conditions of privacy and safety
no one else’s eyes. What’s crucial is the invitation to language in
conditions of privacy and safety.
7. Use the physical voice. When it’s hard to enter into a piece of writing
that feels difficult or distant, for example something written by someone
very different from us—or an intricate work like a Shakespeare sonnet—it
helps to try to read it aloud as well and meaningfully as possible. (When
I’m teaching a longer text, I choose crux passages of a few paragraphs
or a page.) The goal is not good acting; the goal is simply to say the
words so that we feel every meaning in them—so that we fully mean
every meaning. Get the words to “sound right” or to carry the meanings
across—for example, to listeners who don’t have a text. After we have
three or four different readings of the same passage, we can discuss
which ones manage to “sound right”—and usually these readings help us
enter in or assent. (It’s not fair to put students on the spot by asking them
to read with no preparation time. I ask students to prepare these reading
at home or practice them briefly in class in pairs.)
This activity illustrates something interesting about language. It’s
impossible simply to say words so they “sound right” without dwelling in
them and thus feeling their meaning. So instead of asking students to
“study carefully” this Shakespeare sonnet, I say, “Practice reading it
aloud till you can say every word with meaning.” This involves giving a
kind of bodily assent.
8. Nonadversarial argument. Finally, the classroom is an ideal place to
practice nonadversarial forms of argument. Our traditional model of
argument is a zero-sum game: “If I’m right, you must be wrong.” Essays
and dissertations traditionally start off by trying to demolish the views of
opponents. “Unless I criticize every other idea,” the assumption goes, “I
won’t have a clear space for my idea.” But this approach is usually
counterproductive–except with readers who already agree with you
and don’t need to be persuaded. This traditional argument structure
says to readers: “You cannot agree with my ideas—or even hear them—
until after you admit that you’ve been wrong or stupid.”
The structure of nonadversarial argument is simple, but it takes
practice and discipline: argue only for your position, not against other
positions. This is easy for me here since I have no criticisms at all of the
doubting game or critical thinking in itself. It’s much harder if I really hate
the idea I’m fighting.
It’s particularly hard if my essential argument is
negative: “Don’t invade Iraq.” So yes, there are some situations in which