Civil Discourse 101 Transcript (032)

TIM LEAR: Hi, this is Tim Lear, Director of College Counseling at the Pingry School, and you are at the Point of Learning with my friend for over 25 years now, Peter Horn. I know Pete has been facilitating hard conversations with adults as well as students for the past two decades, so when Pingry needed some help with civil discourse and dialogue, Pete was the person I called to lead workshops with faculty and students that he customized for us. I’m pleased that some of our students in the Politics Club turned Pete’s session with them after the January 6 Insurrection into an episode for their own podcast. They gave him permission to use it, so that’s pretty much what you’re about to hear as a special bonus episode of Point of Learning. I mention this in case Pete tries to take all the production credit, like he usually does! But seriously, I think this podcast about what and how and why we learn is so valuable that I became one of the first people to support it when Point of Learning joined Patreon last November. You can join me as a member for as little as $3 a month. Wait a minute. Pete, why am I paying $20 a month? Oh I remember: because it’s just that good. If you’re listening now, you probably know that already. If you haven’t joined yet, hit pause, visit patreon.com/pointoflearningpodcast, and choose the membership tier that's right for you. It only takes a minute. Thanks, and enjoy the show! 

[VOICEOVER]: On today’s show ... this guy!

PETER HORN: Thinking about civil discourse as truth-seeking. In other words, it’s not thinking about it as a debate, not thinking about it as an exercise in winning, which is one of the reasons that I think it requires practice. It involves inviting somebody else in that you trust to say, “Help me think about this difficult topic,” you know, whatever it is. “I want to explore it. I’ve got some ideas about it, but I’m also going to run the risk of changing my mind.”

[VO]: And a group of smart, curious high school students posing thoughtful questions about the hows and whys of civil discourse.

STUDENT: My question pertains to facilitating discussion within a group setting where there are obvious political divisions, however extreme or not …

[VO]: That’s right. One of my favorite topics, charged with one of my favorite sources of insight: students.

STUDENT: I think it’s unfortunate that facts for politicians specifically have become not exactly factual. So I think it’s easy to become wary of when politics becomes so deeply rooted in like, you know, statistics, for example, and when a person that may not exactly be qualified is talking about them. But if they do their homework, it’s incredibly impressive.

STUDENT: If we’re talking to people in a group setting, for example, or even on social media, because we see a lot of arguments on Twitter now. So in these kinds of indirect interactions or spheres where there are other people present, how do we effectively converse—I’m reluctant to use the word debate because I don’t think it’s a debate kind of format, but how do we converse, or arrive at a compromise?

[VO]: All that, and much more on this special bonus episode of Point of Learning!

[03:53]

[VO]: This bonus episode of Point of Learning is a departure from the usual format of me interviewing someone else. As Tim laid out a minute ago, what you’re about to hear is pretty much what took place in an after-school meeting of the Politics Club of the Pingry School in New Jersey. When I showed up for the session via Zoom, club president Marcus Brotman asked if it was okay to record the meeting for the Pingry Politics Podcast (available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and I’m sure some others). Well of course he had me at “podcast”! I’m pleased to be able to share it with you, not just because it’s about one of my favorite topics, civil discourse, by which I mean respectful discussion (or speech, or writing) focused on shared concerns. Cultivating civil discourse as a critical capacity of citizenship that schools all too often ignore completely is a through-line of my career as an educator. But I’m also stoked to share this because—despite that I’m featured prominently—the entire show is really an expression of student voice, another through-line of my career. Students invited me to this meeting; it’s their questions that drive the flow of the show; and of course, what you’re about to hear is a student-produced podcast—full credits at the end. This meeting took place in January, just a few days after the January 6th siege of the Capitol. Marcus sent me a list of questions in advance to shape my introductory remarks, like how I got into consulting, what I believe are key problems in the ways we talk to one another, what solutions I recommend, how to talk with people who believe in a different set of facts, how social media figures into the mix, and so on. I hope it goes without saying that I was thoroughly impressed with this group of teenage citizens—but I’m also gratified that the episode they’re allowing me to share can give you some sense of the work I most like to do when I’m not making podcasts. I can’t let you listen in on a leadership coaching session, and you certainly don’t want to hear me compose a survey or analyze interview data. Plus, there’s almost nothing I enjoy more than talking with and listening to young people. The sound quality will be a little different from other episodes of Point of Learning, thanks to Zoom audio, but I do think you’ll dig it! And so, without further ado, today’s host, Pingry Politics Club President Marcus Brotman!

MARCUS BROTMAN [voiceover]: What’s up? I’m Marcus Brotman and you’re listening to the Pingry Politics Podcast. On today’s episode, we talk with Dr. Peter Horn of HornEd Consulting. Dr. Horn is a fellow podcaster with his podcast, Point of Learning. There, he tries to deal with how and why we learn, and hopes to improve the learning experience for kids and adults alike. Following the Capitol building attack, it is important more now than ever to be able to talk with those you disagree with in a cordial manner, whether those be friends or loved ones. We talked with Dr. Horn today about trying to find methods or strategies to engage with others civilly and in a meaningful way.

