Detect This!

For this phase’s post I want to take us back to Postman and his stern apprehension over the growth of television (and the one-way media channel) and the temptation to “amuse ourselves to death” – what he deems “information glut.” It was surreal to read “Crap Detecting” only to realize his predictions have come true. Throughout the article and the video James posted, I couldn’t help but think of Robert Kubey’s work with media literacy, which entails “critically analyzing media messages, evaluating sources of information for bias and credibility, raising awareness about how media messages influence people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviors and producing messages using different forms of media” (23). Kubey points out that the US seriously lags behind all other English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia in offering critical media literacy as young as 5^th grade. It would seem that the US is doing a serious disservice to its youth by pumping them full of technology they have no formal training in analyzing and contextualizing and, therefore, designates media literacy as “an entitlement of every citizen” (21). The question is, if the government is not willing to offer such analytical training (and really, why would it, since it would undermine myriad agendas and political manipulations), how do we create (I say create because clearly we are not there yet) and sustain a democratic society in the face of media bombardment (cue Simpsons’ dodgeball-obsessed gym teacher here)?

I’d like to “remix” these two thinkers, who have a thirty-three year time difference in the publication of their texts, and put them in direct conversation with one another to see where we’ve been, where we presently are, and where we should aim to be:

Kubey: “Democracy, it is said, depends on an informed public” (“Media” 69).

Postman: “To the extent that our schools are instruments of such a [democratic] society they must develop in the young not only an awareness of this freedom but a will to exercise it, and the intellectual power and perspective to do so effectively” (1).

Kubey: “But if a school is teaching critical thinking and not linking critical thinking to the media world that so many students are spending upwards of six hours a day with, they are leaving a potential gold mine unexplored” (“What Is” 23-24).

Postman: There are men in power who “would prefer that the schools do little or nothing to encourage youth to question, doubt, or challenge any part of the society in which they live, especially those parts which are most vulnerable” (2).

Kubey: “Politicians have become extraordinarily adept at using the media to their advantage […] to the degree that the media are used to propagandize or manipulate and interfere with the public being well-informed, is the degree to which we need media education to be part of our schools’ civics and social-studies classes” (“What Is” 24).

Postman: “Whose schools are they, anyway. And whose interests should they be designed to serve? […] We believe that the schools must serve as the principle medium for developing in youth the attitudes and skills of social, political, and cultural criticism” (2).

Kubey: “the U.S. educational establishment is still too often mystified as to how to retool and retrain to educate students and future citizens for the new realities of communication” (“Media” 76).

Postman: “Things that plug in are here to stay. But you can study media with a view toward discovering what they are doing to you […] Certainly it is unrealistic to expect those who control the media to perform that function. Nor the generals and the politicians. Nor is it reasonable to expect the “intellectuals” to do it, for they do not have access to the majority of youth. But school teachers do, and so the primary responsibility rests with them” (8, 13).

So, in closing, it would seem that we are not only literacy sponsors, but we are also media literacy sponsors: a tough task to take on. How are you responsibility sponsoring media literacy in your classrooms, and how does our tendency to engage students’ interest with technology and digital texts play into Postman’s concerns?

Works Cited

Kubey, Robert. “Media Literacy and the Teaching of Civics and Social Studies at the Dawn of

the 21^st Century.” American Behavioral Scientist 48.1 (2004): 69-77. Print.

-------- “What is Media Literacy and why is it So Important?” Television Quarterly 34.3/4

(2004): 21-27. Print.

Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner. “Crap Detecting.” Teaching as a Subversive Activity.

Brooklyn: Delta (1971). 1-15. Print.

DC's Blog Project

http://eng592a.tumblr.com

The password is....

bifflebonk

My Website for Peer Review Day

Hello everyone! I have posted a link to my website (created on Weebly) for peer review today. It is, of course, a draft, so I have more work to do! Be kind... :P

Ecology, P.D., and Pedagogy: Twitter in the Composition Classroom

Oh, you know... just some thoughts.

So this post was inspired by the ever insightful Jon Harris.  But that doesn't mean it's going to be as creatively formatted.  In fact, it's going to be pretty darn linear, so here goes.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the disparity between teachers and students.  It's actually something that plagues me daily, to a crippling degree, something I'm not even close to having an answer for and probably never will.  It's just been fascinating to get to hear so many different voices in the same graduate boat saying so many different things about this power dynamic.  I myself often want to discredit my students when they don't live up to my expectations; but listening to the way some people talk about how "stupid" students are has been really getting to me.  

