what we should have been taught about how to have a civil conversation about a difficult topic
Talking Across Divides: 10 Ways to Encourage Civil Classroom Conversation On Difficult Issues
Fistfights at campaign rallies. A congressional sit down-in. Angry political trolling on the internet. Information technology's not your imagination: America's partisan split up is deeper today than at whatever bespeak in nearly a quarter-century, co-ordinate to a new report.
Then begins an article from June 2016, which described a problem that has but deepened as the weeks of this unprecedented, vitriolic presidential campaign have gone on.
Months ago, the Southern Poverty Police Center documented the worrying effects of all this angry rhetoric on students and classrooms, and, since then, nosotros've heard those concerns echoed by teachers we asked ourselves. But even later this election is over, a divided nation will remain — and teachers will e'er be in a uniquely powerful position to help young people larn how to talk to each other across those divides.
Below, we share some ideas we've collected from our readers, The Times and around the web. Use them someday you lot and your students are tackling controversial issues, whether in a traditional classroom or online. We welcome your additions to the list.
Updated: Jan., 2017:
In the autumn of 2016, as a companion to this lesson, we invited students to participate in what we called our Ceremonious Conversation Challenge .
From early Oct until Nov. 7, teenagers from effectually the globe were encouraged to weigh in on some of the most divisive problems of the 2016 election. The claiming, still, was for them to have the kinds of respectful, productive discussions beyond ideological divides that, it seemed, many adults were unable to.
In December, we wrote about the almost 3,000 comments we received on the problems of immigration , guns , climate and energy , and race, gender and identity , likewise as on many other topics suggested by students themselves in our open forum .
Take a wait at our Ideas for Productive Discussion: Reflections on Our Ceremonious Conversation Claiming to read our observations about the all-time of those conversations and what made them piece of work, along with unedited pupil examples for each.
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one. Create classroom rules and structures that back up respectful and generative discussion, online and off.
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How do you handle conversations in your classroom in full general? What structures and rules are in identify to ensure that they are constructive and civil, yet promote real learning and growth? How do y'all invite all voices? What happens when someone states an unpopular opinion?
Consider talking most these issues with your students after first asking them to write anonymously about how teachers and schools in general might improve in this area. What problems practise they see? What memorable experiences, good and bad, take informed their attitudes toward grade discussions? What suggestions for rules, structures or guidelines might they have? How should schools residuum the need for open intellectual discussion almost issues with the need to protect those who may feel marginalized for some reason?
Then, take a classroom word about classroom discussions.
Over the years, nosotros have published many ideas for talking about sensitive issues, and suggested structures including journal-writing, the "one-question interview," fishbowls and four-corner exercises. You might use any of those methods, or consult this "big list of class give-and-take strategies" from Cult of Instruction. Or, use a protocol called Circle of Viewpoints that focuses on helping students consider diverse perspectives on a topic.
Finally, extend your inquiry from physical classroom chat to online word past borrowing a recent Reader Thought from a teacher named Kate Harris.
She explains how, when teaching a high school World Religions elective, she used the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris every bit a "teachable moment" to help her students observe and critique online conversations. Ms. Harris writes:
Teachers accept to address the political and social problems that divide our nation and dominate our social media feeds. More important, we demand to equip students to accost those bug on their own, to appoint with and respond to conversations and news that may exist troubling or challenging, from domestic gun control and law brutality to the 2016 U.S. presidential ballot and worldwide terrorism. So much of our students' worlds is online. How can we get them to think critically not only about big media, delivered by giants such every bit Fob News and The New York Times, but also virtually "little media," or the comments and tweets that they write, read and repost?
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ii. Take the 'Speak Up for Civility' pledge from Education Tolerance.
Though it is a pledge intended for teachers and other adults, y'all might share it with your students as well:
I pledge to discuss this election with civility, to treat people whose opinions differ from mine with respect, and to focus on ideas, policies and values. I volition encourage others to do the same. I will speak up when I hear name-calling, stereotypes and slurs. I will practice this because children are listening, and it'southward important that adults model good citizenship.