[07:17]

MARCUS: Welcome everyone. We’re really happy to have Dr. Peter Horn on the podcast with us, or really just to have a discussion. Mr. Horn, if you’d want to introduce yourself …

PETER: Absolutely. It’s such a pleasure to be with you. What I wanted to do for the format of this meeting— It’s such an honor to be with you, first of all, so thank you for inviting me. I want it to be as interactive as possible. I will make sure that I indicate the content of these [PowerPoint presentation] slides. I think based on your excellent questions, Marcus, that’s kind of given me ideas to get my wheels turning, just to get started here. And I thought, especially as people are coming in, I might just give a few thoughts as a kind of overview of some things that might be relevant, given the kinds of things that you’re interested in thinking about civil discourse, and framing it as truth-seeking. And I’d like to do this maybe for 10 or 15 minutes, but I really want the session to be as interactive as possible. I just wanted to relate some of the things that I thought would be relevant, based on your questions, as a way to begin. I hope everybody’s got their [Zoom] chat window up. I’ve got a way that I can see it here, so please feel free to use that at any point. If we find it useful to do a breakout later, we really would just want to make sure that we’re talking about the kinds of things that are of great interest to you. This is absolutely of great interest to me! I was just hearing a little bit about what you do, and I’d maybe like to hear a little bit more in a few minutes about the format of how you usually do a Politics Club session where you say, “We’re going to talk about this particular topic,” because this is really how I got interested in this as a teacher, which I’ll mention in just a moment a little bit more. But thinking about civil discourse as truth-seeking. In other words, it’s not thinking about it as a debate, not thinking about it as an exercise in winning, which is one of the reasons that I think it requires practice. It involves inviting somebody else in that you trust to say, “Help me think about this difficult topic,” you know, whatever it is. “I want to explore it. I’ve got some ideas about it, but I’m also going to run the risk of changing my mind.” So imagine, for example, turning to the guy behind you in line at Panera, who’s trying to figure out what he wants to order. And you say, “Hey, while you’re figuring that out, do you think capital punishment should be abolished because it’s racist and arbitrary and makes mistakes?” You know, the conversation would not go well because it’s missing some of the things that you need in order to do actual civil discourse. How I got into [consulting] was after 18 years as a school teacher and a school leader right down the road from you guys in Westfield at Westfield [NJ] High School. Are you guys familiar with Westfield? I loved it, but I always was interested in trying to think about new ways to approach teaching and learning, and how to leverage some of the things that I’d figured out to work with other groups besides just my own students, besides just my own colleagues. And so about five years ago, I got into education consulting and research. I’d always be happy to talk with you more about that, but I wanted you to see that there's a website, there's a link [HornEdConsulting.org]. You can always reach out to me through the website, or I just wanted to share this [email address] with you as well, HornEdConsulting@gmail.com, if you want to drop me a line about something, so that this is not just a one-off conversation. If something occurs to you later, if I could be of assistance with you for some other topic that you’re taking up, please don’t hesitate to reach out. The thing I miss most about not being in a school every day is having the chance to work with students. And y’all are my favorite age group by far. I was always working at the high school level, so I would love it! What I started to do in my first few years, I always found myself gravitating toward the kinds of topics in class that might be interesting, but especially when the national climate changed—I’m saying after September 11th, 2001 in particular—I just had a sense that there were students who were really interested in talking about issues and listening to other people’s viewpoints about issues that they didn’t necessarily know how to make sense of … the world, in some ways, because that was a pretty dramatic event. So if you can see at the bottom, this is a poster that came out after I left. This is a group that I started in 2002, in the winter of 2002, for students to come and have a space after school to hear what other people had to say. And not to frame it as a debate, but rather like, what are you thinking of? So this is a poster for an event a couple of years after I left, you may remember the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh that was a tremendous, you know, controversial issue. So this was a poster related to making space for people to be able to talk about that. This is again from the group that I began in 2002 under a different name, but it's called Agora right now, which is after that Greek word for a “common place,” almost like a marketplace where people could come together to talk. So in addition to my work as an English teacher, this was something I always felt that was important to be able to make a space for students and all members of the community as well. It wasn’t just for students. We would have often have almost as many faculty as students, you know, 30 or 40 people coming, again but in a spirit of, listening. You weren’t standing up and giving speeches. You were saying, “You know, this is what I think about this. This is what I wonder about this. Here are my questions going forward.” As you guys know, probably better than anyone, there aren’t lots of great spaces to do this. All right, so I just thought it was a good idea to begin with a pop quiz, so I want to ask you—I’m just kidding about that! That’s not necessarily a great way to endear people—but what is the root of politics?

STUDENT ANSWER: [The Greek word] polis, like a people group?