I read this piece by Sean Zwagerman called "The Scarlet P: Plagiarism, Panopticism, and the Rhetoric of Academic Integrity" that actually somewhat speaks to this.  Zwagerman points out the "grades can determine my future" mentality that students often have and attributes this mentality (somewhat) to the influence the professional business sphere has on the academic sphere.  Of this mentality he says, "This belief helps explain the actions of both students and teachers around the issue of academic dishonesty. If this student were to study successfully, he might get an A on the exam; but if he were to cheat successfully, he would have a better chance of getting an A because cheating mitigates the randomness of the outcome—it eliminates the personal factor and puts the student more firmly in control” (684). 

I find this quote infinitely interesting because I think it speaks to a lot of the different factors we've been discussing this quarter that contribute to students' perspectives of school, how and where some of those factors are influencing their perspectives, the effects they have on us as educators, the effects they have on our classrooms, etc.  When I think about all the things in life that are out of anyone's control like the blasted economy, the dismal job market, and so forth, it becomes apparent to me that our students are literally lost.  With most of them being 18-21 and coming from one bubble (home) to the next (college), it makes ten times more sense to me why they would choose to plagiarize.  

And with this realization comes some serious sympathy and empathy on my part.  While plagiarism never once crossed my mind--perhaps because writing came naturally to me or perhaps because I was and still am very fearful of punishment--it makes complete sense to me why students would even consider plagiarism.  Control.  A sure thing.  An Answer.  Isn't that what we're all searching for?  I recall the article we read in 591 about students cultivating their underlives and this reveals itself to me now as another way students attempt to take control of their lives and the situations within which they find themselves.  Maybe that's why our students (sometimes, definitely not all the time) seem way more interested in partying and socializing than diligently working on our assignments.  I think it goes beyond just wanting to have fun; maybe it's because they want to just be in control for once, to understand the situation they're in and act accordingly; something they probably don't yet feel comfortably doing in an academic setting.

I found this video on YouTube that maybe kind of sort of illustrates my point.  It's silly, but rhetorically smart, too, and speaks from the perspective of students to the tension between fun and work in college life.  It's entitled "Shit College Freshmen Don't Say."  Enjoy.

Post-Yancey Remix Post (Un-fun Title)

Warning, warning: this post has too many parentheses. (Sorry I’m not sorry.)

Hello (again)!

Thanks for your participation today. (If you participated.) Thanks for showing up, too. (That was sincere.)

If I could change one thing about my presentation, it would have been during week two. Or three.

If I could change two things about my presentation, I would next try to make a more engaging lead-in question so our dead minds wouldn’t of had to work so hard. Special props to Hillery for leaping in the convo.

If I could change three things about my presentation, I would next have introduced remix a little bit more. I would have clearly defined it (this is optimistic, since I fully didn’t understand the concept until we discussed it). And then I would have defined multimodal composition. I’m guessing more of us assign something—even if just a homework assignment or presentations—which are multimodal in some form. Or, most likely, you teach multimodally. (I think you can use multimodal in that way.)

Then, when I asked the question about if/how remix complicates multimodal assignments, we would have had a clearer idea of what I meant.

I would have shown this video too, asking “What are the potential problems instructors and students face when assigning or making projects like this?” (Imagine they produce Emmy winning videos.) 

And then I would have proposed that we discuss how music remix is different from a textual remix.

But I wouldn’t change anything else about my presentation because of selfish reasons. You all helped me understand remix better—and I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be the other way around—and brought your own questions, confusions, and concerns about the article that allowed us to talk for an hour about it.

Thanks for hanging in there during a week 10 reading. Is there anything you want to ask or talk about after today’s class? (By talk, I mean type via blog. But you can call me, maybe if you want to talk-talk.)

We DO Have (Apparently REALLY GREAT) Lab Space...

http://www.aesthetictechnologies.org/atlab/

Nothing I can find suggests that this is only available to students and faculty in the Fine Arts, and many of their workshops are designed for beginners (according to what I could find on the site).  Next year, this is probably where I am, if I am not in Alden!  This looks SO COOL!

Some ruminations on Fraiberg etc.

