The Right to a Wrong Idea

In my last post, I said something about how teaching comes in two flavors or styles: the sharing of gifts and the asking of questions. All well and good. But is the student always required to accept the teacher’s gift? Is the student required to give the answer the teacher wants?

If I teach that 2 + 2 = 4, is it okay if a student says, “No, it isn’t?” Maybe you think that’s an easy question. How about this one: if I teach that the states of the southern confederacy seceded in order to protect their right to keep slaves, is it okay if a student says, “No, they didn’t?”

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The easy response in both cases would be to say that it’s the teacher’s job to correct the student, period. Identifying and correcting misconceptions is a critical part of teaching. It’s why we don’t simply say a bunch of things and then move on to the next bunch of things. We assess—informally and formally—all the time—to make sure students understand and can apply what we have taught. We hold ourselves responsible for them knowing the truth. When we catch a mistake or a misconception, we’re supposed to correct it. Otherwise, what’s the point of all the blather? We might as well just talk to ourselves.

The older-fashioned way of doing this is to say, “WRONG” and provide the correct answer—or to move to another student to see if they know what they’re talking about. But this can be an unpleasant and humiliating experience for the student, and it doesn’t encourage them to raise their hand next time. It’s also not a particularly useful encounter for the teacher. All you’ve learned is that they don’t know X. Why they don’t know it, you have no insight into. And neither do they.

This is why, in classroom discourse, it can be more useful to ask students to explain their answers, even if it takes more time than simply correcting them. You can learn how a student thinks—and that is much more valuable than knowing they selected C instead of B.

Sometimes it’s important to dig into the correct answers, too, just to make sure students know what they’re talking about. There’s a great story that John Bransford relates, about a third grader who is asked about the shape of the earth. She says it is round, and the answer is accepted. It is only several years later that the student discovers, upon being embarrassed in front of her class, that when she had said “round,” she had been thinking in two dimensions, not three. The third-grade teacher hadn’t taken a second to ask, “round like what?” to find out if she would say, “round like a ball,” or “round like a plate.” Taking that extra minute to ask, “what do you mean by that?” can save everyone a world of trouble later on.

“What do you mean by that?” is a powerful assessment tool. It digs under the surface to reveal what’s underneath. “How do you know?” or “can you show me how you got that?” are also good options. It’s possible that a student heard her neighbor whisper the correct answer a minute ago. It’s possible that she memorized the correct answer but has no real understanding of why it’s correct. One probing question can reveal a lot.

It’s also a more respectful way of engaging with a learner. It’s not adversarial; it doesn’t flaunt the teacher’s authority. It communicates genuine curiosity. It opens things up rather than shutting things down. It tells students that a mistake is the beginning of learning, not a dead-end of embarrassing failure. From personal experience, I can tell you that my lifelong feelings about math would have been very different if anyone had ever helped me think about why I was wrong, instead of simply telling me, over and over, that I was wrong.

This approach becomes even critical as the student gets older and the issues under discussion become more complex and, potentially, controversial. So, let’s get into that. What happens if a student isn’t making a straightforward procedural error, but is stating a belief based on a religious or political background that put them at odds with your curriculum or with you?

The easy answer is to say, again, that it’s the teacher’s job to correct the student, period. But these days, depending on the state and the district, a teacher can be accused of “indoctrination,” simply by teaching a fact (or, worse, an interpretation) that is at odds with the community’s way of thinking—or even one parent’s. So what’s the right thing to do?

My feeling is that even when things are controversial, asking probing questions is the right way to proceed. If the student insists that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War, ask them why they think that, and where they got their information, rather than shutting them down and saying, “no.” There is a difference between fact and opinion, between reality and belief, and part of our job is to help students build the intellectual toolkit they need to tell the difference. If we do all the thinking for them, we’re keeping all those tools for ourselves.

Dialogue, as we said, is more than respectful and curious; it also opens the door to change. Socrates changed people’s minds without stating a position of his own; he just asked annoying questions that forced his victims to think their way to a different position. Socratic teaching takes a lot longer than simply lecturing. A lot longer. But students come out of the encounter owning the resulting ideas as their own (whether they have changed their minds or held firm on their previous beliefs). We can engage them in the dialogue, but they have to own their minds.

Are we okay with the holding firm, though? Do we think a student has the right to hold a position or belief we think is flat-out incorrect—or abhorrent? What is a liberal teacher supposed to do with an alt-right reactionary in her classroom? What is a religiously conservative teacher supposed to do with an outspokenly progressive student staring her down?

Let’s agree that respect is the non-negotiable floor to all of this. Everyone must be treated with dignity and respect in the classroom. Every child needs to feel safe and welcomed. Every teacher needs to feel safe and respected. If a child’s beliefs make it impossible for them to be a respectful member of that classroom community, they need to learn elsewhere. If a teacher’s beliefs make it impossible for them to be a respectful member of that classroom community, they need to teach elsewhere.

Once we’ve established that, is it allowable for a teacher to express a political opinion in the classroom and to argue against a student whose beliefs they disagree with? Plenty of people these days say No. It’s indoctrination, and is wildly inappropriate—it should be, in fact, a firing offense. Other people say Yes—the world is inherently political, and it’s impossible to talk about the world in any serious way without having a perspective on it. Young people cannot learn about the world if they, and we, are not allowed to speak openly and honestly about it.

I don’t know that there’s a perfect answer—or a universal answer that applies everywhere and makes everybody happy. But I think the key is examining and understanding one’s own beliefs and biases and seeing them clearly—knowing where and when they affect the way material is presented in the classroom, and then clearly distinguishing “I think” from “it is so.” Here is what we know and what we do not know; here is what I think it all means; here is why I think that. When we express an opinion in front of students, we should hold ourselves accountable to opening our mind to them in this way. When they express an opinion, they should learn to do the same. It may not be a perfect inoculation against charges of indoctrination, but it gives teachers a firmer bit of ground to stand on.

Sometimes, the progression of evidence is air-tight and a position is either clearly right or clearly wrong. If a student cannot defend their position, it should be challenged. If they believe that 5 x 3 = 72, well, they’re wrong. They will not be able to prove or support that position. So…give them the chance and let them learn.

What about the student who denies that slavery caused the Civil War? Well, the behavior of humans is messier than the behavior of integers, so it’s not as cut and dried as 5 x 3. It takes longer to understand why that position is incorrect. Understanding history involves more than reciting events in a narrative as though an author wrote a novel; it requires questioning the fragmentary and contradictory evidence that history has left behind—what the evidence is, and where it came from, and what agendas drove the creation of it, and how it has been used in the years since the event. It requires asking what we think we know, and why we think we know it. That is the essence of historical literacy. To avoid engaging with that way of thinking because it might offend someone is malpractice.

The idea that teachers should confine themselves to “reading, writing, and arithmetic,” the vaunted “basics,” and keep away from anything controversial or political, is hopeless. The world is not simple, and we will not help the world by pumping simple-minded adults out into it at every high school graduation. The idea that there should be an iron-clad separation between what young people learn at home and what they learn at school, and that the one must never affect or influence the other, is absurd. Our upbringing does affect and influence how we think about the things we learn in school. And the things we learn in school do affect and influence the beliefs we were raised with. It has always been this way; it will always be this way. The only question is whether young people emerge from their schooling trusting their elders as honest guides and coaches, or whether they enter adulthood despising their elders as liars.

No social movement or legislation to infantilize education will win, in the end. The world makes itself known. It’s up to us to decide what role we want to play in its revelation.

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