We have done a lot of reading and much discussion has been focused on treating students as colleagues in the social context of the classroom, even developing those ideas and accounting for data that demonstrates that giving students control over the meaning they make in the classroom is beneficial for their reading and writing processes. In addition, teachers invite students to participate in community-building and social exercises that build trust, not just between the teacher and student but among students crucially. In such a classroom, the ideal participation for a novice, first-year composition student would be honest academic inquiry in a multicultural context that elicits response and discussion from peers as well as creates meaning for her individual experience.
Given this, I have been struggling with a marginal, yet very important to me, implication of this classroom environment. As part of the multicultural classroom, teachers encourage breadth of perspective in inquiry and individual values influence those perspectives. When a student shares a perspective that is true for her, free inquiry prescribes that any other individual can challenge that truth (with evidence) and may conclude that he or she is not compelled to value what is true for the first individual.
In my personal view, I would support this inquiry and challenge. It's true that what one person holds true does not need to be valued by a second person, or by everyone else. As an ethical teacher, I would want to support community-building on a foundation of trust and respectful discourse in my classroom; therefore, my pedagogical stance would be to ask that everyone value the truths of everyone else to avoid a break of trust or offense.
However, this response violates the theoretical stance of my classroom by impeding dialectical discourse. Moreover, the classroom would be not be valuing what is true for the second student (among others) whose truth requires inquiry, doubt, and the freedom to do so. I would be acting unethically as a teacher if I disallowed free inquiry, critical thought, and the space to disagree--not to mention the imposition that everyone's truth must be valued as if it were one's own truth.
I am truly disturbed by this paradox, but I honestly want to understand it. When the time comes and I have to resolve this problem, I want to know how to do so fairly and justly and in keeping with the ethics of my classroom.
One possible answer (and I admit a desirable one because it effaces the paradox) is that the dialectic is protected by free inquiry, and if a student submits an idea it is then open for discussion. This view upholds their freedoms (because they are free to share personal truths in addition to upholding their view in discussion) as well as the freedom of inquiry. Offense is not an argument.
ReplyDeleteThis is a workable negotiation because it doesn't involve compromise (in which no parties get what they want in order to approximate a solution). I am however too sensitive a person to think that it is a good negotiation. Offense is a tricky topic, and not well understood. It can damage the trust relationships built up in the classroom, weakening the ability to learn. At the same time, it is condescending to that student to halt discussion by acknowledging their offense. I would be torn between values and therefore, I'm still disturbed.