One thing that struck me about Fraiberg's article is the structure.  It is not radical or anything, but perhaps bears some note. It is not a bad map for putting together a theory article of this sort.  What sort?  The kind that calls for a particular direction in the field.  It's future-oriented, which is appropriate for a CCC special issue on The Future of Rhetoric and Composition.  

First word is "I" and signals beginning with an anecdote.  In this paragraph, he calls what he is doing "a study" and lays out a general claim about the future direction he advocates. 

Next segment is a "literature review."  This covers what has been already done and argued and with what theories in the area of the field he is extending and plowing.   He is bringing together work on multimodal comp. with multilingual theories and studies. This may not be new, but he makes it seem that way (performance!) and he identifies a "much needed gap" to quote an old joke.  He notes the limitations of the extant work in this area (multilingual/multimodal process) and stakes out a need. He situates himself in the unfolding conversation.

Then, still in lit review sort of mode, he lays out his theoretical foundations.  In the intro to these segments (separated by different, though related, theories) he says that he is "mashing" together some cross-disciplinary (and boundary/border) theories that are the "key to remixing composition in the context of globalization" (104). Note the use of these two (cooking?) metaphors.  He goes on to discuss and do very selective lit reviews of ecologies, knotworking, remediation, and actant-network theories.  (It may be an indication of your growth in this class if you can read this and have a pretty good idea of what is being discussed.)  Note how rhetorical genre theory seems to be in there, Bakhtin (who we did not read but who is ubiquitous, like Kenneth Burke, Foucault and Anzaldua), and some new-to-us folks like the knotworking theorists and Bruno Latour (Paul Lynch has a new article using his work).  Although he does not use the terminology of complex emergent systems, this theorizing is easily connected to that.  

So, onto his "study" which he does not lay out as one might for a journal of empirical studies.   Here he discusses a high tech company he studied ethnographically and, contrary to his stated proposals, hermeutically.  That is, he interprets the web site as a text, but does so though multiple lens and in various contexts. He notes the link to dominant nationalist discourse and military symbols.  He is using the theories he has laid out, but is also adding more (convergence culture) and mentions remix again. Bakhtin's "double-voiced discourse" is morphed to "double vision." He uses some military metaphors of his own and notes the influence of the US. He lists the many tools the team uses and calls them an improvised "genre ecology."  We hear of their discussion of Betty Crocker's site (though I never really got what that was all about).


OK, whew.  On to "Re-articulating Composition." He calls for five such points and goes though them boom boom, first, second etc. His last one renews a longstanding call for "an expanded definition of writing itself" (118). Again he presents this as if new. He returns to remixing.  Perhaps what is new is his particular mashing of these theories, plus the multilingualism.  Exactly how that gets into it is not clear to me.  The idea is to get students to cross boundaries between genres, media, languages, audiences etc.  The point is not to lay out a specific pedagogy but to create a set of related ideas to guide us going forward.  

This was published one year after Yancey's "Re-designing Graduate Education." Close enough.  it is fair to compare Y's revised grad program with Fraiberg's calls.  How do they compare?  

I Don't Always Write Blog Posts, but When I Do, My Writing Defies the Hegemony of Logocentrism

Prelude

In all its various forms, the logic of hypermediacy expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a ‘real’ space that lies beyond mediation. Lanham (1993) calls this the tension between looking at and looking through, and he sees it as a feature of twentieth-century art in general and now digital representation in particular (3-28, 31-52). A viewer confronting a collage, for example, oscillates between looking at the patches of paper and paint on the surface of the work and looking through to the depicted objects as if they occupied a real space beyond the surface” (Bolter and Grusin 41).

This post was intended to be a quick response to Ashley Evans’ thought-provoking blog post entitled “Discussing Right from Wrong with Lynch (and a guest appearance by Ryan Gosling)” but it kept growing and growing until it started to invoke notions of intertextuality that Matthew Vetter revisits in his “One More Post?” post.  My hope is that by meshing these responses I might posture a post that makes intertextaulity hypermediate.

In doing so, this post seems to generally follow the following tenants:

This is a sophistic blog post (hopefully in a “good way).

I, Jonathan Harris, am not writing this blog post (whew!).

This is an attempt at a Hectic Zen composition (and should therefore provide an experience of hypermediacy).

First (Move)ment

Ashley’s post was engaging and made me question how I interact with students in these kinds of critical classroom moments. For whatever reason, I had trouble coming to grips with the Lynch article, so I'm glad that she gave him some space on the blog.

