Teaching Discourse within Disagreement - A Quora-inspired blogpost

I am an occasional Quora user. I love the concept of answering a question as fully and accurately as possible and having it crowdsourced for accuracy.It is the next extension of Wikipedia. I also feel guilty that I really only feel qualified to answer questions about Batman, BYOT, and an occasional entry on some aspect of #digcit.


So when is saw this question come across my screen:
How can Obamacare be explained in layman's terms?


I was determined to take a crack at it. I sat down to write and opened up a few screens to fact check and when I was finished, I realized that I had not come even close to answering the question. So I never posted.


This was the first paragraph of what i wrote:

Wow. This might be one of the most challenging questions I have seen recently. Urban Dictionary describes "Layman's Terms" as an attempt to "describe a complex or technical issue using words and terms that the average individual can understand" -- I would add to that dictionary that most people who ask the question are seeking "just the facts" without a particular bias or slant, since they often are looking to draw their own conclusions. And even the term "Obamacare" was, and to many still is, a pejorative term for the Affordable Care Act that was meant to imply, among other things, a) that it was one person's idea and  b) a big brother-esque totalitarian solutions (remember the "death boards"?). 

So I scrapped my attempt to answer the question. But that started one of those thought spirals that brought me back to my "Teach the Controversy" series (Part I, Part II, and the PLN-based Part III). This was made even more poignant by Sunday's Mass and the subsequent discussions that happened (I'll get to that part in a second).


Interlude - A Peek Behind the Curtain
I remember one of the more frustrating moments of my Senior year was receiving an assignment to write a research paper. Attached to the assignment description was a list of verboten topics such as abortion, the death penalty, and passing out condoms in school. There were the usual grumbles but the teacher was adamant that these topics had been written about to death. 


A year later, I had the opportunity to do one of my first observations in teacher-training at that high school. During this one week intensive, I got to look behind the curtain into the mysterious teacher's lounge. In classic fly-on-the-wall mode, I got to hear about a variety of things. I remember my shock that teachers knew exactly what was going on in the back of the debate bus (yikes!) as well as who-was-dating-whom and other top-secret teenage lore.


During one of these discussions, the topic of the research paper topics came up. I listened as I heard teachers extol the policy of limiting topics that would cause the student's to lose focus on correct structure, cause arguments that would never be settled, and force teacher's to tip their hand to their own opinions. Through the conversation, it became clear that for all but a few of the oldest teachers, these topics had not been written about "to death" in class -- they had not been written about at all for years!
End Interlude 


I think that we are beginning to reap the results of this policy...and as educators, I think it falls to us to begin to fix the problem -- one controversy at a time.

Fortnight of Freedom:
A Real World "Teach the Controversy" Application

If you are not Catholic, you may not be aware that we are currently in the middle of a celebration, a movement, a protest called the Fortnight for Freedom. This is the name of a series of articles, speeches, homilies, etc. in protest over the Combination of the Affordable Care Act's demand for insurance coverage of certain routine/preventative/health promoting services and an HHS sub-committee's determination that one of those services in the area of women's health should be contraception. You can read the Kaiser Family Foundation's summary here. Note I did not say its unbiased description -- that is kind of the point I am going to try to make -- While I think the summary is accurate and accounts for arguments on both sides of a controversial topic, that is no longer the measure of "unbiased" in American discourse.


Unbiased, has taken an Orwellian shift to mean its opposite. In order to be considered "unbiased" you must now present information from the political, religious or other perspective of the reader.


I sat in church and listened to the homily of my friend and Priest as he explained that this was not an issue of contraception but was an issue of Religious Freedom. More importantly, it was an issue of religious discrimination, since insular churches (predominantly ministering, educating, helping) people of a single faith could be exempt but churches with outreach (read Catholic schools, Catholic hospitals, among others) could not be exempt. -- In a moment i have since come to regret, I walked out.

• I sat on the steps of the parish with my Transformer Prime and began reading the letter from the Bishop that the priest had been quoting -- it outlined the case for religious discrimination. 
• I went back and read the reaction from Church leader's when the coverage was first announced -- very little about Religious Freedom in that context. The concern then was that Church dollars (in the form of payments to insurers) would be used to fund contraception that is against the tenets of that faith -- good point, thought I. 
• Reading further, I found that there had been a compromise made that would force the insurance companies in these situations to cover the full cost of contraception without payment from the Church or the individual being a factored into the cost model.
• I went back to the Bishop's letter written weeks after this compromise. It clearly talked about the church being forced to "fund and facilitate" contraception. No mention of the policy change. The language was now much more nuanced with the vague "facilitate" taking on strange, non-layman meanings and the term "funding" being applied only under that  "if-we-pay-for-thing-A-then-there-will-be-money-for-someone-else-to-pay-for-thing-B" kind of way.