PETER: Exactly. Like such as you might find in a city, like that’s really the root, like a city-state is the polis. So you have like Indianapolis, Minneapolis. That Greek suffix on there, that Greek root at the end of it means “city.” And in Greece, like in Athenian democracy, that’s how you talk about somebody who was interested in the concerns of other people. Politās, that’s how they would describe it. So that’s politās with a long ā. That’s how they would talk about, “I’m interested in the concerns of the city, which is to say the concerns of the larger group, not just myself,” that’s how Greeks would talk about those people. “I'm politās.” If you only cared about yourself, you know what you were? That’s right. It’s an idiot. So these two words up here, the word “idiot” that we use casually in a lot of different senses to have a lot of different meanings. It’s changed over the years, but the root sense of it was you’re only concerned with yourself. So like your idiosyncrasy is something that just you do, your idiolect is the way that you speak. And of course your ideology is the way that you look at the world, make sense of the world, the logic of the world that you yourself impart to it—that has that same root. But if you’re just concerned with yourself, you are technically an idiot. So, you know, and again: not that name-calling is going to be a way to begin anything. It's just that I find that interesting, because “politics” of course gets a dirty name. You know, people talk about “playing politics” and so forth. I love that you, many of you, who would go to the [Politics] Club would associate yourself with this term because I think it needs some rebranding in this moment. I think politics can be wonderful. It can be about saying, “You know what? These are shared issues of common concern.” So I wanted to lay that out. For those of you who may not know, Marcus sent me a list of questions and perhaps he talked with you, did a little bit of crowdsourcing on that. The things that he asked were some of the challenges that we face. And again, I’m just going to be presenting for a few more minutes here on some of the ideas that those questions stirred up in me, and then I really want to hear what you have to say about that or other things that you’d like to throw in. But one of the things that are important to remember, one of the challenges that you’ll always find: Jonathan Swift, the Irish author and clergyman from about 300 years ago, he had this line that I have up on the slide. “Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.” A more up-to-the-moment way to paraphrase that is that you can’t reason people out of opinions that they didn’t reason themselves into. In other words, there are some conversations that you cannot have, because either the timing isn’t right—like you’re in line at Panera and that’s just not what you’re supposed to be doing right there—or just because it feels emotionally true to them and that’s what they’re going to hold on to. And it’s not something that anybody could disabuse them of. I think it’s an important thing to keep in mind, because it’s important to remember that we all have these things: We all have some opinions, some judgments that are—you know, we kind of believe that we are scientists, always kind of looking at the data and reasoning to the right conclusion. But if you listen to my conversation with Jonathan Haidt, you recognize that part of the way that we’re wired is to come up with a viewpoint and then afterwards, go look for evidence, go look for those websites, articles, people who will support that point of view, and that kind of reinforces that cycle. Sometimes we didn’t get there by thinking, and so just by thinking, we can’t come out of it. So it’s important to recognize that civil discourse is a specialized kind of situation; it’s not for everything. I think another important thing to recognize when you’re trying to have these conversations, is that all points of view—I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say that every single point of view—some people have some, you know, some really horrible points of view—but the political orientations, you know, we tend to counterpose liberals and conservatives, for example. I think it can be very helpful to remember that these are really orientations, you know, ways of looking at the world, and that everybody brings something to the table. So, for example, one of the easiest ways to distinguish between liberals and conservatives would be like, “What is your attitude about change?” And liberals are sometimes—again, if you overlap them with progressives, there tends to be an openness to change. There tends to be a willingness toward an orientation that says, “Let’s try something new, let’s reform something.” Whereas conservatives, just in the route of conserve, the orientation technically tends to be, you know, “Let’s not make change just for change’s sake: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m going to be a little bit more hesitant toward that.” We need both kinds of those orientations in order, especially, to think about something difficult. So I think that’s one of the most important things—in your club, in your classroom, on your team, wherever you happen to be practicing civil discourse—if you get yourself into a conversation, is to recognize that these different orientations really bring something different to the table and something important. It’s very important to have those different perspectives. Ideological diversity, or viewpoint diversity, is one of the very important types of diversity that we don’t often talk about, but it’ an important one. Another thing is to recognize, as Jonathan Haidt jokes, it’s really easy for us to see that other people have biases and prejudices, but we don’t tend to recognize our own biases and prejudices. And that’s very important to do. You know, we tend to have different standards. If there’s an idea that we like, if there’s a website that we like, maybe we can say like, “Can I believe this?” Okay. Whereas if it’s something that we don’t like, we often ask ourselves a different version of this question and say, “Must I believe it?” [Based on the work of social psychologist Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: That Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life.] If it’s a different point of view, we all of a sudden have a different kind of [standard]. And I think it’s important to recognize that this is the way humans are wired. Another dimension is that there’s a real social aspect. We’re much better at staying with our group, with our tribe, with our team. As human beings it’s reasonable to assume that we evolved from people who were good at staying in the group, or else, you know, we wouldn’t be here now! So you, you know, loners and so forth, people who didn’t depend on a sense of relatedness, a sense of belonging, did not do as well in a harsh environment, and so that’s part of the way that we tend to be wired. So even if some members of my group do some really awful things, sometimes I can still cling to that group affiliation because it’s better than being off the team. Okay? I think this is one of the things that is very important in this particular moment, in the news right this very week [12 January 2021], right? Since last Wednesday [6 January 2021] with social media companies objecting to—and this is not a slam on President Trump. You know, demonstrable falsehoods have been part of his rhetoric, and this is not news and that part is not debatable. But what the role of social media companies is in terms of saying, “Well, maybe we should regulate this more,” and when they’re changing [their approach] and what might change with different oversight in the Senate, for example: these things are coming to the fore because it’s so difficult nowadays to get decent information. And I’m not just going to do a commercial for my podcast, although I’d love to have you guys check out Point of Learning with Peter Horn at any point that you want! But the episode a couple before the Jonathan Haidt episode, I talked with an education historian named Jonathan Zimmerman, and he laid out this this line: “I never thought the question of ‘What is a fact?’ would become the most important question in our political culture, but it absolutely has” become the most important question in our political culture. Some of you probably know that line of the late senator in New York, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said, “Everybody is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.” Part of the problem with our discourse right now, part of the problem with the proliferation of internet sources, is that there doesn’t seem to be in some conversations, a standard-bearer. And so that’s one of the things, of course, that you have to establish. If you’re going to talk about something, you have to be able to agree to “These sources are going to be reliable for us to be able to have this conversation. We both agree that this is okay, or we agree that we’re going to challenge them along the same lines.” Toward this end, I would direct you to allsides.com. This is something that might be interesting for you to check out as an independent organization that was founded by somebody with a very progressive history and somebody with a very conservative history who came together and said, “How can we get better at talking about media and media sources?” And so this website allsides.com might be useful as a tool for you, either in conversations or in classes or in your own research, just to be able to try and begin to rate and evaluate [sources]. It’s an interesting website because the main thing it does is take up particular topics and then present different kinds of coverage on that topic. But without a shared starting point, you know, without a shared reality that you and the other people you’re trying to discuss it with, or you and that other person can discuss it with, you cannot have a productive conversation. So anyway, I really don’t want to talk at a clip any longer than that. These were the [concepts] that Marcus’s questions stirred up in me. And so I wanted to lay those out as kind of a starting place for us. And I wanted to see if either in the [Zoom] chat or speaking out, you’d like to follow up on any of that. Is there anything that you’d like other elaboration on, or are there any other kinds of challenges that you’re facing that you’d like to discuss?

