Academic Exchange Quarterly
Winter 2003: Volume 7, Issue 4
Teaching Conflict through Multiple Rhetorical Stances
Nancy L. Chick is an
Associate Professor of English at the
Abstract
After September 11, teaching
freshman composition classes focused on traditional modes of argument seemed
incomplete and socially irresponsible.
While rhetorical persuasion is a valuable skill deeply embedded in
American and academic cultures, it is only one stance, and it can limit the way
students see the complexities of the world.
Teaching other rhetorical stances, particularly mediation or conflict
resolution, in writing classes can complement argumentation while also
providing an alternative, more comprehensive way of understanding the world
around them.
“I
was of three minds,
Like
a tree
In
which there are three blackbirds.”
— Wallace Stevens, “
“If you limit your view of a problem to choosing
between two sides,
you inevitably reject much that is true, and you
narrow your field of vision
to the limits of those two sides, making it unlikely
you’ll pull back,
widen your field of vision, and discover the paradigm
shift
that will permit truly new understanding.”
—
The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen
One
morning in September 2001, I walked into my freshman composition class at the
In the wake of
September 11, I wasn’t alone in my reflections on what and how I teach. I knew
that others were wondering what they teach and why. The more familiar community concerns about a
liberal curriculum of controversial books that “have no place” in the
classroom, much less on our library shelves, gave way to new concerns about our
perhaps more conservative approaches. A writer for our local newspaper noted in
her September 26 column that “Educating our children about peace is sorely
lacking.... We may be teaching our children
in the home that there’s another recourse to hitting their siblings, but we
aren’t following it up” in the classrooms (Nimm
4). She’s right. While we widely teach some great thinkers who
demonstrate “another recourse”--Gandhi, Thoreau, King--often
our war-filled histories and, more disturbingly, the skills we teach for future
actions do not. I had not. While I had included these great thinkers in
my courses, I had not translated those lessons into how I teach my “skills
class,” freshman composition. Until
September 12.
Half of my teaching
load--literature--provides the most eloquent of springboards for discussing war
and peace, death and rebirth, fear and hope.
But the other half--composition--can at times feel painfully
disconnected from our lives and what’s going on in the world around us. In fact, the primary type of writing taught
in composition across the country sometimes seems antithetical to peaceable
communication and probably wouldn’t resolve a fight with a sibling or anyone
else. We focus on rhetoric, the art of
effective persuasion, often called “argument.”
We teach this kind of writing to show students how to build strong
arguments, for example, by balancing logic, emotions, and common
values--Aristotle’s formula--in a successful attempt to convince someone of
their point of view. We also teach
rhetoric to arm students with the abilities to see through, protect themselves
against, or disprove weak or faulty arguments, such as those found in
advertising, politics, peer pressure, everywhere. Ultimately, we teach rhetoric to empower our
students with a skill that is valuable and necessary in our culture.
However, as we
recovered from September 11, and as what our president called an “unyielding
anger” spread across our nation, I had to rethink this course, the effects of suggesting
that argument is the most valuable
and necessary communication skill in our culture, and the nature of such
empowerment. Teaching rhetorical
argument does not inherently lead to adversarial thinking, but it can. In The
Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue, Deborah Tannen indicts our educational system for perpetuating what
she calls a “culture of critique,” an “argument culture” with dualistic
tendencies both to cast all complex issues as simpler debates with a right side
and a wrong side, and to try to win arguments at all costs, no matter what we
believe (257). To sense some truth in Tannen’s criticism, I need look no further than my own
bookshelves for my multiple volumes of Taking
Sides, collections of essays that present--according to their subtitles--Clashing Views on Controversial Subjects,
always set up as a question followed by a “yes” essay and a “no” essay. Within this stance of argument or debate--the
“standard way of writing an academic paper” and thus often over-emphasized in
our classes--students are focused on being right, winning, and conquering the
opposition, no matter what they really think, rather than engaging in “truth
seeking,” “integrative thinking,” and an authentic exploration of a topic, open
to multiple possibilities (Tannen 268, 260,
273). Tannen
further claims that this intellectual environment has become “a model for
behavior” outside of the classroom, setting “the tone for how individuals
experience their relationships to other people and to the society we live in”
(280). In this time of war, then, isn’t
teaching Tannen’s other mindset--the ability to be
“of three minds,” to see “thirteen ways of looking at” an issue--absolutely
essential? Isn’t this the time to take
stock and encourage multiple stances when we teach students how to deal with
controversial subjects and how to address conflict? If we haven’t already, should we now empower
our students by showing them how to “widen [their] field of vision, and discover
the paradigm shift that will permit truly new understanding” (290)?