This was a lot more complicated than the homily made it out to be. The homily was a call to arms, complete with a concluding litany-of-saints invoking images of people being forced to say prayers in homes with darkened curtains and underground Eucharist.

My wife, an OBGYN and much better writer than I am, wrote a letter outlining her reaction to the priest and he asked if we could have dinner. After a wonderful evening with chatting, fellowship, and a good meal, we sat down to discuss.

Let me repeat that last line, it's important: We sat down to discuss.

• We outlined points of view. 
• We repeated what each other said to be sure that we understood it. 
• We spoke with passion about our feelings, but not dismissive of the passionate feelings of others. At one point, my wife was reading the language of the final rule, the priest was reading documents from the Bishops at USCCB.org, and the Google TV, was showing the news articles during the shift in tone from the funding-issue to the religious-freedom issue.

We identified areas of common ground and areas of further discussion. We talked about actions that could be taken to address the larger issue of a corruption of human sexuality. We learned from each other.

In a broader context, we talked about the polarization of politics, religion and society in general. We talked about confirmation bias and echo-chambers, where we dismiss that with which we do not immediately because there are always hundreds of sources that confirm our belief, so how could we be wrong? We talked about raising a generation of children without the ability to see past their own perspective.

Reflection

As educators, we have to embrace the opportunities for controversy. In those moments and those topics lie the opportunity to teach the fundamentals of discourse and persuasion. To teach how to dissect the biases of our own perspective and work with people from differing points of view on finding common ground. 

Gary Stager, at #ISTE12, chastised educators who force students to "make presentations on topics they don't care about to audiences that don't actually exist". We need to listen to this truth. Teach the controversy...better yet, let the students teach the controversy while we guide them on the fundamentals of finding accurate information, deconstructing claims and identifying evidence and flaws in logic, and building consensus with people who did not already agree with us.

Will this increase standardized test scores? Probably, but that's not why we should do it.

• We should do this because it is too easy today to live in an info-laden world where everyone agrees with you.
• We should do this because students need a place and an environment in which they can learn to ask questions, disagree, and change the minds of other while being open to having their own opinion change
• We should do this because it might be the most important 21st century skill.

Let's stop having students write about "safe" topics they don't care about. Let's stop hiding behind a bland vernier of unbiased objectivity that no student believes anyway. 

We have a month left until school begins...let's start changing the world.

When High Stakes Testing Comes to Sunday School - A Reflection

Disclaimer: I truly don't think there are any bad guys in this story. Each person, although they have some personality quirks, is a caring individual trying to do his or her best. I am obviously the hero of the tale, but take that with a grain of salt as well...I write the blog.

Once upon a time... ok, this isn't going to work. I am not nearly that creative.

Context - A Pluralistic World of Competing Objectives

No deep thoughts. I just like this cartoon.

Many of you who follow my twitter account know that my three children are affectionately named Prime (the 10 year old), the Undivided Middle (7), and Ender (3). Each year, we wait with baited breath to see what the Sunday morning catechism class will hold in store for us. Each year it is a little different. This year, our downtown parish, about 60-70% Hispanic, was holding the Undivided Middle's COMMUNION class as a mixed language class immediately after the Sunday English services.

Having discussed issues of language and culture in a mixed ethnic parish before, I knew that it was important to our parish priest to have more opportunities to have the two different parish populations have more experiences together.

OBJECTIVE 1 (PARISH PRIEST): The English- and Hispanic- speaking parish populations should worship and learn together.

As the class began to meet, a number of concerns began to arise from my perspective as a parent. My daughter described classes as "boring" (never a good sign) with a significant portion of the class presented in a way that she could not understand. Working in schools, I held off judgement and tried to keep the rotor-blades of my every-present helicopter in check.

