William Perry and Liberal Education

While I think Perry's developmental stages are valid, it disturbs me that he didn't feel the need to pinpoint what or when his development scheme describes, simply the three stages of intellectualism that all people pass through at one point or another. I find it slightly excessive, these theorists need to put things in neat little boxes. I would argue that Perry's stages of development could be reduced to something as simple as the evolution of selfishness as we grow up: when younger, we see things in terms of good and bad because we have not yet learned to be selfish, or the perks it brings. As we grow we become more selfish in nature, which eventually softens when we realize the importance of others worldviews. It's just simple growing up, but by forcing it into these "stages" that are unclear both in age and progression as well as application to teaching the process of writing. Bizzell argues that these stages could be used in order to help the instructor identify what level the writer is at, but wouldn't that also be clear through other components of the writing (sentence structure, word choice,etc)? Furthermore, I think there's something to be said for the subjective nature of each of these stages. Some people never progress very much past the world of valuative extremes, good v evil, and some people are incredibly selfish for all of their lives. While I think Perry's observations are interesting, without more detailed explanation or application, I struggle to see their validity.