By Four high school freshman students visited my Opening Syllabus undergraduate class on cultural diversity in education. After the class, together with one of my undergraduate students, the high school students and I went for lunch. On the way to the Student Union on the University campus, where we would be having lunch, we discussed our class. I asked the high school students what attracted most their attention about the class. The high students were very surprised (pleasantly surprised) about open and thoughtful discussion in our class. They asked if it were a norm in the class. They told us that they did not have any of that in their elementary, middle, and now in high school (they all are freshmen). I asked why. Two of the high school students told us because when their teachers tried to do it, kids became very passionate and personal and the discussion usually deteriorated in a shouting match — people get often offended about each other passionate views, personal attacks and counter-attack were launched, while many other kids tried to shut up and got withdrawn. That is why high school teachers often stop any class discussions and return back to lecturing. My undergraduate student commented that shouting matches were rather common in some of her undergraduate classes but never in our class despite the fact that we discussed very touchy issues like, for example, race relations in the society and education a week ago. I told that I had never experienced shouting matches in my classes for many years I did dialogic teaching — the term and phenomenon were very new for me. The high school students turned to me and asked what I do to prevent shouting matches in my classes.
So, I have questions for OSE instructors and OSE students. Have you experienced "shouting matches" in OSE classes? If so, please describe them and whether and how OSE instructors tried to deal with them. If not, why not? What do OSE instructors may do to avoid or minimize them or respond to them? I'll try to reply myself below….
As I said above, I don't remember having "shouting matches" in my classes ever. I may forget something, or didn't notice, or may be lucky so far. But in any case, I think I do the following things that may reduce a possibility for "shouting matches" to emerge in my dialogic discussion-based classes that promote students' ontology, opinions and discussions of controversies and touchy topics:
Considering a "shouting match" phenomenon as unavoidable — so far I'm lucky that I was not running into it (if it is true indeed). There is no way to guarantee their prevention. I wonder how I'd respond to it. Also, items#1-10 above have limitations: educational tolerance to intolerance has its own limits… I imagine that at some point, I must act as a policeman to keep peace in my class rather than as an educator helping the students to critically examine the self and the world. Sometimes, to be professionally and humanely responsible, the role of a policeman in the class has to be prioritize over the role of an educator/learner by the instructor and/or students. Sometimes safety is more important than education. What do you think?