Conviction or compliance?

I was a public school teacher in Madison, Wisconsin. Many (most?) of the students in my high school classes had political and social opinions that differed from mine. If I created the kind of classroom atmosphere described below, it was certainly not my intention, and it would have definitely contradicted my teaching philosophy. This article from The Hill discusses what many college students believe they need to do to succeed.

On today’s college campuses, students are not maturing — they’re managing. Beneath a facade of progressive slogans and institutional virtue-signaling lies a quiet psychological crisis, driven by the demands of ideological conformity.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes.

These students were not cynical, but adaptive. In a campus environment where grades, leadership, and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly learn to rehearse what is safe. ....

Late adolescence and early adulthood represent a narrow and non-replicable developmental window. It is during this stage that individuals begin the lifelong work of integrating personal experience with inherited values, forming the foundations of moral reasoning, internal coherence, and emotional resilience.

But when belief is prescriptive, and ideological divergence is treated as social risk, the integrative process stalls. Rather than forging a durable sense of self through trial, error, and reflection, students learn to compartmentalize. Publicly, they conform; privately, they question — often in isolation. This split between outer presentation and inner conviction not only fragments identity but arrests its development.

This dissonance shows up everywhere. Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors. For many, this has become second nature — an instinct for academic and professional self-preservation. .... (more)

Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman, "Performative virtue-signaling has become a threat to higher ed," The Hill, Aug. 13, 2025.

"The sage on the stage"

My teaching style was primarily the lecture. There was pressure, especially in the '70s, to avoid lectures in favor of students sitting in a circle and sharing what little they knew. However, it always seemed to me that, having formally studied a subject in college and graduate school, I was qualified to share it, translating it into understandable terms for my students. It was incumbent on me to make the lectures interesting and to respond to questions. But what was the point of requiring teachers to have advanced education if it wasn't intended to be used? Consequently, I liked "Don’t Yank the Sage From His Stage":

.... Relegating the teacher to a secondary (or even tertiary) supporting role as a “guide on the side” implicitly devalues what it is that sets him apart from his students: his education, knowledge, and professional experience. We reduce him to a mere repository of information. This may have initially been a bug in the system, but, in any case, it is now a feature. The transformation of the teacher’s role from “sage” to “guide” and the corollary “flip” of the classroom have been aided by obsessions with “power,” biases against “privilege,” and efforts to dismantle “systemic” and “institutional” structures of “oppression”—all of which are represented by the “sage on the stage.” ....

Contrary to widespread characterizations, the sage on the stage does far more than merely transmit information to a necessarily passive audience. The lecture, writes Amanda Fulford and Áine Mahon, “should … be seen as a special form of human encounter.” And it is a human encounter that allows for the kind of “guidance” that the flipped classroom may or may not actually provide in practice.

This is particularly true when the lecture is delivered live. Students not only are able to think critically about the material that is being presented, but they may also be able to ask questions about it and receive answers in real time. They may even be able to engage in dialogue with the lecturer. ....

A good lecture isn’t the regurgitation of information gleaned from sources that could be provided directly to students to be read on their own. It is the product of the kind of active learning that teachers seek to promote—a synthesis of information, critical analysis, and informed interpretation on a specific subject, carefully prepared within a particular context for a target audience for specific purposes. In this, it serves as a real-world example of “active learning.” In a piece titled “In Defense of Lecturing,” professor Mary Burgan notes that lecturers serve as “models of knowledgeable adults grappling with first principles in order to open their students’ understanding. […] The phenomenon of a grown-up person capable of talking enthusiastically and sequentially can show students how they themselves might someday be able to think things through.” Lectures thus provide students with the opportunity to see that “the passionate display of erudition [is] valuable in itself—regardless of the rewards of approval or popularity.” Those students “rarely … have the chance to observe intellectual mastery and excitement in their daily world. When they find it on a campus, it validates the life—the liveliness—of the mind.” ....

None of this means that direct instruction is always the best approach—that there is no room at all for facilitated “active learning” in an occasionally “flipped” classroom. In practice, almost every sage occasionally leaves the stage to guide from the side. As Peter Stanton argues, “the ideal teacher should be able to act as both a sage on the stage and a guide on the side, and they should carefully evaluate when it’s most valuable to use each approach.”

What I do mean, however, is that the guide on the side is no substitute for a sage on the stage. Students do, in fact, need a sage—for his education, knowledge, experience, and expertise. And if students are to receive the full benefit of these things, the sage needs his stage—even if he may occasionally leave it to guide from the side. (more)

David C. Phillips, "Don’t Yank the Sage From His Stage," Martin Center for Academic Renewal, August 8, 2025.