Hello Eepanty, Many thanks for the feedback and I totally agree with you that these processes are influenced by a range of factors.

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Thanks for sharing your comment. I do not have a specific idea about how to improve my teaching delivery. But, my philosophy or teaching concept is a student-centric approach to education, acting as a facilitator to help students to help students form opinions and deliberate ideas, and for students to be able to challenge conventional assumptions and positions.

I also was really impacted from reading “organized thoughtlessness”…

The most in-human I’ve ever felt was when I was 17 and standing in my beloved childhood Virginia Tech sweatshirt behind barbed wire at Majdanek Concentration Camp in Poland. I didn’t feel like I had the ability to think anymore, to process what had happened there, and the evidence I was still looking at 70 years later. I felt an overwhelming need for survival- that I could do anything and think nothing- that to live in this place required not thinking, just doing. My humanity had been taking from me.

I suddenly understood how people could watch others sent to their deaths and do nothing- not out of fear, but from the fact that they saw, but did not see. They heard, but did not listen. And they felt their surroundings physically, but did not feel them in their hearts or brains. Total dissociation from their actions and bodies occurred. They were beings but no longer conscious in the way that people are; they were closer to automatons or animals- focused on the one goal of survival, but so focused on survival unable to process anything else besides immediate psychical needs. I was no longer Lizzy anymore- whoever that was or had been. That person was lost forever in the pile of ashes that still smelled faintly of the people who used to be… In Descartes logic my thoughts had been killed, therefore my mind and my life had been taken.

I hadn’t thought about that day in Poland very much in years, probably for the very reason I’m writing about, until reading “organized thoughtlessness”. The momentary utter and complete dissociation I experienced from my body was terrifying and buried, but I remembered it as I read about systematically dissociating your actions from your thoughts, the Orwellian squashing of all thoughts and questions, and purposefully pursuing thoughtlessness.

I’ve certainly exercised forms of thoughtlessness in my life since my trip to Poland. Not only did I put away my memory of standing behind the barbed wire, but just a few months after my return from Poland I cheated on a test and used the thoughtless excuse of “the entire class is doing it so my action to cheat or not cheat will be meaningless either way”. I’ve also used emptying my mind of thoughts as a meditation technique. But these are not the same as total thoughtlessness. Alford described the use of thoughtlessness in organizations, with a focus on the level of thoughtlessness used when one cheats on a test or runs a red light, but the highest level of thoughtlessness is complete dissociation of ones actions, words and thoughts. I think thoughtlessness starts consciously with a choice, but can escalate to a non-conscious condition when one is in a stressful situation. I certainly experienced it, and as Alford writes many people in the work force consciously or not engage in thoughtlessness, the problem is once you are thoughtless I am not sure you can return.

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Hey Milad, I think that is a great exercise! It reminds me of the Civil Engineering senior design project at WVU where students are asked to submit a design for a proposed project on the WVU campus. The designs are weighed against other contractor proposals and the best design is selected for implementation. Thanks for your feedback!

I like your post. I like the word gratification, especially when it comes to gaming. In fact, gaming offers great potential and opportunities for learning in various settings. I think it is something that students of all ages can easily identify with as well.

Amos – you make an excellent argument. Also, I feel like both conscious and subconscious learning experiences happen in a continuum and are both influenced by social attitudes, culture, and environment settings.

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Hi Savannah, such a nice post! I could relate to your experiences of feeling constrained in incorporating innovative and more mindful learning practices as a TA in my first two years of graduate school. However, I have also made a commitment to myself on how I am going to work on changing the learning environment in my class as well as listening to the insights of others. Thanks for your post.

Hey Patrick, Thanks for your feedback. I agree that people’s competitiveness can swing to both extremes and that it’s difficult to find a good middle ground. Actually in my responses to other comments I tried to point out that competition may not be the best approach to student activities and that rewarding curiosity and creative thinking may have the same or better affect. What do you think?

Patrick, I think you offer a good perspective on anti-teaching with a well-argued rationale for a standardized testing in our education system. I also agree that testing, when well tailored and conducted, may be relevant and useful as a diagnostic tool for students. This is especially true for high school and undergraduate education. For grad school, standardized testing may not be that important, depending on the subject area.

Thanks for your post, Ziyad! I also support the statement “It’s in the doing that the idea comes”. Without putting ourselves into the process of making trial and errors, it would be difficult to get a sound understanding of the challenges and the problems that need to be solved. I had the same experience of working with some energy data collected from building to make them more sustainable in my research. At the first sight, I was clueless on what the challenges and opportunities are, but getting hands-on experience helped me to look at the problems and trying to develop solutions around it.

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