What would be a reasonable approach to classroom teaching in the fall?

[Caracal]

The graduating high school class of 2020 has been irrevocably scarred by a miserable capstone experience. I really don't know what's going to happen with that cohort. I don't think that most of them know what's going to happen to themselves either.

They'll be fine for the most part? I mean its a mess out there, but I don't really think missing the normal experience of a senior year in high school is going to scar you for life. Sometimes I think we go to these images of "young person life" and forget that there are lots of people whose didn't have all the correct emotions about all these life experiences in the first place.

[Aster]

The graduating high school class of 2020 has been irrevocably scarred by a miserable capstone experience. I really don't know what's going to happen with that cohort. I don't think that most of them know what's going to happen to themselves either.

They'll be fine for the most part? I mean its a mess out there, but I don't really think missing the normal experience of a senior year in high school is going to scar you for life. Sometimes I think we go to these images of "young person life" and forget that there are lots of people whose didn't have all the correct emotions about all these life experiences in the first place.

You might be surprised at how much one's senior high school experience affects a person. Or maybe not for long, as we'll all be seeing these folks in the Fall. Both our full time academic advisors and our social sciences faculty have been observing alarming behaviors already with the high school 2020 cohort. Low self-confidence, low interest in attending university, low overall motivation, actualized helplessness, etc... And while most of our sociology faculty agree that time heals most wounds, we are being advised that this year's freshman class is most likely going to persist as a statistical outlier in socioeconomic reporting for many years down the road.

Jobs they take. How much university they complete. People they marry. Where they move to. Personal incomes. I do not want to sound like our sociology faculty are eagerly drooling over the new research possibilities that the pandemic has delivered to them, but dang, I have not seen that department so excited since... ever... now that I consider it.

[Caracal]

Both our full time academic advisors and our social sciences faculty have been observing alarming behaviors already with the high school 2020 cohort. Low self-confidence, low interest in attending university, low overall motivation, actualized helplessness, etc...

Seems like pathologizing totally normal responses. My "overall motivation" is pretty low right now too.

[downer]

I thought that sociology departments were all about promoting acceptance of difference, and explaining everything in social rather than individual terms.

It's the psychology department that does the pathologizing.

[spork]

June 17 statement from the president of MIT about the fall semester:

https://president.mit.edu/speeches-writing/initial-decisions-about-fall.

I find the key statement to be "Everything that can be taught effectively online will be taught online."

[Caracal]

I thought that sociology departments were all about promoting acceptance of difference, and explaining everything in social rather than individual terms.

It's the psychology department that does the pathologizing.

Maybe they're branching out. If you just graduated from high school right now, why would you be feeling motivated? Maybe your plan was to work a summer job, make a little money, hang out with friends, before going to college in the fall. Now, you don't know if you will be going to college in the fall, maybe you'll just be living at home trying to take classes online. If you decided not to go to school this year, or weren't planning to go to school in the first place, you probably have no idea what you'll be doing. If you are working, you're having to do so under deeply abnormal conditions. So what exactly is there to feel really motivated about? And your ability to control or do anything about most of this stuff is deeply limited.

It just seems so bizarre to be looking at some survey responses where people express completely normal reactions to the situation they find themselves in and assume that rather than expressing their current reality, they are expressing their future trauma and dysfunction.

[apl68]

I thought that sociology departments were all about promoting acceptance of difference, and explaining everything in social rather than individual terms.

It's the psychology department that does the pathologizing.

Maybe they're branching out. If you just graduated from high school right now, why would you be feeling motivated? Maybe your plan was to work a summer job, make a little money, hang out with friends, before going to college in the fall. Now, you don't know if you will be going to college in the fall, maybe you'll just be living at home trying to take classes online. If you decided not to go to school this year, or weren't planning to go to school in the first place, you probably have no idea what you'll be doing. If you are working, you're having to do so under deeply abnormal conditions. So what exactly is there to feel really motivated about? And your ability to control or do anything about most of this stuff is deeply limited.

It just seems so bizarre to be looking at some survey responses where people express completely normal reactions to the situation they find themselves in and assume that rather than expressing their current reality, they are expressing their future trauma and dysfunction.

I get what you're saying about not wanting to write off this unfortunate cohort of youth prematurely as in some sense a lost cause, or pathologize their understandable unhappiness into an assumption that they're all fragile and bound for trouble.  There's good reason for wanting to avoid that.  There's reason to suspect, for example, that pushing everybody who experiences any sort of traumatic event straight into therapy on the assumption that they'll suffer past-traumatic stress issues risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Still...study of past age cohorts who've suffered heavy blows at this stage of life does suggest that they often suffer lasting damage.  We don't need to assume that the young people caught up in the current crisis aren't going to be able to show any resilience...but man, that resilience is certainly going to be put to the test.  You can't help but worry about these youths.

[mamselle]

Horatio Alger, anyone?

   <<runs away quickly...>>

M.

[Caracal]

Still...study of past age cohorts who've suffered heavy blows at this stage of life does suggest that they often suffer lasting damage.  We don't need to assume that the young people caught up in the current crisis aren't going to be able to show any resilience...but man, that resilience is certainly going to be put to the test.  You can't help but worry about these youths.

