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People keep going on and on about feelings, being nice, etc. And it has nothing to do with that. As some have mentioned, it has everything to do with persuasion.
There is nothing more sophomoric than intellectual chest thumping, especially at the undergraduate level.
I've taught a few times. And I say this not to claim I am a great teacher, but to say that I've heard and read some pretty stupid things being said out loud by supposedly smart kids. Teach anything for some period of time and you will be constantly amazed at how stupid some can be. However, I would never say that whatever they said was stupid, for a couple of reasons:
- They'd kill me in class evaluations, and nowadays you can't have a career teaching without stellar evaluations.
- The kid would tune me out and/or shy away from discussions, etc. therefore being obviously less susceptible to trying to understand what I have to say.
Now, you may ask "and what does that have to do with me and my opinions? I don't care about the kid."
Well, it's simple: any employment in the sciences, especially social sciences, is about persuading someone else. This class was in political science. Political scientists in all likelihood will end up working as either academics themselves, or in political campaigns, or in governments analyzing policy, or in think tanks. All of them require the ability to engage others (often of differing opinions) and be persuasive.
So while being correct is important, learning how to discuss and present arguments is also at least as important. Heck, in graduate school most of what you are learning is how to persuade your peers that your work is correct. Being right is of no use if you can't convince anyone of it, so like it or not form is as important as content.
Think of it as signal-to-noise ratio. Keeping the "noise" down is as important as having a good signal.
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