[24:18]

STUDENT 1: Recently—maybe this isn’t recently, maybe this has been going on much longer than I think—but politicians have delved much more into determining like, what is factual and what is not factual, now it feels like, and I was wondering, do you think that politicians exactly have that obligation to disseminate what is true and what is not true? Like, do you think that that’s a dangerous game to play, because I mean, they could lie? So do you think that that’s their role, in your mind, at least?

PETER: You’re talking about like people discussing a particular issue? They might go on like a Sunday morning show, or like when they’re debating in the House or something and say like, “This is factual … or not”?

STUDENT 1: Yeah. Like someone’s speeches, for example, will talk about something that arguably they aren’t exactly qualified to talk about. Like, for example, talking about climate change, when their knowledge of it may be rather slim, I’m just wondering do you—and then they go on to say something like, “That’s a fact,” do you think that that’s exactly their place to do that?

PETER: Well, you know, my feeling about politicians is that part of the nature of the job, you know, another thing that that root polis leads to is policy, right? And if you’re a Congressperson, you’re not just going to be making choices about that little area of policy that you might have a specific background in. You know, somebody might come as an educator, and so maybe they do have a kind of on-the-ground understanding of educational issues, but they’re also going to be asked to talk about defense, if this is at the national level, right? They’re also gonna be asked to talk about the environment. And so they do have an obligation, I believe, to find out, to learn, to do their homework and to become as educated as possible. For me as a citizen, I’m always more impressed when people do have sources and footnotes and things that I can check on their website, if they’re laying out a policy proposal. Remember the joke about, you know—it wasn’t a hilarious joke, but the quip about Elizabeth Warren, “I’ve got a plan for that,” and you would go to Elizabeth Warren’s website and she had very detailed plans that were footnoted with sources. Like “these are the sources that I’m going to, in order to back up these things.” I would much prefer that people are honest about what they know and what they don’t know, sure. But that’s—you know, it could be a little bit of a political gamble, but I do think that there is an obligation to show your work and to say where you’re coming from. Does that—

STUDENT 1: Absolutely. That answers my question. Yeah. I absolutely agree. And I think it’s unfortunate that facts for politicians specifically have become not exactly factual. So I think it’s easy to become wary of when politics becomes so deeply rooted in like, you know, statistics, for example, and when a person that may not exactly be qualified is talking about them. But if they do their homework, it’s incredibly impressive. I mean, your Elizabeth Warren example, like going to her webpage and seeing it be very detailed is an impressive thing. Yeah, I’d agree.

[27:20]

STUDENT 2: I had a question. First, I guess I just want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.

PETER: My pleasure. Thank you.

STUDENT 2: And so my question is about like, given the nature of today’s political climate, which is very polarized and people tend to be very sort of entrenched in their ideals. You had this slide about how you can’t use reasoning to sort of change someone’s opinion when their opinion was not really created by reasoning. Could you elaborate, or explain like, like what are the first steps we should take to sort of prophylactically prevent people from being super entrenched in these ideas early on, or is there anything we can do after the fact to actually change their mind?

PETER: Yeah, I think it’s a great [question]. And I was just trying to set up a reasonable expectation to let people know, just to be aware that there are some things you’re not going to be able to convince some people of. Right. But if you get to that point—and there was a question in some of the preliminary conversations that Mr. Lear and I were talking about, you know, I think we all have this: I think we all have family members, like people, if we don’t love them, we’re supposed to at least! But people we are close to who have very different ideas about the world. And so I would say if you get into that situation to try to use that relationship, whatever relationship it is, that you have to try to turn down the temperature and make sure it’s clear in whatever way that you can signal or say explicitly like, “Look, man, this isn't a contest. I’m not trying to prove you wrong. I really want to understand where you’re coming from. I hear you say X, and to me, I’m just thinking like, ‘How could somebody look at this question this way? Or how could somebody vote for this person?’ But I respect you, and I really want to understand where you’re coming from. How can you help me understand how you’re looking at this?” You know, I think that kind of general attitude and orientation is always going to be better than the kind of thing that sets it up as some kind of combat and makes it us vs. them. That’s the reason I changed that title of the Jonathan Haidt episode to “Us + Them,” because it’s so often us vs. them. It’s not a contest and to go back to Sean’s point about facts, right? That can also be a less combative way to get at it. Just say like, “Where did you read that?” Or “Where did you hear that?” “What sources are you using?” It’s just basically as a place to begin—but again, the tone is very important. Not like [angrily], “Where’d you hear that?” That’s part of the reason I used that flippant Panera example at the beginning, to say you have to be in a space where you can take a few minutes, and you have to be in a place where you’re also sensitive to the social dimensions where you especially, if you’re comfortable talking about politics—right? Because this is something that a lot of people shy away from. One reason is that they’ve seen it done so badly in so many places, right? A decent political conversation makes pretty bad television, because usually a political conversation [on TV] is where somebody’s saying things they already believe. And it could be like arguing back and forth, whatever—that’s going to make decent television. If somebody throws a chair or whatever, you know, that’s ratings for you. However, stopping, pausing, thinking about something, changing your mind—that's terrible TV! So we don’t have a lot of examples of how this can be done well. And so if you are known to be somebody who reads the newspaper or whatever, who thinks about these things a lot, somebody could be pretty shy in engaging with you about it. So you must figure out a way to make them more at ease [so they know] that you’re not going to demoralize them, and also be aware of the social dimensions of it, that you’re not going to do it in front of a friend group where it’s just going to make them feel stupid, or less adequate, you know what I mean? Does that, does that help in terms of an approach?

