There was once a time when schools and colleges were places where debate was encouraged. When I first attended college in the mid-1960s, I recall engaging in lively discussions with classmates on a wide range of issues, including such controversial topics as civil rights and equality, during the turbulent Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
Fast forward to the twenty-fifth year of the twenty-first century, and it seems that free and open academic debate is an endangered species. Even in the United States, long regarded as the world’s shining example of democracy, college students are now imperiled for holding ‘wrong’ views on certain topics, and teachers find their jobs threatened for their positions on some issues.
Thankfully, this retrogression is not total. There are still a few classrooms where freedom of expression is considered a sacred right. One of those classrooms is mine. I teach three online graduate courses at a prestigious American university, and in my classes, students, during our online class meetings, are encouraged to politely express their opinion, even when it directly disagrees with mine, or any other students, and everyone—myself included—is required to listen politely without interruption.
I do the same in online discussions, where students are required to clearly and objectively state their opinions on classmates’ discussions, avoiding personal or ad hominem attacks. I remind my students at the start of each term, and frequently throughout the term, that when we disagree, we should disagree on the facts, not the character of the person with whom we disagree. Students are also encouraged to state objective and factually-based reasons for their disagreement.
I model this by my own behavior. For instance, I am a diehard opponent of transactional diplomacy (the short-term, one-dimensional approach to diplomacy that ignores long-term impacts of actions or policies), but I will often have students who are fans of ‘The Art of the Deal.’ In discussions, when one of them offers a counterargument to my views on how diplomacy should be conducted, I acknowledge their valid points and show how their short-term views can be merged with a medium- or long-term approach. I also recognize that, despite my thirty years of experience as a diplomat, I don’t have all the answers, and I appreciate it when I learn something new.
The bottom line is that students shouldn’t be subjected to a classroom where debate is curtailed or only orthodox thinking is allowed. If education is to be truly effective, we must insist that our classrooms remain safe spaces where open discussion is not only allowed but encouraged. | NWI