The arrangement'due south ideas for teaching Election 2016 can as well be useful, and those nether the heading of "getting along" tin can be practical far beyond this election flavor.
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3. Read and hash out articles that explore the problem of a divided America.
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In "What Your Online Comments Say Nigh You," Anna North writes about some questions researchers recently asked:
When we comment on news stories, most of u.s. hope to say something about the topic at hand — even (or maybe peculiarly) if it'south that the author got information technology all wrong. But what exercise the comments we leave say about us — virtually our beliefs, our biases and how we act when the ordinary rules don't employ? And how exercise our comments impact the behavior of others?
Read that article, and, for more context, peradventure the Room for Argue forum "Take Annotate Sections on News Media Websites Failed?" Why do we seem to be able to say things online that we wouldn't say in person? Where practice students run into especially glaring examples of that?
The Times, including The Learning Network, has commenting standards put in identify to maintain civility. Y'all might share them with students, along with a related Times post, "The Top 10 Reasons We Deleted Your Comment." What practise they think of these rules? Could they be useful elsewhere on the internet? Why or why not?
Then, examination how well they have captivated those standards by taking a Times quiz created by our comment-moderation team. If you were a moderator, which responses would yous approve and which would you reject? Why?
Finally, have students cull a Times commodity that interests them and that has many reader comments. Scan the comments, noticing which ones are "reader picks" and which are "Times picks." What do they notice about the conversation? Is it generally civil? Exercise they call back people are really talking to each other, or do you lot think they are more than talking at each other? In their opinion, tin online conversations e'er change minds?
You might starting time with a contempo Op-Ed essay "Will the Left Survive Millennials?" Among the many comments, this one by Andy B:
Has anyone noticed that despite our increasing diversity, we are becoming a more isolated society? More prone to stare at a screen than to engage our neighbors in conversation. That same screen provides easy admission to environment oneself with an echo chamber that allows for an ever growing sense of entitlement to impose i's opinion on others above all else. Both sides have moved so far away from 1 another that honest constructive debate is next to impossible. For the sake of our American experience, let's hope we can eventually find a unifying force. Imagine what could be done every bit a society if we unplugged and engaged again.
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five. Practice empathy.
Practice your students know who Glenn Beck is? He is a conservative radio host and media personality who surprised many this summer when he urged his fellow conservatives to sympathize the Black Lives Thing movement. He then published an Op-Ed essay in The Times that begins:
In a recent speech communication to a group of conservatives, I made what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial signal about the commonalities betwixt Trump supporters and Blackness Lives Matter activists. I idea this was a simple idea, but the criticism was immediate and sharp: How dare I endeavor to understand the "other side"?
But as people, wouldn't nosotros all benefit from trying to empathise with people we disagree with?
Accept them read what he has to say — and read some of the 919 comments Times readers made in response. What do they retrieve of the statement he makes? What issues virtually which they feel passionately might they seek to understand from an opposing point of view?
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6. Back up statements with evidence and sources.
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"These days it seems like politics and propaganda take precedence over rational give-and-take, particularly when the conversation goes online, " writes Chris Sloan in an essay at KQED Education on "Teaching the Art of Civil Dialogue. He suggests "teaching argument the way it's been conceived since Aristotle's time."
It seems that everyone agrees that in order to be "college and career ready" our students demand to know how to write argument and back it up with bear witness. In reality, this approach falls short when our own assumptions are challenged; however, research shows that learning gains are greatest in these moments of "cerebral dissonance."
The winners of our annual Student Editorial Contest, in which nosotros invite students to "write about an result that matters to you lot" but back it upward with evidence both from The Times and elsewhere, can provide models for how to practice this. Yous might invite students to scroll through the essays and find a few that involvement them to run across how the evidence is woven in.
And this related lesson plan can help with tips and ideas. In it, nosotros quote Andrew Rosenthal, former Times editorial page editor, who made a video for our contest and reminds students to do their research. He says:
Everyone is entitled to their stance, you're not entitled to your ain facts. Go online, make calls if y'all can, cheque your data, double-check information technology. There's nothing that will undermine your argument faster than a fact you got incorrect, that you did not have to go incorrect.
