Military Officer versus Journalist

[coberst]

Military Officer versus Journalist

 

The standard teacher/pupil teaching technique accentuates the importance of acquiring knowledge. The Socratic technique accentuates the importance of understanding and critical thinking. Being knowledgeable of a matter and understanding a matter are very different categories of comprehension.

 

I thought I might compare and contrast the professional journalist with the professional military officer in an attempt to focus upon the difference and importance of these two intellectual traits of comprehension.

 

What might be the ideal character traits of these two professions? It seems that the military officer should be smart, well trained, obedient, and brave. The journalist should be smart, well trained, critical thinking, and honest. The journalist must have well-developed intellectual character traits and be skillful in critical thinking. The military officer should be trained to act somewhat like an automaton in critical circumstances.

 

The officer’s behavior in each conceivable circumstance should follow precisely a well-established code of action. The officer is trained to follow well-established algorithms in every circumstance. Even those instances wherein the officer is authorized to deviate from standard procedure are clearly defined algorithms. The officer deviates from established behavior only when absolutely necessary and that ad hoc behavior should follow along prescribed avenues. The officer obeys all commands without critical analysis except in very unusual circumstances. Bravery and obedience are the two most desired character traits of a military officer.

 

The role of the journalist in wartime has evolved dramatically in the last 50 years. During WWII the journalist acted as cheerleader and propagandist. During the Vietnam War the journalist often played the role of critical analyst. While one can see some positive reasons for the cheerleader and propagandist I will assume that overall this is not a proper role for the journalist in a democracy. The ideal journalist must always be a critical analyst and communicate honestly to the reader the results of her investigation.

 

Since most people unconsciously seek opinion fortification rather than truth they become very agitated when they find news which does not fortify their opinion. Thus, most people have low opinions of journalists. Nevertheless, it is no doubt the ideal journalist is one who presents the facts fairly, accurately, and in a balanced manner. The ability ‘to connect the dots’ in each situation is of primary importance for the ideal journalist. Knowledge is important but understanding and critical thinking is more important.

 

We certainly want our military officers educated more in the didactic mode than in the Socratic mode whereas we would find that journalist educated in the Socratic mode would be the better journalist. The journalist must be able to recognize the prejudices of others as well as recognizing his/her own biases.

 

What might one say as regarding the contrasting importance of critical thinking and knowledge for a teacher, engineer, accountant, nurse, factory worker or secretary? With consideration we probably will find that knowledge is more important than critical thinking when analyzing the individual as a worker. The credentials that appear on most resumes are those testifying to a degree of knowledge by the job applicant. We do not even have a metric for understanding or critical thinking.

 

I think it is correct to assume that knowledge can be imparted by a teacher to an individual more quickly and efficiently using the standard technique whereas the Socratic technique, while developing understanding and critical thinking, is much less efficient in imparting knowledge. Here, as in everything else there is a trade off. In a set period of time more knowledge can be imparted using the standard mode.

 

The question then becomes: is it more important to have citizens with greater knowledge and less understanding and critical thinking or citizens with greater understanding and critical thinking and less knowledge?

 

I claim that democracy is more dependent upon the citizen who exemplifies more the characteristic of the ideal journalist than the ideal military officer.

 

Democracy will eventually live or die based upon the degree of sophistication for critical thinking and understanding by our citizens. Our schools and colleges have made some small attempt to teach Critical Thinking but adults cannot wait for the distant future when many of our citizens have learned Critical Thinking. Today’s adult must proceed with the effort to become a self-learner of Critical Thinking.

 

I think there are several levels of critical thinking, do you agree?

 

Do you think that the journalist or the military officer offers the best example for educating the citizens of a democracy?

[HydrogenBond]

The military officer is a product of the critical thinking of others, who, through experience, are more qualified to think critically. Their training is not mindless but has been carefully prepared by others. The bottom line is based on life and death and having to make quick decisions, under duress, when the lives of those under your command are on the line. Under those conditions it is not always easy to think clearly, so procedure can be useful. If procedure breaks down one has to think on their feet. Things that work become part of the next training.

 

The Journalist has only the pressures of deadlines, which is not quite the same. The lower stress makes it easy to ponder and reflect. Nobody will die if he writes a story or doesn't meet the deadline. The only death could be a career. Journalist critical thinking is not full critical thinking. He has other constraints to satisfy such as career, advertisers, and the political agenda of his editor or owner.

 

If he works for a liberal newspaper it can't be objective against liberals. This is a sure way to get fired or blackballed from the herd. If he is purely factual it may not be entertaining enough to sell newspapers and keep advertisers. He also needs a readership and has to have his signature style to cater to his readership. There is a journalist template many follow for this balance. It is learned in school, prepared by other critical thinkers who know how to blend the needs of career, advertisers, political agenda of superiors and the needs of your readership.

 

The real critical thinkers have to read a variety of biased journalist critical thinking. Some things should be liberal to get those facts and bias. Some things should be conservative to get those facts and bias. You also have to strip away the drama manipulation for advertisers, as well as style points and readership signature for career padding. When you are done there may not be much substance left. That is why you have to get a bunch of them to make one critical story that is a balance of just the facts.

[CraigD]

Democracy will eventually live or die based upon the degree of sophistication for critical thinking and understanding by our citizens.

Democracy is not, I think, a thing analogous to a biological organism able to live or die. Rather, in its modern usage, it’s come to be essentially a term describing the characteristic of societies that have regular orderly elections open to a large fraction of their members, rather than, as is often naively assumed, a synonym for “direct democracy”, a system of government where government decision are determined by direct votes.

 

Paradoxically and self-referentially, the quoted sentence is, I think, an example of the sort of statement critical thinking techniques lead one to analyze and, in an unqualified form, reject. CT teaches one to be wary of loaded terms, especially when used metaphorically. A CT slogans or rallying cries, of which the quoted sentence is an example, is an oxymoron, because practitioners and proponents of critical thinking tend not to use or be receptive to slogans and rallying cries.

Our schools and colleges have made some small attempt to teach Critical Thinking but adults cannot wait for the distant future when many of our citizens have learned Critical Thinking. Today’s adult must proceed with the effort to become a self-learner of Critical Thinking.

Critical thinking instructs one to require objective supporting evidence for assertions, seek precision over vague adjective-noun pairs such as “small attempt” and “distant future”, and question imperatives such as “must”.

 

Before accepting the above, a critical thinker requires evidence of correlation between the teaching of critical thinking techniques in schools and their short and long-term use. He requires concrete definitions of terms. He requires reproducible data assessing the fraction of people in a particular society exhibiting CT skills according to various definitions, and correlation between this fraction and various characteristics of the society.

 

I suspect, but can’t support with well-controlled statistics, that CT skills are rare in all cohorts, and largely independent of educational and governmental factors.

[coberst]

Democracy is not, I think, a thing analogous to a biological organism able to live or die.

 

I suspect, but can’t support with well-controlled statistics, that CT skills are rare in all cohorts, and largely independent of educational and governmental factors.

 

 

 

I can remember reading, many decades ago, a book by a great historian, whose name I cannot remember, and this historian wrote about the death of recent civilizations.

 

Civilizations do "pass-away", and I suspect our own will do likewise; soon, if our citizens do not become more intellectually sophisticated.

 

Unfortunately you are correct, in fact this morning's Washington Post speaks of the amazing dullness of the American electorate; CT skills are "rare in all cohorts, and largely independent of educational and governmental factors".