Yes, Feelings Can Be Fact-Checked

Some years ago I picked up Rick Perlstein’s well-known historical treatise, Nixonland, and found it so engrossing I could hardly put it down. So when I saw that Perlstein had written an article about Trump supporters for Mother Jones, I was intrigued. “I asked my student why he voted for Trump,” Perlstein wrote. “The answer was thoughtful, smart, and terrifying.” He called this student, whom he named Peter, “one of the brightest students in the class, and certainly the sweetest.”

As I read Perlstein’s essay, I became increasingly troubled. After outlining the many factually false claims and assertions made in an “extraordinary” and “eloquent” essay Peter wrote for class, Perlstein writes that:

It’s not fair to beat up on a sweet 21-year-old for getting facts wrong—especially if, as is likely, these were the only facts he was told. Indeed, teaching the class, I was amazed how even the most liberal students took for granted certain dubious narratives in which they (and much of the rest of the country) were marinated all year long, like the notion that Hillary Clinton was extravagantly corrupt.

Feelings can’t be fact-checked, and in the end, feelings were what Peter’s eloquent essay came down to­—what it feels like to belong, and what it feels like to be culturally dispossessed.

I’m flabbergasted. Look, I was Peter. I grew up in a conservative family in a homogenous evangelical community and was quite adept at making all this known while attending a state university a decade ago. I never had a professor treat me unfairly when my conservative views came up in class or in a paper. I was generally one of the brightest students in any class I was in, and I could tell that my professors liked me, even if they were sometimes puzzled or taken aback by me.

But I also never had a professor shrug when I made statements that were false.

Feelings 100% absolutely can be fact-checked. I went through that process. I once believed that white people were the most discriminated against demographic in the United States. And I didn’t just believe it—I felt it too! But you know what? When contrary evidence was presented to me, I fact-checked my feelings, and I concluded that they were wrong. And I changed them. Feelings can, in fact, be fact-checked.

Perlstein says it wouldn’t be fair to “beat up on” Peter for getting the facts wrong when “these were likely the only facts he was told.” You know what wouldn’t be fair? Letting a student go though class believing things that are factually false without correcting them, especially when that student has (as Perlstein notes) never had access to factually correct information before. When I was Peter I didn’t need my head patted, I needed access to accurate information.

Look, in addition to being Peter, I’ve also been in Perlstein’s position—I’ve taught college-level classes and I’ve met Peters. It’s a weird feeling, meeting Peters after having been a Peter. In any event, it’s true that you have to be careful in how you correct students when they have something factually incorrect—publicly embarrassing a student isn’t going to help them listen—but there are ways to correct a student’s factual inaccuracies without shaming them. I know this because I’ve been on the receiving end of this, having factually false statements corrected, and because I’ve been on the giving end, correcting students’  factually false statements.

Perlstein constantly emphasizes how sweet Peter was. He sweetly said backwards and factually incorrect things about race. He sweetly bungled the economic reality of his state and local community. Well you know what? I was sweet too, when I was Peter, even as I hobbled together factually incorrect information to make a case for ending social security. I sweetly argued that women would be better off if we banned abortion, because pregnancy was natural and not dangerous, like abortion.

I’m not suggesting that it’s a professor’s job to make their students share their political beliefs and their views on every subject. It absolutely is not. I’m not talking about political positions; I’m talking about factual information.

I well remember a professor who told us on the first day of class that he was going to intentionally expose us to information and facts we probably had not had contact with before, growing up in the red state midwest. His goal, he told us, was not to tell us what to believe, but to encourage us to grapple with information we likely hadn’t been exposed to before. That is what education is about, not about being coddled because you’re “sweet” and your feelings are probably earnest even if you facts are wrong.

The greatest disservice any professor could have done me, when I was Peter, would have been to view me as an interesting specimen and conclude that the factually incorrect ideas I held came down to feelings—and that feelings can’t be fact-checked.

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