How to encourage diversity of points of view in classrooms

Groven made this point during a recent roundtable discussion on how best to encourage diversity of viewpoints in classrooms, hosted by the Freedom of Expression Project, a nonpartisan initiative led by Georgetown University. EdSurge was asked to moderate the session, which took place here on the Hamline University campus.

The discussion touched on many thorny issues facing K-12 and college instructors these days, including how to respond to pressures to ban books in schools, how to make classrooms a welcoming place for debate as schools and colleges become more diverse, and how to respond. to the misinformation that students bring to classroom conversations.

The panelists were:

• Groven, who is also assistant dean for faculty development and associate professor of communication studies at Augsburg University.
• Kathryn Kay Coquemont, vice president of student affairs and dean of students at Macalester College
• Deborah Appleman, professor of educational studies at Carleton College and author of the book “Literature and the new cultural wars”, which raises the question: “Can educators continue to teach troubling but valuable texts?”

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Cloudy, Spotify, Seamstress or wherever you listen to podcasts, or use the player on this page. Or read a partial transcript below, lightly edited for clarity.

How is the diversity of points of view different now compared to a few years ago?

Deborah Appleman: I (used to be) a high school English teacher, but at Carleton I’m in the educational studies department. So my big concern about what’s happening with the teaching of literature has to do with the people I call my ‘thought partners’ across the country: high school teachers, middle school teachers, and even elementary school teachers, that are really threatened. That includes librarians too.

If I think about what has changed at Carleton in the 37 years I have been there, there are both external and internal forces. External forces have to do with the conversation the culture is having about cancellation, about what authors are doing well, what books are doing well, and what content is doing well. And this seeps into college culture within the context of a classroom.

And I need to start by saying that I love my students, I am here for my students. They are the most important thing I think about. But many things have changed. One of the things that has changed is something some of us call “the harm discourse.” So students come to the classroom extremely vulnerable and at the same time armed with the willingness to defend themselves against any perceived harm. And I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with colleagues who are reconsidering what they’re teaching. People anticipate moments of difficulty (and avoid assigning books that might cause controversy).

So, on the one hand, we teachers have our own version of the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” None of us want to cause harm to our students. On the other hand, we believe that learning is and should be uncomfortable.

So, on the first day of my educational psychology class, I say… my job is not to make sure you never feel uncomfortable. My job is actually to make sure that you are intellectually uncomfortable with that kind of cognitive dissonance that will help you grow. That has become more difficult to do.

Kathryn Kay Coquemont: I want to compare something that happened in my formal education to what I think is happening with the current education of our traditional-age college students. So it wasn’t until I got a Ph.D. Student in my 30s who learned about the origins of racism towards Asians in our country. That’s where I learned how Asian immigrants were not allowed a path to citizenship. About how after the Civil War, when Southern plantation owners wanted to pay their former black slaves less, they brought in Asian immigrants from the West Coast who had been driven out of those cities due to anti-Asian sentiment, and how it sparked discord between those two communities of color. I didn’t know about the history of Hawaii and what we had done to make it become part of the United States.

When I learned this when I was 30, hopefully my brain was already fully developed by then. I had a lot of life experience about how to deal with these things that seemed so personal and difficult to deal with and that I was so angry about. And in high school they didn’t teach me those things.

The good thing right now is that our students come with a totally different K-12 education. They could have been in the AP African American History. They may have already learned what short-term oppression is through TikTok. The way they’re learning about these things and starting to grapple with what that means for society and what it means for who they are as individuals is totally different than how I walked into a classroom as a college student. And we should rethink what curricula call and challenge them.

Why do you think these changes have occurred?

apple man: One of the things… is what I call a pandemic hangover. For students who spent their first years of college in their childhood dorm with their stuffed animals behind them, there was a way of infantilizing that made them feel more vulnerable. They didn’t have many of the social interaction skills one would expect 18- to 22-year-olds to have.

Grove: I would say there are probably three things at play. One is simply that as a society, as conservative columnist George Will has said, American history can be written by watching more people be given a seat at the table of American democracy. And I think that’s essentially what we see continuing to happen, is that more people are getting a seat at the table and as a result their views need to be included, and that’s happening at all levels of society, including education, higher education, and in debate.

I think a second is the diversification of the country. From a demographic perspective, and particularly the diversification of higher education, because a lot of the problems we see now are actually driven by who is in the classroom. If we turn the clock back 100 or 150 years, higher education was overwhelmingly white and male. And as a result, many of these questions just didn’t (see) relevant, because they weren’t part of their experience. But now we have in Augsburg, I think we’re like 67 percent students of color now. That means if we’re not talking about those issues, we’re not talking about the lives of those students.

And then the third part is that a large body of research, studies and theories have been developed that talk about why these things should matter, not only for education, pedagogy, but also for all the different areas in which we do decisions collectively as a society.

How can educators respond to these changes?

apple man: Thus, a couple of decades ago, a literature professor, Gerald Graff, spoke of “teaching the controversy”: saying what is at stake, presenting both sides. So when you are teaching a book because the author has been censored. I was recently working with some students and teachers at Henry High School in Minneapolis, and they were offering a book written by Sherman Alexie, who has been ‘cancelled’ due to his sexual misconduct. accusations and admissions of the same. He is a wonderful writer and, in many ways, irreplaceable for some of the work he can do with children.

So what the teacher did was say, ‘Okay, we have these books.’ We have another set of classes from this book or this book and this is what I want to tell you. Some people think this book should not be taught and here are a couple of articles on why. And then here are a couple of articles about what this book is and some reviews, let’s read them, talk about them, then have a discussion and then vote.’

Coquemont: The other thing I think about a lot is, ‘Who is built up and who has had a legacy of being built up into who they are and who isn’t?’ … ‘Who has always had a reflected mirror and who has only had windows?’ And I think sometimes that’s really the crux of the issue: there are options now being offered that are not yet equitable, not because we’re trying to reinforce inequity, but because the society that they’ve lived in hasn’t been equitable for them. So one of the things I think about a controversial book is: can you deal with that controversy? Are you a healthier person to have that conversation when you’ve already had things that reflect who you are?

And I’m really concerned about the state of K-12 education, by state, because it’s going to be even more difficult, especially for those who work at private universities that have students from all different states where people have had very, very different experiences. That’s always been true, but I feel like it’s just gone further.

But maybe they don’t start with the controversy because maybe some of our students now have only had to deal with the controversy and have been taught the controversy. Maybe start first with the things that uplift and reflect.

One of the controversial things I’ve noticed is the way we also sometimes say that emotion introduced into spaces is somehow bad. And a big part of my job is to reduce the intensity of emotions. There is a lot of that that is needed. But I also think about how we can set up the conversation to say, “It’s okay to bring emotion to this, but let’s talk a little more about the place of that, because emotion is really connected to the lived experiences that we live.” I want to honor.’

Listen to the full discussion on the EdSurge podcast.