First, I want to copy Ashley’s brilliant move in the beginning, where she repeats/remixes? our colleagues’ blog posts, but, instead, I want remix two lessons from in-class discussions (I apologize in advance if I misquote or misrepresent [I welcome everyone to participate in the creation/writing of this text (thankfully Blogger lets us do this]). I hesitate doing so for the obvious reasons (misrepresentation and the distrust of orality) but there is always space to critique me in the future (again, I welcome it).

The first is from Ashley (again) who said in Dr. Nelson's class last quarter (replying to a colleague's mistrust of student survey responses, which were fantastic btw) that "we don't give our students enough credit to voice their own opinions" (I’m terrified of using the quotation marks here) by which I think she meant that our students are very comfortable as agents, to speak up and voice their opinions.

The second comes from Sarah who conjectured (and here, I think I'm extremely guilty about misrepresenting her ideas [I should have taken better notes]), during our discussion on Postman, that it might be possible to bring up positionality and then set it aside." Here, I believe that she was speaking about assessment/ classroom authority.

Second (Move)ment

I bring in these two lessons/gifts from my colleagues because they continue to roll around in my head (and probably will for some time) when I think about authority in the classroom space). I don’t bring these up counterargument or instances of aporia. Rather, as Veeder writes of the Hectic Zen Space, “writing in a Zen space is always writing away from understanding—exploring rather than explaining, waiting for the plop of a frog in a pond of the mind/ This is rhetoric in the acoustic—a rhetoric in an new key” (Reading Marshall McLuhan).

Which brings me to my second “plop” in the pond of my mind.

I find interesting the ways in which our conceptions of author/ity chance when we’re in the classroom (as teachers) in the classroom (as students) and outside of the classroom (as writers). All of the writers on this blog probably have realized by now that I’m unbearably quiet in the seminar classroom but that I’m long-winded as a writer. Almost none of you know that I’m confident (if a little Ludacris) in the classroom (as a teacher).  

All of this leads me to question how our enacted roles fatalistically determine out students’ responses to our critical stances on controversial issues, etc. This quote from Ashley’s post is extremely telling:

“As a teacher, I am easily frustrated when my colleagues tell me they have every right to be politically open in their classroom. One even said something along the lines of “they believe everything we say, so we should tell them what to think.” No. No no no no no no” (Evans “Discussing Right”).

I suppose what I’m trying to get at is that I find myself both disagreeing and agreeing with Lynch vis-à-vis Ashley’s post. Making a political status known/having strong opinions when engaging students in discussion is not a terrible thing to do for all teachers, and it is a terrible thing to do for some.

For example, one of my goals as a teacher is to get students to accept some of the power in the classroom, and part of the way that I do that is by announcing my political take as an individual and then as a cog in an institutional machine. In doing so, my students hopefully see that I can inhabit multiple positionalities in a recursive-critical stance without giving up my ideological stake in certain issues. Certainly this stake, this understanding might change as a result of this recursive process, but that’s really not the goal of the course or the discussion, is it? I am both allowing students right to their own political/cultural ideology and “pushing an agenda” that advocates this recursive, meta-cognitive process.

Coda

“In all its various forms, the logic of hypermediacy expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a ‘real’ space that lies beyond mediation. Lanham (1993) calls this the tension between looking at and looking through, and he sees it as a feature of twentieth-century art in general and now digital representation in particular (3-28, 31-52). A viewer confronting a collage, for example, oscillates between looking at the patches of paper and paint on the surface of the work and looking through to the depicted objects as if they occupied a real space beyond the surface (Bolter and Grusin 41).

It seems to me that there are many ways to go from here. Do we talk about this writing space and its affordances for intertextuality? Do we talk about post-modernity and my remediation of in-class discussion? Do we talk about Vetter’s notion of the earwig and apply it to our writings here?

If you stuck with me until now, I thank you/apologize./? Also, thank you Ashley and Matt for your engaging posts. If you didn’t (or meandered through, I don’t blame you).

Good Luck everyone on writing your finals!

Introduction to Yancey

Welcome to my blog post! I hope you all are surviving the last week of the school year.

I'll get right to it: below is a quote mash-up introduction of Kathleen Blake Yancey.

“Her research and consulting work focuses on composition studies generally; on writing assessment, especially print and electronic portfolios; and on the intersections of culture, literacy and technologies.” 

