From
what I've seen in comment sections of articles on line, and based in 40 years
teaching courses in rhetoric, "the art of ethical persuasion," I'll
suggest a broader project.
One
of the reasons so much of our public discourse is uncivil is that too few
Americans know how to put together an argument and therefore fall back on personal attack. (Too few Americans can
argue well privately with a spouse or other family member or friend, which is a
related issue.)
For
the last three generations, middle-class kids have gotten little practice
arguing in contexts they care about. Their families have fewer children, and
family dinners have become rare, so young children don't get supervised
practice arguing with siblings, with feedback from parents on the order of
"'Johnny is a doodie-head' is not an argument!" Older children aren't
routinely shooed out of the house to organize their own games, and by the time
they're teens moving toward adulthood, economically-privileged kids are trapped
in what I've called "The Little-League Syndrome."
Little
League Baseball and similar organizations for other sports, and grammar school
and high-school athletic teams, teach kids to play the sports well, and these
adult-organized and coached sports have been excellent for father-daughter
relationships. They have been bad, though, for allowing American kids opportunities
to organize their own activities and learn how to persuade their peers.
On a
couple of occasions, my students were surprised to learn my age cohort really
didn't have Little League when and where I grew up, but teenage boys had high
school fraternities and social-athletic clubs and ran our own leagues.
"It's not like we built the parks and playing fields," I told my
students, but we did put together teams, arrange schedules, and, sometimes, had
to decide what to do with some schmucks who'd embezzled the money the clubs had
chipped in for trophies.
And
there were year clubs for boys and for girls that arranged social events.
Poorer
American kids still have gangs — which look to me authoritarian and led by
adults — but current fashions in middle-class American parenting and school
management seem to preclude kids' organizing their own activities.
So,
one thing that can be done to improve American discourse is for parents and
other adults to teach children basic manners and insist on basic decency to
others — including no bullying — and to draw back a bit at a time to allow older
kids to run more of their own activities and have to persuade one another to do
what they want them to do.
Little
League and such teaches kids how to fit into a bureaucracy and follow orders;
kid-organized activities teach democratic organizing, which includes persuasion
of peers on issues kids care about (and some activities that may legitimately
horrify their parents and others in authority).
The
schools need to teach things kids may care less about: argument as a kind of
summation of skills, but also description and definition and analysis and other
"modes" of discourse. For a slogan for this kind of teaching, we used
to have "Unplug the Scantron machines!": i.e., get rid of
multiple-choice tests (as an ultimate goal) and have students write out present
orally descriptions, extended definitions, analyses, and finally arguments.
Logical
thought isn't exactly natural, and kids need to be taught, and adults need to
be reminded, how to use evidence and present a logical argument (if one with
enough of an emotional appeal to get it accepted).
And
young adults and some older ones need to be taught how to debate with one
another on matters for adults, and for citizens.
This
doesn't mean just pure politics, but — obviously! — issues in the sciences, including
military science and tactics, history, theology, and the arts. And it means
some training in the sort of deep analysis where you can figure out why
political arguments so often go in circles.
One
reasons for a "failure
to communicate": Different people often use the same key words with
different meanings. E.g., if a human being is essentially a soul to be saved
and "ensoulment" occurs at conception, then abortion may be worse
than murder. If you're not big on theories of souls and/or if you think
theological issues shouldn't enter American politics — then you'll have a different
view on abortion (and we haven't even gotten to historical questions on control
of women's bodies!). For another example, what do we mean by
"patriot"? In 1969 or so, I told an FBI agent, "Mr. N_____ is a
very patriotic young man" since Mr. N_____ started out in Marine ROTC,
studied US warfare in Vietnam and decided it was wrong, dropped his plans for a
military career, and joined the Peace Movement, actively opposing the war. Now that is a patriot, like John Kerry, only
a bit earlier. The FBI agent may have had different ideas on patriotism and,
indeed, might have thought my idea of a patriot his idea of a traitor.
The
sort of rough-and-ready analysis I just did requires training, and pulling it
off in the real world requires practice — a lot of practice — in controlling
one's temper and getting opponents to control theirs.
Meg
Heubeck is doing important and difficult work; she deserves a wide variety of
support.
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