STUDENT 2: Yeah. Thank you. That’s definitely a really good approach to it. I think that that makes a lot of sense, that like understanding where they’re coming from is like the foundation of it, and making sure they don’t feel like attacked or anything.

PETER: And I think it’s important to recognize, as well that people—you know, I don’t think this is [only] an adolescent thing. You’ll see adults doing this too, but especially, with your peers, sometimes people will try out ideas. I’ve got a nephew who’s just a few years older than you guys. He's all libertarian all the time now. Like, he's trying it out. And it’s not that he’s been super interested in politics for a long time, but there’s some things that are kind of appealing to him. And so, you know, I’m just listening and trying to hear where he’s coming from and what appeals to him about that. Because sometimes people do just try out an idea, you know, and I think we should be able to do that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. The danger is when you become so entrenched, and just decide that everybody else must be wrong. I see somebody else.

[32:30]

STUDENT 3: Hi. Yeah, thank you for coming here.

PETER: Sure!

STUDENT 3: My question is kind of almost responding to one of your points you made just now. If we’re talking to people in a group setting, for example, or even on social media, because we see a lot of arguments on Twitter now—you know, something that reminded me of this is like AOC and Ted Cruz, I believe, got into a fight on Twitter a few days ago. So in these kinds of indirect interactions, or spheres where there are other people present, how do we effectively converse—I’m reluctant to use the word debate because I don’t think it’s a debate kind of format, but how do we converse, or compromise?

PETER: It’s a great question. What I would say to that is that yeah, pretty much Twitter forces you into a debate. You know, if you see civil discourse on Twitter, please screenshot it and send it to me right away, because it’s just like, exactly for that public dimension, it’s not set up to do that. You know, it's set up for virtue-signaling, you know, to say like, “Look how woke I am,” you know, or “Look how tough I am,” or whatever the virtue is, right? It’s set up for that and to do it necessarily in front of a group. Even if you just “at” somebody [i.e., mention them by their Twitter handle in a way that they’re likely to see it but the rest of Twitter is less likely to], obviously if you’re both friends with somebody else, that somebody else can see it, you know, so there’s an audience there. [Twitter] is just not set up to do that. And so what I would say is if you find yourself in that situation where you really would like to engage with somebody, say, “You know, I would like to do it, but this is not the forum for it,” and then, depending on how you know that person and how you’re comfortable doing it—you know, emails, anything would be better than pinging at each other in crafted comments for public consumption where people aren’t replying and it’s just like people are keeping score. That’s a nice example of the opposite of what we want. Does that answer your question?

STUDENT 3: Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much.

PETER: Sure. Yes, please.

[34:30]

STUDENT 4: Yeah, I just want to say thank you again. My question kind of pertains to facilitating discussion within a group setting where there are obvious political divisions, however extreme or not. And how do you go about facilitating that kind of discussion when you know that people will feel personally attacked, or how do you go about preventing it? Because what I’ve noticed is that a lot of people in these kinds of settings start to feel unsafe, just [as a result of] someone’s opinion. So how do you go about either navigating that or just trying to prevent it?

PETER: Facilitating discussion is one of the hardest things to do, you know, and that I’m talking about like facilitating a discussion about a non-controversial topic, you know, just facilitating a good conversation about a song, for example. Well, people could feel some kind of way about [a song], but I’m just saying like, [facilitating a discussion] is difficult in itself. And then if you add a controversial dimension to it, you’ve just got levels of difficulty. So God bless you for trying, if you’re doing this yourself! I would say the key thing is the ground rules that you lay out, that you make very clear … to make sure that everybody’s there at the outset. I’m raising this because if you’re talking about our Zoom world where unfortunately we currently are now and have people coming in a little bit later in that sort of setting, you’ve really got to have everybody there at the outset and then lay out some ground rules. So for example, a very good one to begin with is to say, “Look, the spirit of this is exploring this idea. This is not a contest.” You know, to lay that out, like, why are you coming together? You want to hear other people’s views. And that implicitly, explicitly, every person in this circle has dignity, and that dignity cannot be impugned. So that means no side conversations, right? Like whispering or chatting [on Zoom] or whatever. Obviously, no ad hominem attacks. You’re attacking ideas, you’re questioning ideas, you’re critiquing ideas, raising questions about ideas—not about the people who hold those ideas. So that it’s less personal. No personal attacks or no ad hominem attacks, no generalizations about a particular group of people, because nobody likes to feel like if they’re part of that group that they have to answer for everybody, and usually, you know, there are not too many responsible things that you can say about entire groups either. So to have some things at the outset that you’re saying. Also maybe something like “What’s said in this room stays in this room,” or “What's said in this space, stays in this space” just because it’s so easy to misconstrue stuff. If somebody is like, “She said what?!” if it’s reported afterwards. So I would think carefully about those. And I’d be happy to talk with you about those. I mean, those are some of the ones that I’ve used whether it’s in one of these discussions or running a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting, or whatever it might happen to be, that have been helpful. And I’d be happy to talk more about that. But I also think also in the group, a great way to start is to say, “So these are some [ground rules] to begin. Does anybody else have one that they’d like to add?” You know, just so you feel like you’ve got some ownership in that, does that help?

STUDENT 4: That helps a lot. Thank you.

PETER: I see somebody raised a hand up there.

[38:01]

STUDENT 5: Yeah, that’s me. First, thank you for coming to us, like everybody said. And my question is do you think there’s any red flags when having difficult conversations, and then what are they and how do we recognize them? And then how do we tactfully deal with them and potentially get out of the conversation?