Tannen traces the “roots of the adversarial approach to knowledge”
back to its telling origins: universities in the Middle Ages attended only by
men and marked by frequent violence and the pitting of students against “their
symbolic enemies,” their teachers (257).
Significantly, in their Latin language, “school” or ludus came from “training
exercises for war”; thus, the descendants of these classrooms teach that
knowledge is “conceived of as a metaphorical battle” (258-259). Of course, then, we use the term “critical”
for careful, reasoned thought; this antagonistic heritage is suggested in both
its denotation and its connotation. As a
result of this privileging of argument and “regard[ing]
criticism and attack as the best if not the only type of rigorous thinking,” we
have devalued other forms of rigorous thinking and other approaches to issues
(257). Synthesizing--one of the higher
levels of thinking in Bloom’s Taxonomy--is often treated as wishy-washy
avoidance, the inability to pick a side, “a ‘cop-out’” (Tannen
257). This is certainly the message sent from our leadership during this time
of war. President Bush’s oft repeated
proclamation that “you’re either with us or you’re against us” is evidence of
the primacy of the dualistic thinking and its accompanying logical fallacies of
oversimplification, misrepresentation, and straw men. The suggestion that those who didn’t support
the war were guilty of treason is a now famous example of “the heart of our
argument culture” in which we see “issues and ideas as absolute and
irreconcilable principles continually at war” (Tannen
284). Further effects of our argument
culture’s thinking--there is one
right side, and that side must win--were seen when our government rejected Jesse
Jackson’s offer to travel to Afghanistan to talk to the Taliban before we sent
our troops to drop bombs. Our nation had
decided that there would be no negotiation because such “giving in” would prove
that our country was weak. War--further
violence--was the only possible response to September 11. Barbara Kingsolver was well aware of this
dualistic environment when she stated, “It is not naive to propose alternatives
to war,” and then prepared herself:
“I'll get scolded for it, I know. I've already been called every name in
the Rush Limbaugh handbook: traitor, sinner, naive, liberal, peacenik, whiner.” Proposing
alternatives, seeing the grey in between the black and white, thinking outside
of the binary are traitorous cop-outs that those in the right must prove wrong, without even considering the possible
wisdom in such positions. What kind of
message does this send our students? It
reinforces the messages we send when we teach only argument.
What I have realized
as my pedagogical response to September 11 is that this dualistic thinking,
passed on as the only intelligent way of looking at the world when it is the
only stance we teach in our classrooms, both reflects and perpetuates not only
an argument culture but a culture of war in personal, academic, professional,
and ultimately national and international relationships. It teaches and confirms the tendency to cast
opposing sides as proverbial apples and oranges, so dissimilar that we can’t
even discuss them together. However, as
this cliché reveals, what I hope my students begin to recognize more often is
that many apparent opposites that seem “absolute and irreconcilable” have
plenty in common: both apples and oranges are edible fruits that we sometimes
use for juice, they both begin with vowels, they’re both semi-round and about
the same size, and they both bear seeds and grow on trees. So much for the difficulty of comparing
apples and oranges. Such is the logic of
teaching only argument, debate, picking sides, disproving the opposition--without
an alternative, “another recourse.”
