Getting an Education

When Kyle Gillette, now a theater professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, was 18, he followed his dream of exploring the world of art and ideas and attended a liberal arts college. His father and stepfather thought he was making a mistake, one that would risk poverty and unpredictability.  

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Transcript

Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments, how we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Sometimes we throw words like reasonable and emotional around pretty loosely, and their meaning can seem rather vague. Sometimes we use words like reasonable and emotional to celebrate arguments we like and denigrate arguments we don't.

Michael Lee: Of course this group of people likes Candidate X. They just aren't seeing the person or the world rationally. They are just thinking emotionally and having strong feelings about Candidate X. These words may be employed carelessly, and they may be used as dismissive insults, but that doesn't mean that reason or rationality have no meaning.

Michael Lee: So how do we know if we're being reasonable? Well, there are a few hallmarks of reasonable thinking. None of them is foolproof, because reason is just an imperfect way to minimize bias. But one of these hallmarks is taking steps to [00:01:00] ensure some measure of objectivity or neutrality in a decision making process.

Michael Lee: Why don't we let NBA players call their own fouls, for instance? Well, the answer seems pretty obvious, even if they aren't being consciously biased to help their own team win by calling fouls against the other team in the heat of the moment, it could also just be really hard for competitors to see with any certainty and agree on the same reality of this or that foul.

Michael Lee: They would have a built in competitive and emotional bias. What about members of Congress and laws against insider trading? Currently, members of Congress have advanced access to information about markets. Sometimes even privileged or classified information that none of the rest of us can get. But there aren't comprehensive rules in place to prevent insider trading.

Michael Lee: Whether they engage in the practice or not, there's a financial bias baked into the system. To take a third example, if I'm accused of a crime, should one of my family [00:02:00] members be a member of the jury that hears my case? Most people, I suspect, would say no, simply because of the high risk of a relational bias.

Michael Lee: It's not a certain risk. Some members of my family might love to send me up the river, but there's a very high risk of a relational bias. Biases come in all shapes and sizes. They can be circumstantial, psychological, relational, systemic, and more mindfulness about the pursuit of neutrality and objectivity in decision making could help increase our knowledge of potential biases and increase the explicit ways in which we guard against the influence of bias.

Michael Lee: I'm Michael Lee, professor of communication and director of the civility initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest today on When We Disagree is Kyle Gillette. He has a PhD in drama from Stanford and he leads the conversation at Trinity University. The conversation at Trinity promotes constructive dialogue.

Michael Lee: Spaces to encounter diverse perspectives and programs to build laboratories [00:03:00] for democracy. Kyle, tell us an argument story. 

Kyle Gillette: Well, the argument story I have is about coming to Trinity. I was an undergraduate here and my stepdad, Brian, he did not want me to come to Trinity when I was, uh, you know, a high school senior.

Kyle Gillette: Actually, my father also agreed. It was one of the few things my father and stepfather agreed on, that this is not realistic, not practical and, you know, way too expensive. But I was set on it. Um, the girl I was dating at the time, she was interested in Trinity. I started looking into it. I was so excited about the, the thing, the things you could study, the way that you could explore a lot of different disciplines.

Kyle Gillette: But, but for him, that, that's not what. The whole point of going to college would be, you know, it's about training for a job. 

Michael Lee: For our listeners, set up a little bit about Trinity and why you were so interested in [00:04:00] Trinity. Why they weren't where it is, what it specializes in. Let's give us a little background.

Kyle Gillette: Trinity university is mostly undergraduate liberal arts, uh, university here in San Antonio, where I now teach and I'm an administrator. And, um, it, it's a place where students are encouraged to take lots of different disciplines to explore for a long time before they settle on a major. And a lot of those disciplines are rooted in liberal arts.

Kyle Gillette: Questions like humanistic and social science. I was particularly interested in, in literature and philosophy and religious studies and theater. 

Michael Lee: And they were promoting, I mean, liberal arts schools can be expensive and Trinity is certainly no exception to that. And then, so your dad and stepdad across their many differences come together on a kind of, well, what are you going to do with that agenda?

Kyle Gillette: Yeah, totally. So my, my stepdad, he, he worked his whole life with his hands. He was a [00:05:00] carpenter, he, you know, worked on roofs, he did all kinds of odd jobs, and he put himself through nursing school and an associate degree and he's an RN now to this day. And so for him, uh, it would make a lot of sense to stay home, go to North Harris County Community College there north of Houston.