“In addition to co-founding the journal Assessing Writing and co-editing it for seven years, she has authored, edited, or co-edited eleven scholarly books and two textbooks as well as over 70 articles and book chapters. Her latest volume is the co-edited Electronic Portfolios 2.0, which highlights the research on electronic portfolios conducted under the auspices of the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research. Her edited collection Delivering College Composition: The Fifth Canon, was released recently as well; it received the Best Book Award from the Council of Writing Program Administrators. She is also the Editor of College Composition and Communication (CCC), the flagship journal in composition and rhetoric.” 

Chair, President of NCTE

President of WPA

Chair CCCC

 

The title of this video is called "Remixing our Scholarship"; Yancey here discusses the need to make scholarship more assessable for local and political reasons. She also stresses the exigency (like at the beginning of her C’s address) for scholarship and writing, rather than just what we are personally interested in. It’s worth sharing just so you can get a feel of her persona—it changes how I read her C’s address. 

“Re-designing Graduate Education in Composition and Rhetoric: The Use of Remix as Concept, Material, and Method” was written in 2009. This article appeared in the “The Future of Graduate Education in Computers and Writing” issue of Computers and Composition. Other articles were similar, in which the authors offered advice in preparing students to be professionals based on experiences at their own programs. It describes the process of redesigning the rhetoric and composition program at Florida State University in 2005. You can check out the program’s website here.

Yancey describes this process as a remix, “making a new, coherent program both from fragments of the old program and from new programmatic pieces” (5). Remixing is defined as “the combining of ideas, narratives, sources” which Yancey says is still “a classical means of invention” (5).

Yancey later describes the new program, focusing on a few specific classes. Overall, as she mentions, there is an “embeddeness of technology” in all of the course offerings (7).

Check out the Digital Studio’s Twitter feed here.

One of the main goals for the program was to examine how literacies and technologies interact. Yancey says the design of the program led her to two areas to consider further:

1.     “the role of what William Gass has called the ‘making[ness]’ of a text and its relationship to technology”

2.     regards to “the everyday-ness of texts and their connection to self-sponsorship and sustainability” (9).

I think these are important aspects to consider when implementing technology into any classroom, and questions I hope you keep in mind as you read the articles for Tuesday.

For class discussion or blog response:

1. How do you see remix as a different process than editing, combining, borrowing, or revision?

2. How can we use remix in our classrooms? In our discipline? In the university?

3. How does the concept of remix problematize the composition process? How should it approached when composing and assigning multimodal compositions?

4. In the article abstract, Yancey writes that the program at FSU was designed as a way to meet the needs to a 21^st century student. What do you see as these needs? How should/do these needs change the way we teach FYC? At what point does responsibility for these needs go beyond the classroom? At what point—if any—should students become their own [technological] literary sponsors? And finally, how does Yancey approach this idea in her C’s address?

5. Yancey writes that there were three key factors to designing the program: relevant social needs, disciplinary trends, and financial resources. What are the potential problems of each of these factors, both in regards to A) designing or developing a program and B) the curriculum of the program (and that of FYC classes)?

6. In what ways do you see Yancey’s call to action in her C’s address succeeding or failing in her description of the new program at FSU?

7. Here are some of the words and phrases Yancey uses to describe the program and reactions to different aspects of the program:

“important role” (7)

“noteworthy” (7)

“complemented our other offerings” (8)

“extracurricular activities with a curricular benefit” (8)

“intriguing and challenging” (9)

“Faculty were unanimous in their appreciation” (9)

“the library’s interest in working with us” (9)

“contributed to our program in exciting ways” (10)

“distinctive” (10)

“a program that is at once at the center of the discipline” (10)

“both a signature course and a distinctive programmatic approach” (11)

“a member of a more recent generation” (12)

Why do you think Yancey chose to write the article in such a praise-worthy way? I ask, hoping you’ll take into consideration the lack of failures mentioned in the article.

8. Fraiberg quotes Heidi McKee who argues the “cultural revolution is a social and cultural one” (112). How do you see (or not see) this concept in the FSU program? Does it seem like the program addresses cultural ecologies?

Discussing Right from Wrong with Lynch (and a guest appearance by Ryan Gosling)

Lately I’ve been frustrated. Too much information has entered my brain, and I can’t retain it all—especially from this class.

 

We’ve discussed a lot of theories from a lot of scholars. If I were a good student, I would have been making a list as we read. But it is too late…

 

OH WAIT. We have blog posts.