PETER: That’s a good question. So if one of those norms has been violated, for example, right? You know, if you agree to say, “This is the way we’re going to engage with each other, and this is the way we are going to agree to engage with this topic.” And then all of a sudden somebody starts trash-talking and throwing shade at another person, then, okay, so that would be a red flag—that a norm has been violated. And just say like, “This isn’t what we're doing here. What we’re doing is hard. That’s not it.” Okay. Well another thing is body language. And obviously this is much easier to do in a room, when you’re in this space, as opposed to on Zoom, especially if you can’t see people’s faces [i.e., Zoom video for participants is off], right? I would never recommend that for this kind of thing, you at least want to be able to see other people’s faces. But the body language will you know if the other people are feeling comfortable or not, you know if you get a lot of this [gesture = arms crossed], if you got a lot of leaning back. If you’re attentive, if you’re facilitating that conversation, that can be a sign for you. It’s not necessarily a red flag; it might be a yellow flag, depending on what the body language is. But I think that’s a very important thing to pay attention to, because it can mean people are shutting down, or it can mean people are feeling, like it’s not going to go well. Does that help?

STUDENT 5: Yeah, thank you.

PETER: Sure!

[39:33]

STUDENT 1: I guess my question is that oftentimes, and this is, I guess, a pretty personal experience, is when Marcus and I are leading discussions for the club, you know, somebody might say something that is factually untrue—not like it’s an opinion I disagree with, but it’s just demonstrably false—but you don’t want to shut the person down right away and be like, “Well, you just made a false statement, so you can’t talk now.” And that’s obviously not good either, but I was wondering, what are your opinions on regulating factual information in a setting that, you know, very much requires it?

PETER: Yeah, it’s a wonderful point. One of the things that I would do is first of all, you could set it as a norm. You could say, “Be prepared to defend any claims, or any facts that you lay out,” right? You could set it up at the outset to say like, just because people could be getting [information] from different places. The other thing that you could do is decide to harness [conversation] to a text or a couple of texts. In other words, you could have two excerpts of opinion pieces, or two excerpts of news pieces, whatever, on a particular topic, or even just one if you wanted to. It really depends on what you want to do. But to say like, “We’re going to deal with the reasoning involved in here, what they lay out here. We’re going to accept this as what’s going on.” That can help, and I usually advise that. It may not work as well for your purpose. But I will say when we were talking about like the [United Nations] Oil for Food scandal or something like that, doing a topic that people might not have top of mind awareness of, often it was helpful to just kind of root it in a text to say where it came from, or a couple of texts. But just say, “We’re going to stay within the boundaries of this as an exercise and see how well it goes.” I mean, that’s something I would do if you find itself going off the rails a lot of times. If it’s just untenable, that’s a kind of conversational harness that you could use.

STUDENT 1: Thank you. I appreciate it.

[41:36]

STUDENT 6: I think something that comes up a lot in these discussions that we’ve been having is that the people who need to hear this aren’t here. How do you encourage people to join the discussion and to engage with it when they’re faced with a large majority which disagrees with them?

PETER: One thing is to rely on your relationship. If there’s somebody that you know. That’s always a personal thing to get somebody, the relationship that you have with somebody, to trade on that and say, “Hey, I think it would be really be interesting to you.” And that’s one of the things that you could do in the Politics Club. For example, if you have a core group who generally attend meetings, you can ask, “Next session, everybody brings somebody else, one other person,” so that everybody has the charge to bring somebody else here.” Right. You can do that. I think that’s one of the ways to do it, because people do respond to personal invitations, especially ones that feel sincere. So if you just notice about this poster [on slide, an ad for WHS discussion group Agora], one of the things that are built into this— and again, I didn’t design this poster—but it’s a technique that we used to use: to build in the questions, like, “Are you concerned, frustrated or angry over the recent Supreme Court nomination process?” Because of course, the title Making Sense of Politics in America is super broad. So at least to say, here are some kinds of dimensions of this that we might discuss. And if you target those questions towards some of the people who might feel a certain way, but may look at an issue differently from the way that you do and you know that, then you could maybe draw them in, in terms of the way that you advertise, in terms of the way that you market it to people. Does that make sense?

STUDENT 6: Yeah. No, thank you. I think the personal connection is really important to make people feel comfortable in a situation where they normally wouldn’t be.

PETER: Yeah. And if you do that, you know, make sure you check in with them afterwards, if you invite your friends, just say like, “How was that for you? What was that like?” Again, it’ll give you useful information and also—because not everybody wears their reactions on their sleeve. Usually there’s some kind of signal about body language, but you’re not necessarily always paying attention. So to check in with them afterwards can be very helpful too.

STUDENT 6: Gotcha. Yeah. Thank you.

PETER: Yessir.

[44:00]

STUDENT 7: I had a question about the slide you just had on [i.e., the WHS Agora discussion group ad], whether these spaces for civil discourse actually attracted people that were Democrat, Republican, and Independent, because when I was doing research for colleges, I would look at what clubs they had. And sometimes there would be these clubs that would say, “Oh this is for civil discourse where everyone can come.” And then when you go on the website, sometimes the speakers that I would see, and like the way they would say “for everyone and especially the Republican Party,” it would kind of attract students that didn’t feel like they fit into the mold and then they would all come up. And then, you know, it was intimidating, I guess, and almost kind of turned me off and I, that’s probably part of me not wanting to engage in that kind of discussion and being scared of it too. So I was just wondering, you know, specifically in educational spaces, how to legitimately draw in everyone.