Now more than ever,
I’m drawn to the concept of “teaching peace,” as our local columnist
discussed. That day, after the second
Tower fell, I began giving serious thought to an alternative rhetorical stance:
conflict resolution, mediation, searching for the common ground between what
may seem like polar opposites, perhaps even finding an outcome to which
opposing sides can agree. In “Six Steps
Toward Conflict Resolution,” William V. Costanzo
offers some good beginning guidelines: students should “seek to understand the
positions of both sides, to clarify their underlying interests, and to
appreciate their immediate and long-range concerns. At the same time, [students] invent new
options that might resolve the disagreement and consider them in the light of
objective standards” (9). With these basic steps in mind, I committed to
teaching this stance as a valuable method of approaching complex issues, an
alternative to effective rhetorical argument.
As with many composition
syllabi, my course schedule was full of references to argument, persuasion, rhetoric. In fact, three
of the six units on my syllabus explicitly pointed to this stance. Also like many syllabi, mine was the result
of much pre-semester frustration: how would I fit in everything? I had eliminated this, cut that, and
conflated those until I came up with a tight schedule that would address all
the elements of writing and rhetoric essential to second-semester composition .
. . unless we faced school cancellations because of extreme snowfalls. (I couldn’t imagine any other reason for
classes to be canceled.) Now I had to
accommodate the school cancellations on Friday, September 15, as a national day
of mourning. So my already-packed
syllabus was in a crunch. (I had
addressed the counterproductive concerns for coverage in my literature courses,
admitting that the desire to include “everything,” in fact, led to less learning by the students and a more
hectic classroom environment. Obviously,
I hadn’t yet translated that lesson to my composition courses.) So, four weeks into the semester, I had to
figure out how and when to teach an alternative stance to the primary focus of
this course.
I decided, rather
than overwhelming my students further in a difficult course during a difficult
time, to allow the students to choose their stance for their research papers:
conflict resolution or argument. (The
possible topics included the effects of media violence, standardized testing,
online education, and restorative justice.)
I introduced conflict resolution by briefly explaining why I was
suddenly offering an alternative to argument, my response to the September 11
attacks, and how I felt about what I was teaching. The next meeting, we practiced it with an article
we had recently read on standardized testing.
I asked the students to paraphrase each side in the debate, and we
listed the major points on the board, pro-testing on the right, anti-testing on
the left. I then asked the class to
determine the motives for each side, considering the background of each
perspective and what each wanted for students, teachers, and our educational
system. The students soon found that
both sides in this seemingly unresolvable debate
wanted the same thing (all students to learn, all schools doing the best they
can for all students, and improving schools across the board), a surprise when
they were expecting debates to be made up of apples and oranges. I wrote these common points in the middle of
the board and finished by pointing out the Venn diagram we had just made,
demonstrating that pairs, even opposites often intersect in some common
elements. The differences, the
disagreements often come in how to get to that common motive, so we discussed
many alternatives to multiple choice and standardized testing, such as essay
exams, exams written by local teachers rather than distant boards, and more,
again noting the complexity of such solutions, but at least discovering a
common ground, a middle point that bridged the extreme distance in this debate.
Despite my efforts,
some of the most explicit evidence of Tannen’s
adversarial stance within argument emerged in my classroom that semester. My students had submitted proposals for their
research papers in which they clarified their topic and stance, as well as the
beginnings of their research. One
student who chose to argue against standardized testing described her research
process as a “journey to assemble armor to fight the injustice” of her
opposition’s views. Despite our in-class
discovery of the common ground she shared with what she would call her “enemy,”
she clearly felt so strongly about her view that it became a crusade--perhaps
not coincidentally shortly after the president used the same word to describe
the nation’s campaign against the Taliban.
Another student characterized her opposition’s points as ones she must
“refute, discredit, and shoot holes through.”
The redundant insistence on disproving her opposition, combined with the
violent imagery, reveals how easy it is for our students to envision argument
as total conquest, a take-no-prisoners war with no survivors. Perhaps what was happening outside of the
classroom during those months--the president’s rousing speeches lauded by both
Republicans and Democrats, the repetitive televising of the World Trade Center
crashes, the recordings of the final phone calls of the now-dead reaching out
to loved ones before they died in the Towers or in the plane that crashed in
Pennsylvania, the daily images of our apparently patriotic bombs falling in
Afghanistan--was too powerful, and my solitary concerns about more peaceable
alternatives to the voice of conquest came at an impossible time for some.