Kyle Gillette: Yeah. And where I grew up and, and to become a physician's assistant, he saw that as a really worthwhile thing to pursue my dad too. He, he thought, well, you could go to Texas, a and M get a full ride. Um, why would you go to this place? That is really expensive. I mean, I, I knew already something they didn't.

Kyle Gillette: Quite, which is that there's a whole lot of financial aid and scholarship money, but still, there would be a lot of loans that I, that weren't covered there. So why not just get something where you can get in, get out, focus on the job training. And I wasn't interested in what's the meaning of life. I was interested in [00:06:00] exploring, um, where did we come from and what are the larger questions and conversations that, that give a meaning to civilization.

Michael Lee: Just to sort of tease this out, taking your dad and steppads point of view, but combining it with your own, why not debating against your 18 year old self here? Why not pursue meaning of life questions as a hobby and then go to Harris County Community College or A& M and do a little bit more practical job training at the same time?

Kyle Gillette: Yeah, actually, that was pretty, pretty similar to the kind of questions they asked at the time. Right? So why not? Indeed, I think there was a level of, and I, you know, I had friends who are autodidacts. One of my very closest friends dropped out of high school and, uh, just read, uh, and he read, like, then he went on, got a PhD in history.

Kyle Gillette: You know, he, he, he really did, um, [00:07:00] focus on, Those kinds of questions apart from any kind of formal education 

Michael Lee: for 

Kyle Gillette: me, I wanted to learn from people who had gone quite far in those different disciplines and directions, people who had written books, people who were used to introducing students to what those conversations were at a high level.

Michael Lee: This is not a hobby for you, this is definitive of your life course and going to Trinity and really immersing yourselves in these kinds of big, who are we, who am I, what are we all doing here kinds of questions is not something that you can just read a couple of books on the side or on the weekend while you study to be a PA.

Kyle Gillette: Yeah, exactly. Right. Because I, I didn't, I thought that whatever I ultimately did wouldn't just be about learning how to do things. It would be learning to, to ask what's worth doing. And, and I, I wanted that conversation to [00:08:00] guide my choices. 

Michael Lee: Yeah. 

Kyle Gillette: I mean, I have to admit a lot of it was too, like the woman I was seeing at the time, she was interested in Trinity and we had conversations together, you know, about that.

Kyle Gillette: And so, you know, a big part of it was I wanted, I, I was on her side. 

Michael Lee: There's a relational context here. 

Kyle Gillette: Yeah. 

Michael Lee: Uh, what you, you, you asked, you said something very poignant and I want to come back to it because it's, it's so powerful. You were interested not in what we're doing, but what's worth doing. Have you figured out the answer to that?

Kyle Gillette: Oh man. No, I, I've, I've figured out there's a lot more, uh, possibilities though, you know, that there are a lot more different kinds of options. And so a lot. Okay. A lot more ways to construct meaning, both individually and in communities. 

Michael Lee: One of the things I'm really struck by, and this may be [00:09:00] elaborating a case that was not very elaborated in the time that your dad and stepdad presented it.

Michael Lee: But as I'm, as I'm feeling the case they were making for a more narrow pursuit of practical knowledge, or seemingly practical knowledge. In a cheaper environment, right? To save money. It seems like so much of that is about what's worth doing is what is safe in the moment because it's predictable and safe in the future because it doesn't incur a lot of debt safe in the future because you have a sense of like, okay, well, I'm going to be a PA or a carpenter or whatever that is.

Michael Lee: So it's this exact job track is kind of laid out. And so I think it comes from a point of view where the world. Is unpredictable and terrifying and potentially cruel place. And so, and having a skill in that world. Can be really useful for reasons that you may not even understand right now. We have a different, and I presume you do [00:10:00] very much so, and I certainly do as well, but what sort of value do you see in that method of meaning construction?

Michael Lee: That interpretation of danger in the world? 

Kyle Gillette: They both knew a lot of poverty growing up, you know, a lot of siblings, not a lot of money. Um, and just, just being able to survive was the most meaningful thing you could do, you know, protect your family from homelessness. Um, I lived in trailers and cheap apartments a lot of the time and, and then after my stepdad.

Kyle Gillette: Began work as an RN, um, and, uh, and did it for a while, then we got a nicer house and we had cars that that were new. And he, so there was this upward mobility that was really rewarding. That was meaningful. Um, and so I, I really have come to appreciate it. Back, back then there was a, of, it was clear that, uh, to me that they were [00:11:00] against creativity and exploration and, uh, and I was for it.

