into a cultural limitation. A large subset of my students were Asian, kids of Asian immigrants. They had significant issues with speaking up when they disagreed with the obvious lies I told. They internalized the conflict and assumed that they were misunderstanding the lesson. Or they thought that I was making a mistake and didn't want to embarrass me by pointing it out. Then when someone else was brave enough to challenge me by pointing out the absurdity, these students felt left out. I really noticed this cultural limitation while talking about a historical US supreme court case. I said that the judges were wrong, that they were showing an improper bias. Then one kid challenged me saying basically "who are you to criticize a Judge!" He was genuinely offended and more than a little scared that I would so casually "disrespect" a legal authority. It had taken him a while to build up the courage to say what he did. That is when I realized teaching techniques reliant upon students challenging authority might not be the best idea for all students.
(I did explain that cases at the supreme court only gets there because someone openly disagreed with the decisions of lower courts. The western legal system is based on constantly challenging authority.)