A propos of nothing
Although I know I need to completely focus on my college work, the pressures of being a mum have taken over for the last couple of days and I've been helping my daughter revise for her Psychology AS level exam, which is today.
Well - what an eye-opener! Man's inhumanity to man in the name of science and progress!
Apparently there was a study by someone called Rayner in the 1920s when a little boy was placed in a room with white rats and every time he stroked one of them the doctors crashed some cymbals against his head (or something equally horrid) and after a few hours of that he was a gibbering idiot with a phobia about anything white. Those bags of cotton wool balls would send him shrieking from the room - and the phobia lasted his entire life.
And in 1960 some guy called Milgram did a study where volunteers were asked to ask questions of a person hidden in a next door room, and if the answer was incorrect they had to press a button which apparently sent an electric shock to the other person. The other person was an actor and just had to scream as if they were in pain. The volunteers just kept on pressing the button until no more screams could be heard and the other person was apparently dead, but they couldn't stop pressing the button because they'd been told they had to. Weird eh?
Well it all put me in mind of the psychological torture that is the final year. I think there should be a study to see how students react to being systematically ignored, shouted at, ridiculed, pressured, kept in the dark, very occasionally praised, given tasks first and information second and generally made to feel stupid. Oh hang on.....I think I can answer that, no need for the study.
Well - what an eye-opener! Man's inhumanity to man in the name of science and progress!
Apparently there was a study by someone called Rayner in the 1920s when a little boy was placed in a room with white rats and every time he stroked one of them the doctors crashed some cymbals against his head (or something equally horrid) and after a few hours of that he was a gibbering idiot with a phobia about anything white. Those bags of cotton wool balls would send him shrieking from the room - and the phobia lasted his entire life.
And in 1960 some guy called Milgram did a study where volunteers were asked to ask questions of a person hidden in a next door room, and if the answer was incorrect they had to press a button which apparently sent an electric shock to the other person. The other person was an actor and just had to scream as if they were in pain. The volunteers just kept on pressing the button until no more screams could be heard and the other person was apparently dead, but they couldn't stop pressing the button because they'd been told they had to. Weird eh?
Well it all put me in mind of the psychological torture that is the final year. I think there should be a study to see how students react to being systematically ignored, shouted at, ridiculed, pressured, kept in the dark, very occasionally praised, given tasks first and information second and generally made to feel stupid. Oh hang on.....I think I can answer that, no need for the study.
posted by Jackie Edwards at 10:49 am
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