Kyle Gillette: Um, I've come to appreciate their perspective as one that was deeply protective, that, uh, had a lot of care in it. And look at what my, my stepdad, he's not a stockbroker. I mean, he's not. Somebody who is just living off of financial derivatives, he's, he's taking care of people. And he's saw that as a noble thing to do.

Kyle Gillette: And I couldn't agree more. 

Michael Lee: Is there also in their argument, there certainly is culturally and broadly, but at least in the way that they presented the case and the way that you had to defend it throughout college and presumably at Stanford and then as a professor as well, which is that what they're interested in.

Michael Lee: Telling you to do, which is go get a kind of narrow, practical job related skill is useful and the kinds of questions you are interested in [00:12:00] answering. are interesting, but useless. 

Kyle Gillette: Yeah, it's, yeah, that's a really good point. Because sometimes I'll come up against, um, a need to justify my existence professionally or, or justify the whole project of a liberal arts education.

Kyle Gillette: And, Sometimes what I'm pointing to are, well, actually, this will help you a lot, get a job, or this is, uh, learning how to communicate thoughtfully and well is instrumental as well as being interesting, um, and, and to agree with it. degree. That's really true. So my very first class I ever took at on on campus, uh, was Moya Ball's, uh, classical rhetorical theory class.

Kyle Gillette: And, uh, Princess Diana had recently died. And we were talking about how Theories of rhetoric by Aristotle and Plato were [00:13:00] relevant, um, not only to, um, how do you speak well or how do you communicate persuasively, but also for criticizing the kinds of communication that were swirling around major events and trying to see through them to understand the world more deeply.

Kyle Gillette: So I guess I know in a way, while. I appreciate that you want to be able to do something useful. What is understood as useful transforms. And so I think of what college does well, what a liberal arts education does well, is less Like a factory, which produces objects or tools that, you know, you're going to need and more like a garden, a kind of ecosystem where different sorts of creatures are evolving and you want to nurture that co evolution, but in a [00:14:00] way, you can't predict yet what it's going to become and it will have to adapt to different circumstances and be open to different ways of living.

Michael Lee: That argument about prediction is so interesting to me because if we go back to your, the first example of your dad and stepdad's case, it seems to be that their case is built on the idea that the world is deeply dangerous, unpredictable and cruel and a narrow or safer, more job focused. Educational training can make the unpredictable predictable.

Michael Lee: It can narrow the flat surfaces and it can diminish the amount of uncertainty in your life much for the better. But like so many of the things we do in our lives, the fictions we hold on to that make our world seem more pleasing can actually harm us in the long run by creating a set of scenarios that will not come true no matter how long and how hard we hope.

Michael Lee: And one of those scenarios is. How unpredictable life really is. So you go get an [00:15:00] accounting degree and something bad happens in your world and you can't be an accountant. Or you just hate accounting and now you're stuck with this accounting degree or you just you get hurt on the job site and you can't be a carpenter anymore or whatever it is just because you go do the thing just doesn't mean you're going to go do the thing and so there's a kind of like unpredictability to the knowledge gathering process and the best example I've ever heard of this.

Michael Lee: Just to talk about predictability is from Steve jobs. Of all people, Steve jobs, his famous commencement speech at Stanford was all about how calligraphy was the most useful thing he did when he dropped out of college. And we can think of it, make a top 10 list of things that seem like the most useless quote unquote pursuits of study, calligraphy has got to make that list, at least the short list or the second tier list.

Michael Lee: And so, but here, you know, his calligraphy studies were massive in the design of, of Apple's interfaces. And so predictability is a shell game. You know, what matters is what makes you happy. What matters is, [00:16:00] um, finding questions that you'd like answers to in an environment that you feel supported in. 

Kyle Gillette: Well, absolutely.

Kyle Gillette: And here I am now talking to you on one Mac device who just bought this other one. These Apple devices are incredibly useful. That's right. But we didn't have those specific use cases when, uh, they were invented. There was a sense that Steve Jobs education at Reed, even after he dropped out, and calligraphy and things like this were, were about imagining the possible.

Kyle Gillette: And, um, pushing, uh, us beyond what we already know how to do. And so you, things become useful that, that you could never have imagined having a use for before. 

Michael Lee: That's right. His daughter is a great example of that too, because she's such a brilliant writer. And she's so, Lisa Brennan Jobs is just such a gorgeous writer.

