I was not looking for the two paragraphs I am going to share from a 1994 article entitled, “Democracy and the Teaching of Argument” written from a British perspective. The article starts out, as expected with a definition of argumentation, includes a great list of why we argue — the best I’ve found thus far. The author notes that we are stuck in schools, covering too few of the varied types of argumentation, using only traditional essay form, and not providing real audiences and purposes for student work.<\/p>\n
Then, on pages 67-68, I read the two paragraphs shared below. \u00a0I’m not sure how things have changed in the British education system since 1994, but I think the U.S. has adopted some of this 1994 mindset.<\/p>\n
“Furthermore, the \u00a0whole \u00a0English curriculum is framed in monologic terms: individuals \u00a0compete \u00a0against \u00a0others \u00a0in \u00a0the classrooms, classes (and their teachers) compete for rankings in school, schools compete both locally, regionally and nationally and are represented in league tables. There is no sense that learning is a dialogic, negotiated activity. Rather, learning is seen to be the direct result of teaching and can be measured in \u00a0‘performance’ or \u00a0‘output.’ You can \u00a0see how \u00a0contrary this set-up is \u00a0to the spirit of inquiry (“No, we haven’t time to discuss that fossil you \u00a0brought into \u00a0the classroom this morning, because we’ve got to concentrate on the National Curriculum”) and how it reduces argument to safe, conventional forms that are more to do with control and regulation from above than with the genuine exploration \u00a0of \u00a0ideas \u00a0in \u00a0language, \u00a0with understanding a \u00a0multiplicity of \u00a0positions, with resolution, with the exploration and acceptance of difference. (p. 67)<\/p>\n
\u00a0In effect, what we \u00a0have in \u00a0the present government in \u00a0England is \u00a0a \u00a0hegemonic, ideologically-driven \u00a0situation \u00a0in \u00a0which successive Secretaries of State have been influenced \u00a0more \u00a0by \u00a0government \u00a0‘think- tanks’-small, extremists-than ill-informed \u00a0groups \u00a0of by \u00a0the \u00a0testimonies \u00a0of \u00a0teachers or \u00a0anyone who \u00a0knows \u00a0anything about education. Indeed, it has been the express intention of the government to eradicate anyone with a knowledge of language\u00a0or language education from these committees, guided by the principle that if you don’t know anything about a field, you are in the best position to \u00a0advise on \u00a0it. Anyone who does know is branded as prejudiced or ‘liberal’ and treated with suspicion by the government. ” (pp. 67-68)<\/p>\n
Andrews, R. (1994). Democracy and the teaching of argument.\u00a0The English Journal<\/i>,\u00a083<\/i>(6), 62-69.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was not looking for the two paragraphs I am going to share from a 1994 article entitled, “Democracy and the Teaching of Argument” written from a British perspective. The article starts out, as expected with a definition of argumentation, includes a great list of why we argue — theRead More →<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-sachauncey","post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463,"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.informationconnections.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}