Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

Among all the possible realities, all the possible “truths,” a
commitment, a commitment to a forward movement, is, similarly,
“needed.” But I would again ask the question: what was the
cause of those “needs” – the “need” for relativism and the
inseparable “need” for commitment? What was the impetus? What
was, again, the “catalyst”? For Perry – again, circa the late-
1950s through the mid-1960s – it was the exposure to “diversity”
offered by the “liberal arts college,” of which he explains:
The shock [of pluralism of values and points of view]
may be intentional on the part of individual
professors, as it is most frequently, though not
always, in courses in General Education, or it may be
simply the by-product of the clash of different
professors, each one of whom is sure he teaches “the”
truth. (35)
But he claims that that “shock” must be a deliberate thing, at
least according to the statements of the students who had
experienced it.
[F]rom what our students have told us […] the
educational impact of diversity can be at its best
when it is deliberate. When a teacher asks his
students to read conflicting authorities and then
asks them to assess the nature and meaning of the
conflict, he is in a strong position to assist them
to go beyond simple diversity into the disciplines of
relativity of thought through which specific
instances of diversity can be productively exploited.
He can teach the relation, the relativism, of one
system of thought to another. In short, he can teach
disciplined independence of mind. (35, emphasis
mine)
And it is the responsibility of the teacher, those students’
instructor, to plan and then execute that “shock” which has the
potential to bring out that relative way of perceiving and
thinking – and writing.
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