PETER: Yeah, absolutely. And college, you know, college is a little different. It’s a little bit different from high school, but I think some of the same principles apply. To answer the first part of your question, we really did. We really did get, you know, people from a range of perspectives, but that’s after we’d done it for a while and the word got out that that really was what we were doing and encouraging. You know, so for example, I think I mentioned that [our open discussion group] started at 2002 shortly after the United States went into Afghanistan. And you know, the first name of the group that we had was the Peace Discussion Group, because the first kids who came and said, “I’m really concerned about this,” or “I feel some kind of way.” Like that was the angle that they were concerned about. But then because we called it the Peace Discussion Group, there was this perception that we would just be holding hands and singing, you know, like everybody’s going to feel a certain way, as opposed to some people who might feel like military intervention is justified. So [those people might assume that] “I’m not welcome at this meeting.” So that was actually part of the way that the reason that we changed to a more neutral name, like Agora, which maybe nobody knows what it means anyway so it’s very neutral! It’s kind of a blank slate as an abstract term—but we wanted to be clear about that. You know, who we were and what we were about. But that took a little while, and you’re absolutely right that some campus groups, some groups in high schools will say that they are for political discussion and say that they welcome all points of view, but there are the “right” points of view, there are the sanctioned points of view, there are the ordained points of view. And it’s a little bit like being in a teacher’s class where you have a “discussion,” but you pretty much are sure what the “right” answer is. You know what I mean? Right? So that does happen. It takes effort to protect that space and for people to believe, “Okay, you know, I’m not going to be judged for asking this question or putting this out there,” but that’s something that even when we had a reputation, we reinforced those messages explicitly every time: “This is what we’re about. This is not about grandstanding. This is not about proving how right you are and how much you’ve read or how smart you are. That’s not what this is about. This is about exploring this issue that we’ve come here to hear other people’s opinions about. Or even if we don’t speak, just to listen to,” because that was what I think could be a valuable process too: if you have the experience of thinking about some of these things where other people don’t, sometimes you can be a model, you know? Sometimes you look to other people to model how do you approach thinking about this? What kinds of things are involved when you decide something is right or wrong, or worthwhile or not? What are the things that you’re taking into account? And I think we all need models in terms of moral reasoning, logical reasoning—things where there isn’t just a cut and dried answer for how do you approach thinking about some of these things? So that’s another thing that you can do that I think is just so much more useful when it’s transparent, as opposed to, you know, just this debate and everybody’s coming with their minds made up and like, you know, that’s what it is. That’s all it is. Does that help?

STUDENT 7: Yeah.

PETER: Did you have another one?

[48:01]

STUDENT 4: Yeah. Just going off of this point, how do you just deal with spaces where a lot of times, especially recently when handling conversations around social reform, I’ve noticed that it’s always one group who feels pressured to speak and another group who feels pressured to respond, whether that be in a way of support or whether that be in a way of opposition, how do you just break down the barrier of one group has to speak for the rest or one group has to introduce the opinion that will just set the norm for the conversation? If I’ll speak personally, when it comes to issues of Black people, I feel like I have to say something to set a tone about like, “Obviously I won’t like if someone brings up this point or this point,” but I also don’t want to do that because I feel like that will silence other people who want to disagree but don’t want to attack me personally. So how do you deal with those kinds of situations?

PETER: Thank you for speaking and being candid about your experience. You know, that burden of representation, you know, if you’re the only woman in a group, or you’re the only person of color—the burden of representation, of feeling like you have to speak on behalf of the group, that’s not fair to anybody, right? And so I think that can be explicitly one of the things that you say, to lay out that nobody’s going to speak on—you know, just as we’re not going to make a generalization about an entire group, no one should be expected to speak on behalf of an entire group. That’s just not fair to do, so to lay that out as an expectation at the outset. You’re absolutely right. It’s a difficult dynamic. And when it’s not said, when it’s not explicit, that’s where I think it gets weirder. Again, it’s not something that you necessarily lay out on the first day of French I, for example, but if you take up these issues, if you take up these kinds of conversations in class, very soon it should be made explicit that, that’s not cool to do for anybody. But I think it’s important to be explicit about that as a norm. Does that make sense? Does that help?

STUDENT 4: Yes. Definitely.

[50:13]

STUDENT 8: I was wondering … There’s a lot of pressure to stick with facts and logic in political conversations and like make sure everything is backed up with statistics. But I do think there are certain topics where emotions tend to actually play a significant role a lot of times, like human rights and hate speech and hate crimes, especially. And I guess I’m asking your opinion of whether emotions really have any place in political discussions and emotionally charged topics.

