Politicians, students, and bullshit

In his now famous article "On Bullshit", Harry Frankfurt observes that "one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit." That was in 1986. Things have not improved. For the first time, I included this essay on my syllabus for an introductory philosophy course. It was one of the first articles we read, and it generated a pretty interesting discussion. During that discussion and in subsequent essays, many students most easily connected Frankfurt's analysis of 'bullshit' to the bullshit they produce in the courses they take. This wasn't necessarily surprising, but it did cause me to think about the extent to which we encourage (or require) the production of bullshit.

I suspect the answer to this is "a lot." When I taught in a writing program, I was more or less told that our goal was to teach students how to bullshit. The techniques we taught would virtually guarantee that students could earn a "bullshitter's 'B'" on an essay. This was not presented as a negative thing. The assumption was that we all understand that a lot of student writing is bullshit, and writing courses are designed to make that bullshit well-crafted. It's easy to see why people might get the sense that it's bullshit all the way down. We prepare students to write the kind of bullshit we are later going to require them to produce to pass our courses.  

Bullshit, according to Frankfurt, primarily involves a lack of interest in the truth. This distinguishes the bullshitter from the liar, who at least cares enough to try to deceive you about what is true. Politicians are generally pretty good bullshitters. They have to be. While many of them may care about the truth, they also care about getting votes. That means they care about making us believe certain things about themselves, and not just certain things about the world. One way to do that is to bullshit. Debates about "building a wall" are largely bullshit. The goal of the debate is not to engage in a sober inquiry about the merits of such a proposal. The goal is to get people to believe you are tough, or empathetic, or honest, or whatever. It's not about a wall. That's bullshit.

I worry that assessments too often encourage the same thing. Students may care about the content of the course, but they also care about their grade. That means they care not just (or maybe not at all) about pursuing an interest or a topic, but also about making those of us grading believe certain things about them. See how smart I am. See how clever. See how much work I put into this. If our assessments encourage that, they are encouraging bullshit in the Frankfurtian, technical sense. They are not about genuine engagement or inquiry. They are about giving a believable performance of a person who is engaged in genuine inquiry. Bullshit.

So how do we eliminate or minimize the amount of bullshit students produce? I don't know, though I have some ideas. I'll leave those for another time. The first step is recognizing it as a problem. When grades are determined by our assessment of required student performances--tests, essays, presentations, etc.--we are inviting students to say or do what they need to in order to get us to believe certain things about them. We're inviting them to be politicians. We're asking for bullshit. I'd like to think we can do better than that.