Fewer students than I
expected took up the challenge to write a conflict resolution paper. Before they started writing their papers,
almost half of the students said they were planning on writing a conflict
resolution essay rather than an argument, but in the end, only about a fourth
carried through on this intention. When
they turned in their essays, I asked them to write a note about why they chose
their particular stance. Most who chose
argument said they did so because they had strong feelings about the issue, so
their stance reflected their authentic position. Interestingly, a few said they chose argument
because it’s “easier” since they only had to deal with one side of the issue,
clearly revealing a lack of understanding about effective rhetorical argument
in which they must address potential points of opposition to avoid merely
preaching to the proverbial choir. A few
wrote arguments because they accurately noted that this is what we focused on
in class. Clearly, I had not offered
enough instructional time on the alternative: I gave no model of this kind of
essay, and one in-class workshop was not enough for the less confident
writers. One claimed that he had decided
not to write an argument, and indeed his essay fit the basic format for
conflict resolution, but the “solutions” he offered in the end were ones that
clearly revealed a preference and would please only one side; it was, in fact,
an argument in sheep’s clothing. Several
noted that they began their research with an argumentative stance but changed
to conflict resolution when they saw validity in both sides of their issue or
when their research showed that the issue is more complex than figuring out
simply who was right and who was wrong.
Yes. These students were
embracing a perspective beyond dualisms, developing “three minds,” undergoing a
“paradigm shift.” These were my
successes that semester, though I now work for more.
As our war efforts wax
and wane and wax again, I have been working harder to counter some of the
faulty assumptions and half-learned lessons that occurred that initial semester
and to encourage more authentic arguments and more skills in conflict
resolution. For the semester after my
initial attempt, I built into the syllabus an entire unit on seeking common
ground, making sure that we apply workshops, model essays, class discussions,
and specific instruction to the approach, as I do for argument. Additionally, for the students who decide
that they do, in fact, fall on one side of the issue they research for their
mediation essay, I allow them to use the same topic for their argumentative
paper. They will thus be approaching a
single issue from multiple perspectives:
first, striving to understand both sides fully, to discover a
resolution, to uncover the common motives between rhetorical “enemies”; next,
if they authentically prefer one side of the debate, arguing for that position only after such in-depth considerations
and arguing its merits while also pointing out the merits of the other side--a
much more effective rhetorical approach than the “easier,” less informed, and
less persuasive form of argument-as-battle.
Hopefully, this assignment will show the students that issues frequently
cast in black and white--Stevens’s blackbird, our wars against terrorism, Iraq,
and beyond, etc.--are often much more complicated and open to multiple
approaches. Certainly, I won’t deny that
persuasive or argumentative writing is a valuable skill that our students still
need to learn, but something has been missing, some “other recourse,” and on
the morning of September 11, as I faced 24 shocked faces, I think I found what
it is, at least for my classes.
Good teachers don’t
teach the exact same syllabus over and over.
While there is continuity in the essential course concepts, we try new
techniques, add new readings, rearrange units to
change emphasis, and evolve and change with the world around us and the
students in front of us. September 11
was perhaps the day on which we all evolved and changed the most, and I
committed myself to moving with the students, to guiding them away from the
inevitable call to war in the hopes that a middle ground might one day be more
familiar territory and looking for a resolution might be a more common goal in
our culture.
Works Cited
Costanzo, William V. “Focus on Conflict Resolution.” Classroom
Notes Plus: A
Quarterly
of Teaching Ideas (August
2001): 7-9.
Kingsolver,
Barbara. “No Glory in Unjust War on the
Weak.” Common Dreams
NewsCenter. Common Dreams. 25 Jan. 2002
<http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1014‑01.htm>.
Nimm, Eileen. “Writer’s
Block.”
Stevens,
Wallace. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird.” 1931. Anthology
of
Modern American
Poetry. Ed. Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 127-29.
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to
Dialogue.