We are now 3 days into President Trumps term, and the turmoil around the country has not settled. Like any millennial lady, after work I check my Facebook and see links to 1,000 angry hyper-partisan articles that may or may not be from credible, reliable sources. I scroll through memes dedicated to the destruction of one political party or family. I read the most vicious comments between people attempting to prove which person is "wrong". If I am noticing this negativity, this infuriation, every single time I log on to Facebook (which, self-admittedly, is more than I wish), imagine what our students are seeing. They are witnessing intelligent, educated adults desperately trying to make their voice heard and using cutting personal attacks to do so. If this is what is being modeled for our children, what are we supposed to expect for communication practices in the future?
Before I begin my cathartic explanation on how we right this wrong, I must state that it is an excellent thing for each person to have her/his own opinion. We each should have our own thoughts on big issues impacting our country. We should build these opinions based off of our values, morals, religious or spiritual beliefs, etc. We should not remain neutral on everything, we should not teach neutrality on every topic. If we did, we wouldn't be a progressive country. We wouldn't be constantly working to find the bigger, the better, or the newer. Opinions are a good thing to have.
Okay, now that I have completed my PSA on opinions, I am going to dive right into what is wrong with structuring opinions right now in 2017. I attended a seminar last week on fake news, facilitated by the incredible David Wee. I am telling you, the stuff I learned was mind blowing. Several teachers engaged in a discussion about the fear that there truly are no more neutral, fact-based sources out there. It seems like everyone is fighting for their own agenda. While that's not necessarily wrong, it makes building opinions extremely difficult. If we cannot have access to the straight up, non-biased facts, than we cannot build opinions that are completely accurate. For example, I have had students come in to class exclaiming that Hillary Clinton's is a close relative of Hitler and supported his mission. I have had students come in to class stating that Donald Trump recently hosted a KKK event. I asked each student where they found this news. Both showed me different websites, hyper-partisan sites, that had since taken the articles down becasue they were, frankly, ridiculously untrue. We had a discussion about where they found the articles - Facebook. We talked about credibility and cross-checking facts. We talked about how our media is changing and what we need to do to be responsible consumers of news. I realized quickly that we needed a lesson on this, and David provided me with just that.
We had a fake news activity last week. The students were astounded that, out of 6 articles, only 1 article seemed partially credible, partially non-biased, and partially accurate. The students realized that they needed to check the author's background, the connection of the source to different political parties, the accuracy of every fact and figure, and the main purpose for writing the article. After doing all of those things, they would get a better understanding of whether or not the news article was appropriate to use towards building or defending an opinion.
That is a lot of work to do for just one article. Many of us read several articles a day! Adding that entire list of fact-checking into our daily reading practices seems daunting. But the result could be an inability to understand the other side and the extreme confidence that our side is the "right" side. This is the dangerous territoriy I described earlier in this post. It feels that so many people have forgotten how to talk to each other, how to listen to a new point of view or opinion, deeply consider its validity, and then respectfully challenge it. We have forgotten that other people can be "right" at the exact same time that we are "right." We have forgotten that the difference in opinion is the BEAUTY of the United States. We have forgotten that upholding each person's right to a different opinion is in the foundation of our country. We have forgotten how to be nice. History hasn't changed because one side forced their views maliciously and angrily on another; it change because people came together, learned from one another, and walked in other people's shoes.
I, along with so many of my collegeues nation-wide, are trying to facilitate disagreement in our class. I want the students to be given a very intense subject, build their opinions, and then disagree. Learning how to disagree is an artform and we have to stop its extinction. We have paideias and small group discussions in order to practice expressing our opinions while listening to each other. Students have to listen to each others opinions, they have to consider each others opinions, and then they can disagree. Because we have been practicing so much, I have seen some of the most beautiful disagreements in my life. I have witnessed students debating tax policies and taking polar opposite sides. They used fact, they tried to debunk each other's theories, some revised their own opinons after listening to both sides, and then they walked away as friends. Man, could we learn something from these kids.
The thing I fear most today is the growing inability to be open-minded. We are so stuck
in our beleifs that we have forgotten this idea of growth. We are built to adapt; maybe the things that we believed in yesterday will not be the ones we believe in tomororw and that is OK. We have to facilitate conversations with one another, especially when we are sharing differeing views. During these conversations, we have to listen to the other side and consider it's validity. We cannot spend our time thinking that we have all the answers and that the "other side" is corrupt or unintelligent. We have to open our doors, our minds, and our hearts to those different than us in an attempt to learn. Somewhere in the middle is the truth and somewhere in the middle is the best progress. But we are never going to find it if we are too angry or too afraid to step outside of what we know.
“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there.” - Rumi