I did this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I had experienced clashes before with the Director of Sunday school when I was a catechist. As an English-only speaking catechist, it was difficult for me to teach within a bilingual structure. I tended to assist. But my beliefs in education (student-based, deeper understanding, you know, constructive stuff) tended to grate on the nerves of head teachers who preferred a more by-the-book, memory intensive style. I will never forget my shock early in my participation in this  system to discover that if I presented a lesson in English (as a translation to the few Caucasian students), every student in the class, Hispanic and white, understood me. Almost all of the students in the class were English-only or bilingual. So when I went in to discuss this phenomenon with the directors of the program (through translators), I approached it from my basic premise:

OBJECTIVE 2 (ME): The purpose of catechism classes is religious instruction

Boy, was that off base. It was explained to me (by three people no less) that the only opportunity these students (meaning English-speaking bilingual or English-only Hispanic students) had very little opportunity to use their real language out in the world. The whole point of the system in this parish was to teach culture and heritage and give a circumstance for language use outside of the home.

OBJECTIVE 3 (DIRECTOR OF SUNDAY SCHOOL): The class is an opportunity for culture and heritage transfer and language application

The Counter Cultural -- and Counter-Intuitive Response -- to Gadget Overload (A Rant)

"Now think of yourself as a battery. You really are, you know. Your brain runs on chemically converted electrical current...Okay, the point is this: everything you think, everything you do, it all has to run off the battery. Like the accessories in a car...

Watching TV, reading books, talking with friends, eating a big dinner...all of it runs off the battery. A normal life -- at least in what used to be Western civilization -- was like running a car with power windows, power brakes, power seats, all the goodies. But the more goodies you have, the less the battery can charge. True?"  

 -- Glen Redman, The Stand by Stephen King (1989 or earlier)

Before we talk of human beings and batteries and how the comments of a mid-level character in a 25+ year old book got me motivated to write this blog entry, a preface in three parts: 2 vignettes and a little jesuitical context:

Vignette #1: 

My wife and I are members of "Koko's Kittens" -- geeks who have been on BOTH of Jonathan Coulton's jococruisecrazy. Last year, we skipped out on the 9th birthday of our eldest to go hang with internet musicians and comedians. I highly recommend this. This year, we took the Daughter Prime (now 10yo) and the Undivided Middle (7yo) with us. A good time was had by all. But I digress to this happy time to share a tough conversation that we had three days into the cruise. 

Prime and Undivided Middle with Jonathan Coulton

After 2 nights of concerts, I glanced over to watch the 7yo working her way through Mario 3D and the eldest on her phone playing a word game. My first thought was that the girls were not even listening to one of the musicians who they LOVED! Then i realized that they were both mouthing the words while playing. They were listening but not paying attention (parents will be nodding in recognition of this behavior).  {PAUSE}

Vignette #2

Tweetdeck: Infowhelm writ large

Each year, I have the pleasure of meeting, connecting with, teaching, and - in many cases - learning from amazing student at Brebeuf Jesuit. One of these students, @kcklippel, and I were having an internet conversation through twitter one relatively low-key afternoon about a year after he had graduated. About an hour into the conversation, this tweet came across the deck: 

"Oh, sh**. just blew off my class talking to you." 

"You skipped class?!?"

"No, I'm here. I just wasn't paying attention"

"*Sigh*"

A Few Jesuit Lessons

• The Jesuits task the teachers and administrators who work in their schools to give students the ability to develop the "counter cultural response". The basic idea is that the culture-at-large has got some things wrong. Thus, instead of limiting ourselves to math, science, writing, core curriculum, logical thinking, and 21st century skills (WHEW), we also try to equip our students with the critical eye to examine their culture and their actions within it and analyze whether they are making the best decisions or just the culturally easy ones ("best" in Jesuit-lingo is AMDG - doing things for the greater glory of God).
• Another tenet of Jesuit education is that God, for whom we are doing things, is EVERYWHERE. The rocks, the rivers, other people, and even the NEW iPAD w/ retina display. One of the keys to the counter-cultural response is to be open to seeing God in places where we are not used to looking and responding accordingly.

On Stephen King's THE STAND, Conversational Opportunity and the Counter-Cultural Response

As  I was listening to the Audible version of the post-a-plague-alyptic novel yesterday, the passage above struck me as closely related to what I have been talking about regarding technology, social media, and digital natives for the last few years.

The initial reaction to personal technology in the classroom and schools in general was (and is) to keep it away.

• Parents: worried that items would be lost, stolen, or damaged...
• Administrators: reminded me that "Chaucer never used a laptop -- he didn't even have Facebook"...
• Teachers: concerned about the loss of control "how we we keep them from twittering all day"

But when we keep technology out of the hands of students, we are not JUST denying them educational opportunities. We are not JUST keeping them from developing the skills they will be expected to have in college and beyond. We are not JUST putting our need for control ahead of them.

