The two preferences contribute in different ways, basically. The “E” preference probably contributes to some level of wanting to be out there, interacting, and so forth, not holed up. The “P” preference leads to an exploratory nature. By contrast, classrooms are highly task-oriented. What are the objectives we’re accomplishing? Bam, bam, and bam. Check off discussing this poem, that perspective of so and so author, this formula about electrodynamics, and so forth.

Classrooms are (usually!) almost the epitome of non-exploratory learning, and not letting your curiosity dictate what you read next. They work well for people who get some kind of positive response to feeling like there was a well-defined body of items they get through.

I have not studied this much, but my guess is if you look at the MBTI types in relation to scores in academic settings, a lot of classroom performance is best for INJ types. Types that are highly associated with intellectual curiosity, like INTP, may score very poorly in classroom measurements.

Now, the question is what can we do about this, and why is this state of affairs in existence? Is it avoidable? I think the biggest barrier here is evaluation methodology. How to evaluate everyone’s work in a uniform way if we don’t systematize every last thing into a procedure? Classrooms today, if we are realistic, really aren’t (mostly, again!) houses of learning: they are houses of evaluation. There needs to be a standard by which to assess the masses of students moving forth from one level to another.

Now, there’s one possible thing that can be done – end-of-year exams are more conducive to free-flowing workers. I’d suspect that for those INP types who do not have exam-fear (which should be out of the realms of direct type relation), this would do some help, as they could do things unscheduled, and just learn things by the end.

I still suspect that INP types of a more extreme order would rather not deal with syllabi, and might be the most likely types to simply want to do their own thing.

I really don’t think the issue is with learning, but with the association of learning with task-completion. And really, let’s be totally honest: a lot of students complete a task for a grade, and then forget the material entirely or almost entirely. The reason we simply cannot let the task-completion part go is evaluation. I suspect it would be in the spirit Isabel Myers thought of P types as having introverted judgment to say that they have an “inner” standard of evaluation, and thus do not like being evaluated based on a collective classroom standard.

Rather, when it comes to pure learning, my guess is that the “INP” types would show on average a significant penchant to learning for the sake of learning. But this may be why, when the teacher is going on about Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a certain INFP decides he cannot simply pass up the opportunity to read several of Shakespearean sonnets, having had spontaneous inspiration the very moment, ignoring the lesson for the day to the detriment of his grade.

of coursee like your website but you need to chheck the spelling on quiite a few of your posts.
Many of them are rife with spelling issues and I iin finding it very troublesome to
tell the reality on thhe other hand I will definitely come back again.

sorry for the previous typo’s. this little box confounds me. I forgot to say how cheered I am to hear PL voice the need to ask WHY much more often than we do as educators.We need to encourage our students to ask WHY so much more often than we do. As educators if we can’t answer those why’s we may need to rethink the procedure,material etc.etc.etc.

I think the Extraverted Perceivers are so interested in everything happening around them that they’re not paying enough attention to what is being taught.

Mark:

I don’t see External Perception being marginalized, only Se. Se is treated like the dumb big brother of Ne, where it’s sports or bust.

As for Ne, it’s popular. It’s not foundational the way Te is in most large institutions. But I see so much fame and adulation go to tech inventors and designer geniuses these days. It’s hip and popular to be unconcerned with (or at least de-prioritize) making money off ideas, and to just the “an idea guy”. And the 20s-40s crowd had being smart and educated drilled into their heads so hard for all their formative years, that after they accepted the necessity of being those things, they co-opted them to be cool. Ne looks smart, so even though it needn’t be educated, so it’s seen as cool.

As for Introversion, I see some marginalization in the fading dominant culture (say, Baby Boomers and early GenX), but I see a backlash against that view in the ascendant culture (maybe late Genx and Millennials). The examples you give needn’t justify the existence of either marginalization, although I see the connection and I’m esp intrigued by the idea of surveillance presuming an Extraverted sharing attitude, and of big data analysis presuming a default of like-mindedness.

Mark such an insightful comment. We profess and even mandate the honoring of the individual but………..

The two trends that Adam mentioned—the marginalization of introversion and the marginalization of extraverted perception—seem, at first glance, contradictory. But it seems to me that both fit with the overall trend, in the United States, of ever-greater inflation of the national typology: ESTJ. While a significant number of people are moving toward compensation, balance, and authentic individuation, the dominating public norm—the framework for ‘conventional wisdom’ and public debate and policy—continues to spiral upward into the hubris or extraverted thinking (logic, control, structure, etc.) supported by introverted sensing (with its assumption that the way it should and must be is necessarily an iteration of one’s concrete, personal experience of how it has been).

While the desirability of ‘diversity’ is given plenty of lip service, and has even been incorporated into our laws, increased pressure to conform (generally to ‘norms’ based on an ESTJ perspective) is the reality. ‘Profiling’ is supposedly forbidden, but continues to gain tacit public approval. The killer of a young black man is ruled to have been justified in his action. The NSA eavesdrops on our phone calls, emails and on-line activity, and flags any interest in ‘unacceptable’ subjects as suspicious. We’re searched, humiliated, and investigated if we seem outside the norms at a TSA airport security checkpoint. We could even be confined indefinitely, without due legal process, if we seem too far outside the box. And despite our growing outrage over the pillaging of our planet, the exploitation of the many by the few, and the coopting of our beautiful experiment of an egalitarian socio-political system, most of us respond only very carefully lest we be socially ostracized—or much worse.

My point is that, as disturbing as the trends toward marginalizing certain typologies are in themselves, they are ‘only’ manifestations of a more insidious and threatening underlying trend: a normal peaking of a cultural typology beyond all reasonable limits, made more extreme and dangerous by fear (of terrorism, of ecological collapse, of financial uncertainty, etc.). The fear generates the rationales for more and more vigorous and extreme defense of the cultural ego against that which is perceived as ‘other.’ And I believe that Jungian analysts and type professionals have the capacity to have a significant positive impact on this global neurosis—because we hold powerful tools for understanding and mitigating the cultural dysfunction at the level where the root problem lies.

Adam, let’s be careful to distinguish SP, which you disucss, and EP, which the authors point to. In this chart, the ISTP had trouble but the ISFP did not, and all the EPs had trouble.

My problem with this is that the chart is over 30 years old, and things in both the culture and the Indicator have changed since then. I also don’t see that the actual MBTI was used, much less which form, much less that the students validated their Types. When I think back to being a student in school, I can see that lots of students wd accidentally type themselves in their student persona, which wd be “opposite-teacher” or “opposite-admin” or “opposite-school-culture”, and therefore skewed toward ESP. I know I wd have Typed as P.

Also, I know a dozen ENPs who excelled at school, with no chance of dropping out; I know none who had trouble. Are others surprised by this result? So I agree with the notion that the classification “at-risk” is suspect? I certainly wd have called a bunch of my ENP friends as “at-risk”, but they had no chance of dropping out, reading less, or having trouble in intellectual life, or life in general.

Meanwhile, the problem of teacher-student personality mismatch and bias is pretty well-studied, right? But it’s persisted bc ISJs are still the dominant Types who go into teaching and admin.