I'd be curious to see examples. In lots of ways I think it has been easy for lots of people in the US post Cold War to imagine that large scale events are going to have minimal effects on their own lives. But, really, that hasn't been the norm most of the time for most people in the world. (and hasn't been the norm for lots of people in the US, it is worth adding.) So, when I see dire predictions about what this is going to do to 18 year olds who had their lives disrupted, I wonder if we are seeing things too much through this prism where bad things happening in the world that effect your life is seen as some sort of abnormal development, rather than the norm.

[Hibush]

we are seeing things too much through this prism where bad things happening in the world that effect your life is seen as some sort of abnormal development, rather than the norm.

OK, downer, top that cheerful sentiment.

[spork]

[. . . ]

Both our full time academic advisors and our social sciences faculty have been observing alarming behaviors already with the high school 2020 cohort. Low self-confidence, low interest in attending university, low overall motivation, actualized helplessness, etc.

[. . . ]

Are you in the USA? I am, and I've been noticing among college students increased learned helplessness, anxiety, narcissism, fear of failure, lack of coping skills, whatever people want to call it, for years. I'm not wholly familiar with the psychological research on the topic, but I've read studies that indicate my experience is not unusual. I don't think this year will be anything more than a short-term perturbation in the long-term trend. 

I also don't think senior year of high school is any more influential on a person's life than other childhood events/environments.

[marshwiggle]

we are seeing things too much through this prism where bad things happening in the world that effect your life is seen as some sort of abnormal development, rather than the norm.

OK, downer, top that cheerful sentiment.

Actually it is pretty positive. Our society is obsessed with "trauma" caused by all kiinds of trivial things, many of which boil down to "someone said something that made me feel uncomfortable". People who have literally been in war zones, who struggle with debillitating illness, and so on, deserve some slack from the people around them, but by considering every negative thing that happens in life to be some sort of crushing weight infantilizes people and discourages them from developing resilience. (Resilience, I might add, that many of those people who have experienced real trauma exhibit in spades.)

[Puget]

One of the frustrating things about being in psychology is the number of people in completely unrelated fields who somehow think they are experts on psychology and talk with great authority and zero evidence about things we actually have lots of research on (not targeting anyone in particular here, this is a general trend).

The latest fad is "trauma informed pedagogy", which an English instructor tried to lecture a bunch of psychologists about in our hybrid teaching institute the other day (which went over about how you would expect it to.  (a) No one can really say what that is supposed to mean, other than we are supposed to understand our students' trauma, and (b) "trauma" doesn't mean what they think it means. People have been describing students (and sometimes faculty) as "traumatized" by the pandemic and last semester. A few of them are (e.g., a close family member died, they themselves were life threateningly ill), but most of them were/are just stressed. Let me unpack that second part a bit:

There is a distinction between traumatic and stressful events. The DSM-5 defines trauma as exposure to actual or threatened death, series injury or sexual violence, through actual experiencing, witnessing, learning that the traumatic event happened to a close family member or friend, or repeated and extreme exposure to details of traumatic events (e.g., first responders, NOT exposure through media). There are plenty of problems with the DSM, but this  accurately captures the consensus definition in the literature.  An event can be very stressful (e.g., losing a needed job, failing out of college) and still not be a trauma.  The key difference is threat to life or bodily integrity.

Have some college students experienced trauma? Yes, certainly! We have students who are survivors of sexual assaults, violence, life threatening accidents, etc. We have students who are veterans and refugees who have experienced severe traumas. As I noted above, a few students may have experienced actual COVID-related traumas. Many of them may need support in college, depending on when the trauma happened and their response to it. However, only a minority of people who experience a trauma develop PTSD-- rates depend on the nature of the trauma (higher for interpersonal traumas, and there is cumulative risk from multiple traumas), but even with very severe trauma, research generally shows only at most about a third of people have PTSD that lasts more than a few months after the trauma. That is still a lot of people with a very serious illness, but it also shows that the majority of people are resilient. It doesn't mean that people don't need and benefit from competent therapy after trauma, but they shouldn't be treated as if they are permanently damaged-- that is very, very harmful in their recovery.

OK, let's bring it back to students who do not meet the above definition of experiencing a trauma. Certainly, many of them have experienced a lot of stress, and stress is a major risk factor for depression and anxiety. Traditional age students are already in a high risk period for depression and anxiety, and demand on college counseling centers has been increasing dramatically already (there are multiple reasons for this, only some of which have to do with actual changes in population-level risk). So are our students going to need some extra support and services around mental health? Yes, almost certainly. Does that mean they are traumatized and permanently damaged? No, it most definitely does not.

tl/dr version: Most students are stressed, not traumatized. They do need mental health support. They are not permanently damaged and most will be resilient.

[spork]

[. . . ]

The latest fad is "trauma informed pedagogy", which an English instructor tried to lecture a bunch of psychologists about in our hybrid teaching institute the other day (which went over about how you would expect it to. 

[. . . ]

Ah yes, the early 21st century equivalent of "learning styles." 

[marshwiggle]

There is a distinction between traumatic and stressful events. The DSM-5 defines trauma as exposure to actual or threatened death, series injury or sexual violence, through actual experiencing, witnessing, learning that the traumatic event happened to a close family member or friend, or repeated and extreme exposure to details of traumatic events (e.g., first responders, NOT exposure through media). There are plenty of problems with the DSM, but this  accurately captures the consensus definition in the literature.  An event can be very stressful (e.g., losing a needed job, failing out of college) and still not be a trauma.  The key difference is threat to life or bodily integrity.

How does the DSM define "phobia"?