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seven. Listen better, and ask 18-carat questions that seek to assistance you lot sympathize rather than judge.
Hearing is easy, writes Seth S. Horowitz in the Sunday Review. But "listening is a skill that nosotros're in danger of losing in a globe of digital distraction and information overload."
Many teachers are familiar with the concept of "active listening" and, via activities like "call up/pair/share," accept incorporated regular practice in the skill. But listening can be much more, equally this famous essay from the 1930s, "Tell Me More than," describes. In it, the author Brenda Ueland says listening is a "creative force," and explains:
When we are listened to, it creates united states, makes u.s.a. unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to abound within united states and come up to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does non, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it.
One recent case of listening in activeness: a new book by the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild that seeks to empathise "Why Practise People Who Need Help From the Authorities Hate It So Much?" The Times reviewer writes, "A distinguished Berkeley sociologist, Hochschild is a woman of the left, just her mission is empathy, not polemics." Have students read the review to sympathize the role open-minded questioning and listening played in this "respectful" work, and then retrieve well-nigh how they might exercise listening to those with whom they disagree.
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8. Expand your 'filter bubble.'
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In a Student Opinion question, "Is Your Online World Merely a 'Filter Chimera' of People With the Same Opinions?," we challenge teenagers to wait at their social and news feeds and work to broaden them to include new perspectives and opinions.
Read our questions and invite your students to think almost where and how they get their news. How diverse are their social media and news feeds in terms of the ages, races, religions, geographical locations, interests and political affiliations of the people they follow — and why does it thing?
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ix. Consider why 'us and them' is so ingrained in who we are.
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Unfiltered Voices From Donald Trump's Crowds
New York Times reporters have covered Donald J. Trump's rallies for more than a year. His supporters at these events often limited their views in angry and provocative ways. Hither are some examples.
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Our friends at Facing History and Ourselves frequently expect at questions like these:
• Why are notions of "usa and them" such a consequent feature of human societies?
• When and why does an "us and them" view of the world get particularly appealing or attractive? When does this worldview develop into verbal and physical violence?
• How can individuals reply to expressions of hatred, acrimony and fear? What happens if we choose to remain silent?
In "How Teachers Can Help Students Make Sense of Today's Political and Social Tensions," Laura Tavares and Jocelyn Stanton list a number of resource to help teachers and students go deeper.
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10. Larn virtually and try to counter 'confirmation bias.'
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Confirmation bias is the trend to wait for information that supports the way we feel virtually something. Carl Richards wrote nearly it for The Times in a 2013 piece, "Challenge What You Call up You Know":
We practice this all the time. In fact, academics even accept a name for information technology: confirmation bias. Information technology's when we form an opinion, and then we systematically look for prove to support that opinion while discarding annihilation that contradicts it.
The first place we get for feedback virtually what we believe is other people. And who do we enquire showtime? That's right, people nosotros know who are already inclined to think the same way as we practise. And friends don't e'er tell 1 some other the truth, even if they disagree. The result is a unsafe feedback loop that actually confirms our bias. It's incredibly difficult to avert.
The Upshot also wrote about this phenomenon, maxim:
...confirmation bias may be the reason that our political debates remain intractable. After all, as yous accrue more show confirming your views, you're less probable to question them, and less likely to change your heed. Every bit members of competing political tribes collect more evidence in favor of their favored views, their opinions harden, and each tribe becomes more convinced of its correctness.
And so what'south the solution? As Mr. Richards writes, "The only solution that I run into is to purposely expose yourself to views that don't match yours." In an echo of many of the other ideas in this mail service, he suggests purposely seeking out views from "the other side," whether via websites, books, radio or television, or conversations with people across the alley. And, he says, it'southward not plenty just to seek them out:
Try, just try, to mind, to understand. See if you can get to the bespeak where you can honestly say, "I understand the argument and tin can encounter why they feel that fashion."
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How do you foster civil conversation in your classroom? Tell us in the comments.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/learning/lesson-plans/talking-across-divides-10-ways-to-encourage-civil-classroom-conversation-on-difficult-issues.html
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