We are missing out on the opportunity to help them develop a necessary skill in the info-whelm, postPC world: The ability to choose to shut off the noise -- to disconnect.

My girls and my former student each experienced the same thing. The draw to the technology, whether it was the human connection at the other end or the exhilaration and relaxation found in a video game, was so intense, so consuming, that they were unable to avoid its siren buzz-beep-whir-ding. Thus, they missed out on a lecture that may have contained some perfect insight. They missed out on those unique never-to-be-repeated moments that only happen during live shows. They missed out, in some small way, on the opportunity to discover a God-moment.

I see this a lot in adults as well. Watch the next meeting with more than ten people. Observe the number of them who zone out of the conversation to answer email or surf the web. Watch the jump as they reach for a phone that is on vibrate for a reason but still has to be checked, "just in case". Then notice the tired look in the eyes at the end of a day that was constantly plugged in and connected. "The more goodies you have, the less the battery can charge"

BUT... (And if you made it this far, you need to stay for the end)

The answer is NOT to take away technology, it is to give it to them!

Students learn by doing, the same way that adults do. 

If we never give our children technology, we never get to have the conversation with them about putting the technology away to experience life as it happens before your eyes.

If our students are not confronted with and tempted by the technology in their pockets and their bags, then they will not have the resistance to put it away when it is not appropriate. And we will have raised another generation of meeting-zombies and phone-check junkies to replace the digital immigrants that came before.

In our school, the phrase that we have been using is that student need to develop the ability to
"be present in the moment". 

There are times when your presence is taking notes from a teacher, working on a problem, or listening to a friend. There are times when the moment allows for a quick glance at the twitter feed. Or that 3-coin attempt on DRAW SOMETHING.

Part of our responsibility in the task of developing Digital Citizens out of Digital Natives is providing the opportunity for Experience and the follow-up Reflections on which moment is which. This is not something that can be taught on a fill-in-the-blank test, but it might HAVE to happen in the classrooms, the playing fields, and the homes. 

Knowing when to disconnect is a vital skill.

And our batteries, ourselves, may depend on it.

Why We Teach: the 50,000 ft view of accountability in education

This may just be a shorter or bigger picture rehash of the last blog. But it also might be important

In the last blog, I drew a distinction between the different ways of measuring efficiency when thinking about EDUCATIONAL technology. Namely that, since we don't produce widgets, it is difficult to use the usual "X widgets produced per Y man-hours" formula. I proposed that instead we focus on how much the technology contributed to building relationships between students and teachers.

Wow. That was short sighted.

This is not just about Educational Technology.

It is the heart of Catholic education. And maybe education as a whole...but i'm going to premise off the Catholic part.

Yesterday while eating lunch with Alan Mensel, religion teacher extraordinaire, and Michael Christiana, SJ we were discussing a the concept of the "the classroom as hallowed ground" (40ishoracle blogged about the inspiring article a few weeks ago). In that discussion, we started discussing the teachings of Jesus.

• He never said "convert this many souls"
• He never worried about the profit margin of the ministry
• He never counted the sins

He asked people to love one another. And to love God. He told people to give to the poor and encourage those least fortunate among us. Jesus figured if we were to do all of those things, the whole "getting to heaven" things would take care of itself.

Flash forward a few thousand years.

In my last blog, I talked about those special teachers that we all remembered.

• They didn't worry about solving 56 math problems in two minutes.
• They didn't keep value-add averages of their students on high-stakes test scores
• They didn't peg their evaluation rating and payscale to tests or grades

What great teachers did back then, and continue to do today, is cared about students and their education. They struggled to make a subject that they cared about come alive fore the students. They crafted lessons that would provide experiences that students could reflect upon and gain knowledge from. Those great teachers figured if they did all of those things, the whole "good test scores" thing would take care of itself.

In asking educators to take more time to pay attention to the numerical goals (test scores, college entrance rates, etc. -- which may or may not be a reflection of the ultimate goal), we are asking them to take away from the process of building relationships, caring for students, and creating amazing learning experiences...the very pathways that have to be opened to get us to the promised land.

This has been coming up in a lot of different venues. I think @40ishoracle is tackling some of this from a different perspective here. I would invite your comments and thoughts.

Note: let @40ishoracle know that not all of my blogs are 4pgs long.