In a class once, I had a student proudly tell a story about how, in the army, he and his buddies used to gang rape the other male soldiers. I was shocked and before I could act the students responded, criticizing him. But he scoffed at their disapproval. Instead of shrinking under their condemnation, he defended himself.
As this event is happening in slow motion and my thoughts are racing a mile a minute, I'm thinking, how can this possibly turn out well? How can I at the same time protect this student, teach him something about his own behavior, and help the other students learn from him? He was recently discharged from the army, homophobic and sexist, a lewd and disrespectful class clown'and desperately (inexplicably) wanted my approval.
As I am debating how to make this a teachable moment, he says, \What was I supposed to do? If I hadn't done it, I would have been next!"" The class was shocked into silence. Of course, I thought. This is it, this is the moment none of them will ever forget, a moment where someone else's unexplainable and indefensible beliefs and behaviors become explainable and defensible. Not right or wrong, but understandable.
This is one of the best moments in my teaching career. Somehow, at the end of the day, it meant more to me to move this student an inch than it did to move the rest of the students a mile. They did something more important than move forward'they broadened. Comprehending the incomprehensible is what education is truly about.
In this sense, having a student who vocally disagrees with the majority opinion is a wonderful opportunity. I teach a class in which emotions run high and moral condemnation simmers below the surface. Sometimes, people say outrageous things. Usually the students feel a need to educate the person. They label the person as right or wrong. Instead, I think such a scenario is at least as much of an opportunity for the other students to learn.
Disagreement is a fact of life. Thinking in terms of right and wrong isn't always productive. And learning to tolerate, manage, and even make the most of disagreement is a rare and undervalued skill.
For some reason we treat an opinion different from our own like a poison dart. When a person with whom we disagree begins to state her idea, our first response is defensive. We get physiologically upset. We build a wall, we plug our ears, we sing la la la, we begin formulating a response. We don't ever listen. We are intent on convincing others. We are afraid to let other ideas rattle around in our brains.
How quickly we forget that our primary focus is our own learning. Trying to convince other people not only inhibits our own education, it's hopeless as well. (I've been teaching long enough to know that I won't change many minds and neither will you, and there are studies to prove it.)
We should listen, not necessarily expecting to change our opinions, but to improve them and make them more nuanced. Incorporating other people's worldviews into our own can only make us more knowledgeable with a more complex and sophisticated understanding of the world.
In fact, it's our responsibility to do so. The conscientious thing to do (as citizens, as friends, as lovers, and perhaps someday parents) is to test out our ideas, to admit that we've been wrong before and could be wrong again, to accept the fact that we are uninformed about almost all things.
