TL;DR:
- Teachers of argument should encourage students to lean out of their comfort zone and explore different points of view.
- Listening to things we don’t readily agree with actually helps us become more informed about our own values and ideas.
- Several strategies like believing/doubting, belief continuums, and confirmation bias assessment help students become better at argument writing and speaking.
- Have the courage to change your mind and challenge students to do the same work. As you work to inform yourself on various topics, you broaden your perspective and open the possibility to change your mind.
The ninth graders I work with are currently working on an argument unit, which began with reading Willing to be Disturbed by Margaret Wheatley. In her essay, Wheatley encourages readers to lean into confusion and disagreement to find our beliefs. I was excited to see the outcome; what did students want to learn more about?
How would we approach topics that were both familiar and unfamiliar to us?
The goal was for students to explore ideas they were interested in and unsure about. We talked about their prior argument experience. Most were excited because they loved to debate with peers or family members. Everyone loves argument!
We embarked on a series of strategies for unpacking arguments, what another teacher and I called our own iteration of “argument boot camp.” We started with pros/cons while reading an article about data tracking. The article prompted organic questions about privacy and got students talking and thinking about how this issue looks at our own school. I was excited that they were excited. We discussed good faith arguments and confirmation bias using tools such as the AdFontes Interactive Media Bias Chart to assess where information comes from and how to evaluate it critically.
It's okay to take what you can use and leave the rest. If anything, this helps us figure out how we want to improve the world and assess our role in combating injustice. Click To TweetMetacognition Opens the Mind
After learning how to vet media for balance and legitimacy, students then chose their own articles. Their choices ranged from subjects like electronic waste, dress codes, social media behavior, screen time, and criminal justice reform. The only condition, which I made clear to students, was that topics that positioned the dignity or humanity of their fellow beings as a debate were off the table.
First, we SOAPStone-d. We worked with strategies such as believing/doubting. They also created continuums of belief to examine possible different angles and gray areas of their topic, from extreme agree, to neutral, to extreme disagree.
Throughout the process, students reflected on their own thoughts and engaged in verbal discussions with a partner about their ideas. They tracked their possible changes in viewpoint at each stop, considering more elements and ideas as they encountered them, finding the answers to questions through lateral reading. The day came that we developed our own thesis on the topic.
Two days later, mid-writing process, a student asked my favorite question of the year:
“Ms. O’Connor, is it okay if I change my thesis statement?”
This question was, to me, metacognition at work. Students were changing their minds before me, finding new information as they researched to support their claims, and running into evidence that altered the course of their writing process as well as their thinking. Some students wanted to make their thesis more specific than they had before, so they could weigh possibilities more closely.
In essence, they were acting out the thesis of Wheatley’s essay: exposing their own position, committing to critical thinking. Some students expressed worry that if they heard their classmates’ feedback on their own argument, they might hear something they hadn’t considered. I reminded them that this is exactly the point of our approach.
Change Means We Need to Make America Listen Again
For the past five years, we’ve collectively been gaslit out of our ability to have discourse. Even though it really does feel like the world is on fire, it’s okay to sit and listen. It’s okay to take what we can use and leave the rest. If anything, this helps us figure out how we want to improve the world and assess our own role in combating injustice. As the students I teach move through the world, I hope to offer them the tools to do so. To cultivate the ability to share and connect while prioritizing facts, integrity, and commitment to understanding, even without agreement.
To be able to change the world in which we live for the better, we must begin with listening to listen. So many people say that emotion has no place in rhetorical discussion or discourse. But sometimes that emotion shows up anyway. We’re human. Positionality matters. Our experiences inform what information we readily accept. This is what shapes our implicit bias, assumptions, and the prejudices that we all have. This is especially true if we have the privilege to move through the world in a way that affirms our existence.
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But Remember: Some Arguments Aren’t Arguments at All
I’m not saying that we should readily subject ourselves to ideas that are harmful to the existence of others. If a belief is one that puts the safety, dignity, or freedom of another at risk, or it is based on disinformation, that’s a reasonable place to declare an end of discussion. Some discussions do not warrant our time, energy, or even our civility; there are times when civility is complicity and can be just as harmful as our silence.
We must be willing to transform our silence or our judgment into discussion, understanding, and action (Audre Lorde!). But first, in order to truly consider ourselves open-minded, we have to show up as our whole selves, emotions and all. Ask questions and find out what’s disturbing us, before we mute/block/walk out. We have to be willing to get all the information we can, and then call out and call in. We can still be willing to hear something that breaks the patterns of information we create, as we decide what to do with it.
As Wheatley says in her work:
“It is very difficult to give up our certainties—our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These help define us; they lie at the heart of our personal identity. Yet I believe we will succeed in changing this world only if we can think and work together in new ways. Curiosity is what we need. We don’t have to let go of what we believe, but we do need to be curious about what someone else believes.”
Challenge students to do the courageous work of changing their minds. Teach them to show up and be willing to be disturbed.
About Cait O’Connor
Cait O’Connor is a fourth-year public school English/ESOL educator in New York, committed to social justice and equity in education and beyond.