 

The reason I’ve been frustrated is because I was trying to tie everything together: how do I take all of these theories and create a teaching philosophy? If I can’t take all of the theories, which ones should I value? If I value some over others, am I a bad person? An inept teacher? A curmudgeon?

 

My first step in remembering what we read and discussed was to review older posts. Here are some of the finer points made by YOU (or not you, depending on who you are.)

 

“The point is, for the critic (which is what FYC instructors are) we are to always exist with the orientation of questioning both status quo and resistance.” – Aaron, on critical rhetoric

 

“This process avoids position knowledge as static and encourages students to center their focus on the process of dynamic inquiry.” – James, on Postman

 

“Normativity can only be recognized in outline against the deviant.  It strikes me that this must require making the deviant visible.  How can we, in our classrooms, use this visibility to complicate students' understanding of their own positionalit(ies)?” – Sarah, on disability studies

 

“My hope is that we will all (continue to) consider the ways we invite heteronormativity in our classrooms – as both teachers and students, and, in response, the ways we might be able to create queer, safe spaces in and outside of academia.” – Hillery, on Queer theory

“Was the Internet ever a pure democratic, "rational-critical" space in which multiple participants could shape and reshape the discourse and resist hegemonic discourses and narratives?” – Matt, during ecology and complexity week

 

If you read those quotes instead of skipping over them (as I often do too), you will see a pattern. The key to several theories is resistance. I think this relates directly to Paul Lynch’s article “Composition as a Thermostatic Activity.”

 

As a student, I never like when a professor makes his/her political status known or when they have strong opinions that they preach. Lynch says students view this as “pushing an agenda” (737). I think he’s right. It has the ability to change classroom conversation, constrict freedom of thought, speech, and opinion, and is only ego-boosting to teachers who think they’ve enlightened students who, in reality, might only be telling the teacher what he/she wants to hear. As a teacher, I am easily frustrated when my colleagues tell me they have every right to be politically open in their classroom. One even said something along the lines of “they believe everything we say, so we should tell them what to think.” No. No no no no no no.

 

Want to hear another frustration? When supposedly open-minded people—our professors, our colleagues, ourselves—forget that there are two sides to every opinion and a lot of murky grey areas too. So hearing Lynch’s plea for teachers to set aside their ideologies and start thinking about their students’ ideologies was pretty damn refreshing.

 

Lynch asks, “What rationale could I offer for having wanted to change anyone’s mind in the first place?” (732)

 

His use of “change” is key for me. Teachers who believe something (like…Volvos are the only cars anyone should drive) should not have a goal to change their students’ views to simply agree. If a student claims he believes in Chevys, let him believe that. But take Lynch’s devil’s advocate position and make the student back up every single claim. Challenge the student in every way. Point out the grey areas. Give the student reason to question his/her beliefs. And if they do all of this and still think Chevy is the way to go, let them think that.

 

Yeah, let him think that.

Lynch questions, “How can they [teachers using the thermostatic technique] do this without coercing their students into false agreement or resentful silence? How can they present a counter-argument while keeping all other arguments in play?” (736)

 

I believe students do not have to feel this way if the teacher is not aiming for a particular answer. If a student is opposed to gay marriage, the job of the instructor shouldn’t be to phrase questions that lead the student to argue a particular thing or defend him/herself. Instead, they should engage with that student and converse. “What about this…” and “How would you respond to…” If they are actually critically thinking, they’ll see the value of the teacher pointing out flaws and grey areas. If they are not critically thinking and just holding on to their firm beliefs, they probably will become resentful. I think getting students to talk about issues is key. Make them give reason. Make them get to that point where they cannot answer—the grey area.

 

Every person believes there are “better” stances on certain topics. These are their viewpoints. But if teachers forget that these viewpoints are not correct just because they believe them, they put their teaching and classroom at risk. There is no truth; there is not right or wrong. There are widely held beliefs that stem from our histories, religions, upbringings, educations, and experiences. As we try to get our students to question everything they think, we should also remind ourselves that opposing opinions are allowed. What we think is wrong might be right for someone else. And if we are challenging our students to think about both right and wrong, they will maybe find that they can still be right as long as they consider how they could be wrong.

 

Show me my grey areas. Converse with me on this topic. Ryan Gosling already did.

  

http://forloveofcupcakes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/hey-girl-ryan-gosling.jpg