Michael Lee: And the way she uses [00:17:00] adjectives powerfully to evoke a vivid sense of a scene of what it's like to live in her dad's house as, as he's dying. And as she has such an ambivalent relationship with him, the words, the sentence constructions, the grammar, the diction, all of it as a pursuit can seem kind of useless.

Michael Lee: And then here is this, this beautiful and powerful and poignant and terrifying book about her dad. And so both of them are weird case studies in the case of how the idea that knowledge can be useful or useless. This is a BS distinction. 

Kyle Gillette: Absolutely, because ultimately you're, you're asking the question that people learn in first year composition classes, which is so what, even if you're able to articulate something efficiently, what, what's at stake?

Kyle Gillette: Why does it matter? And this is a question that I think writers and artists ask about. Um, about life. And so ultimately I could see somebody, um, [00:18:00] functioning well in the world by, by doing useful skills, but not having the, the, that part of their, uh, education that asks, wait, but what is this all for? And, um, what are, what are the different forces at play here?

Kyle Gillette: Things that make it ultimately worth living. 

Michael Lee: So, as we close, I'm curious for you to get in the time travel machine briefly and break the space time continuum by going to talk to your 18 year old self. You've got 18 year old Kyle outside of Houston trying to figure out whether to follow stepdad and dad's advice or follow his heart and his girlfriend to Trinity University in San Antonio.

Michael Lee: You have later made a career out of the pursuit of the liberal arts as a teacher, as a writer, As an administrator, as a program director in the conversation, and you've also gained a sense of respect for your dad and your stepdad's case. [00:19:00] Yeah. You go back and you tell Kyle something. What do you say? You got it all right?

Michael Lee: You're going to make the right decision here? Or would you tell him that he should do anything differently as it relates to this decision? 

Kyle Gillette: That's a great question. I think I would want to tell Kyle to, um, to think about where they're coming from. My mom at the time, she didn't understand why this was valuable any more than they did, but she supported it.

Kyle Gillette: She was like, all right, doesn't, I don't know why, but I know this matters to you, so you should do it. And I think that they wanted some reassurance. that I could have given them at that time. I could have said, uh, yes, I see what you're talking about. Um, and if I knew what I know now, which is that, you know, regardless of their major, Trinity graduates are incredibly well placed, you know, within six months after graduation.

Kyle Gillette: And by the way, the person who runs our career center, she majored in [00:20:00] art. Uh, as an undergraduate and sees that is hugely important for how she thinks strategically. So I would like to be able to share some of that with my stepdad and my dad and say, well, this is, this is one way of, of doing that. And if, if you're thinking about my stepdad's focus on medical care, um, I wouldn't have known this at the time, but I could, could now say Anthony Fauci, uh, you know, majored in classics and he credits that as being instrumental for how he was able to think about global pandemics.

Kyle Gillette: Right. Um, so I, I think I would want to take seriously what, where they were coming from and to speak to them on those terms. Yeah. Um, I would also like to share with them that, uh, you know, my, my stepdad called me about a year after I got the job at Trinity. So this is maybe 15 years ago, uh, to tell me he was wrong that he, [00:21:00] he couldn't see.

Kyle Gillette: Uh, what all the different ways a person might live or careers people might do. He couldn't see that from where he was coming from, where the options were really limited. Um, and, and now he does, like, he certainly couldn't see why majoring in English in theater, uh, would be very helpful either. Um, but now he sees that the world as, as richer.

Kyle Gillette: He's, he was very young when I was. When I was looking at college, he's, he's lived a lot now. He's seen, wow, you have to think about mortality, not just avoid it. Um, you, you, your communities are evolving and changing and, and, and there's plenty we still disagree about, politics, um, a lot of other things. But I think we have come around to appreciate each other as, um, as people who care about doing good in the world and who, [00:22:00] how we can learn a lot from 

Michael Lee: it's a beautiful summation and you go back and tell Kyle essentially to follow his dreams, but also not deny the perspectives of those who aren't super thrilled about that dream with the hope that that relationship is.

Michael Lee: Resilient and evolving, which it, it sounds like it is, and maybe also suggest that he should invest a little bit of money in Apple stock too. 

Kyle Gillette: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If I'd spent all of the money I've spent on laptops and iPads and just in stock. Wow. 

Michael Lee: Kyle Gillette, thank you so much for being on. When we disagree, when we disagree is recorded at the college of Charleston with creator and host, Michael Lee.

Michael Lee: Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at whenwedisagreeatgmail. com