PETER: Oh, that’s a great question. I mean, I believe they animate all of politics, you know, emotions. And a lot of activism is rooted in anger, for example, you know, frustration, you know, like real righteous indignation, saying like, “The world should not be this way!” So that’s what motivates you to go and organize and put on or to get together with a march. So emotion does affect a lot of things. I think that part of the difficulty that can happen sometimes—and I think we can’t pretend that we’re not emotional beings who have these feelings about especially issues of right and wrong, those really animate us. Why would you take time after school to come and talk about something if you didn’t care about it at all—just because you want to make yourself look that good on the resume that you’re going to turn into [Director of College Counseling] Mr. Lear for your college? That’s not what it’s about, right? Or it shouldn’t be. It’s because you care. But the next level of that, right?—at some point, if you are going to try to persuade somebody of something, then I think then the argument and the logic—and it’s not necessarily just, you know, “facts,” but it’s an argument that feels reasonable to other people. Then I think you have to figure out some way to put that together. So I can tell you passionately that [Ben & Jerry’s] Chunky Monkey is the best flavor of ice cream. (I’m right about that, of course!) But I won’t necessarily be able to persuade you of that, because that really is a matter of taste, right? And you’re going to have other opinions, people who may be lactose intolerant, you know, it might not fit for you. So I’m going to have to resign myself to say, I believe Chunky Monkey is the best. I know it for myself to be the best, but there are some things I will not be able to persuade in an argumentative fashion and convince other people. And that’s okay. And I also think it’s important, though—and maybe this is related, and I don’t want to kind of dismiss this and say like, “There’s this [emotional] tier, and then there’s this [logical] tier.” Sometimes it can be very useful to say, “This is my experience about this particular topic.” To set up a conversation where that’s what you do. There’s an exercise [developed by Peggy McIntosh] called Serial Testimony where you’re speaking from your own experience about a particular topic. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s not about debate, but in order to put the voices out there, especially the voices of those who don’t feel maybe that they have a command of the facts. To set up a meeting and say, “For the first 20 minutes, we’re going to do this: Everybody talks for one minute.” There’s going to be a timer, right? (Because some people will say “one minute” and then they’ll go longer.) And I can send you guys, if you’re interested, a one-page handout on how to do this. But it’s really cool. There’s no debate about it. There’s no agreement or disagreement. There’s no referring to what he, she, or they said earlier, it’s just, you go around and hear different people’s viewpoints on a topic. And that can be a wonderful exercise, especially when something’s raw. You know, if you have a terrible situation, a really hard situation and you haven’t done the research about it. You just feel, you know, whatever. To be able to have a space that you can come into where it’s not set up like a logical debate, it’s not even set up like the truth-seeking free-for-all [of civil discourse], but it’s set up as a place that we’re going to hear from other people today because something awful just happened or something really poignant just happened. That can be a really helpful exercise, especially when something’s new. And especially when something’s really hard, because it’s another kind of conversational harness that you put on there where the obligation isn’t necessarily to back up everything that you say, to come in as if you thought through everything—that can be useful. So that’s called Serial Testimony, and I’d be happy to share that with you, not as something you do every time—you know, because there’s space for all kinds of conversations, but that can be helpful, you know, especially if you want to draw people into meetings where they just don’t feel competent arguing about politics. Because they don’t get politics, because politics is too complicated. It seems complicated because it is complicated, you know? And some people have grown up hearing political conversations at the dinner table and some people never have, because there were other conversations or no conversation, you know? So that’s an alternative. It’s a great point to bring up.

STUDENT 9: Yeah, so there’s been this trend at Pingry that I’ve noticed amongst my peers and my friends that many are scared to speak up or even discuss politics. It’s like this taboo, because I mean, as you mentioned, politics is complicated. It’s also scary at the same time. And as a result, many people become like apolitical. They’re like, “Oh I’m not gonna talk about politics. I don’t like politics.” Or if they do enter a political discussion, they restrain themselves. Maybe even self-censor to an extreme. And ultimately, that’s kind of a bad thing in that there’s no discourse about vital issues that are affecting our society. And people just keeping things, keeping their ideas to themselves. There’s no discourse. So how do we remove this barrier of entry to politics in a way, like lower that threshold and maybe not make it so personally involved and like lower the stakes in a way, I guess, and make it so people aren’t as scared to just discuss politics and make it so it’s not so taboo as it is right now?

PETER: That has to do with the tone that you set. And so in a classroom, you know, it’s your teachers usually who are setting that tone and you participate in it, and it can be done well, or it can be done, you know, really not in a helpful way so you kind of feel scared. I know that some of your teachers do have concerns that, especially because they have an impression that if you’ve got kids, for example, who tend to be more liberal or progressive, more Democratic-leaning, maybe that kids who don’t agree with that might be more hesitant because of the social dimension, and might be hesitant to speak. It’s very important to set the tone, to establish it. And you can do it much more easily in a club that you control, to say like, “That’s not what we’re about. You know, there’s not a right answer here, we’re here because we recognize that this can be challenging and we’re going to figure that out.” But it comes down ultimately to the questions of the relationship, the respect, the trust that you’re able to have with that other person—where you take out those painful social dimensions, those difficult social dimensions, where you can feel like you’re getting judged because you don’t know what to say, and you really have the sense that you’re engaging with somebody who is taking your ideas seriously and seeing you as a full person endowed with inalienable dignity.

MARCUS: Thank you for coming on. It’s been really great getting to talk to you and it’d also be cool to see what are your thoughts on the Politics Club and how we run things here, but that’s for another day.

PETER: This was a blast. I’d be happy to come back and talk about that and hear from you about it. And I just want to thank you all for your interest. It’s really cool to see people who are passionate and wanting to think about this. It’s one of the things that we have to get better at. We have to get better at, as a country, talking with people we disagree with, and figuring out how to do that respectfully. Keep up the great work and please be in touch!

[58:23]

PETER [voiceover]: That’s it for today’s special bonus edition of Point of Learning, brought to you by the Pingry Politics Podcast, which is hosted and edited by Marcus Brotman. The co-host is Sean Lyons, with intro and outro music by Max Brotman. The advisor to the Pingry Politics Club is Dr. Zachary Wakefield. My great thanks to Tim Lear for connecting me with all of them and the thoughtful young citizens whose questions and ideas you heard on today’s show. On the show page, I’ve got images of most of the civil discourse slides I used during my presentation to the club, as well as a link to the handout I mentioned on Serial Testimony, a conversational harness that was developed by Dr. Peggy McIntosh and pioneered by her colleagues at the National SEED Project. Check out the Point of Learning episode menu for more about Peggy McIntosh and the good folks at SEED! Thanks as always to Shayfer James for Point of Learning intro, outro, and, on this episode, supplemental music. A proud member of the Lyceum consortium for educational podcasts, Point of Learning is produced by me here in Sunny Buffalo, New York. I’m Peter Horn and I’ll be back at you in just a few weeks with Registered Dietitian Britt Schuman-Humbert, star of the sensational YouTube cooking series RD Unfiltered! See you then!