The Relative Wisdom of Tough Love Pedagogy

Whether or not "tough love" is productive depends (among other things) on the level of trust between the person doling out the tough love and the person getting it. It's not just a factor of the recipient's personal psychology, vulnerabilities, thickness of skin, etc.

Personally I'm pretty skeptical of claims to "tough love" as a general rule. Often it just seems like an excuse for a person in power (especially a petty position of power, like a professor or teacher) to vent his or her spleen on someone who can't do anything about it. For tough love to be effective, the recipient has to believe the following things: (1) the doler-out has the recipient's best interests at heart, (2) the doler-out has some sort of fair, coherent system s/he uses as a basis for criticism, i.e. s/he is not just criticizing because breakfast that day was unpleasant, or out of some generalized anger at the world, and (3) the criticism is useful, and the recipient can take it do something with it.

In those circumstances, yes, tough love is great. The question for us is, does this class meet those standards?

-- AnjaliBhat - 09 Apr 2009