Argument and Transformation<\/a>\u201d post reminds me of a recent experience in my\u00a0grade 12 class. A homophobic student bragged how he would spend his Saturday nights driving in a car (crammed with\u00a0six other male homophobes), harassing people he thought\u00a0were\u00a0gay. My discussions with him failed. However, during my lessons on logic, I had him argue why gays had no right to exist\u2026an assignment he relished. Then after finishing his argument, I had him write the counter argument. While he was still homophobic, he did at least stop physically harassing people\u00a0because he could not definitively defend his sexist views.<\/p>\nOn the one hand, school is for Frye derived for the Greek word for leisure, or \u201cschole,”\u00a0 a higher form of civilized development, a detachment from the “real” world. But on the other hand,\u00a0school is engagement, a means of\u00a0fighting<\/em> the forces of social conditioning, advertising, politics, and bigotry\u00a0by way of\u00a0words with power. Frye\u2019s notion that every argument has a counter-argument, and that the best we can do is become aware of our social conditioning, helped moderate the views of one otherwise intansigent student.<\/p>\nTeaching is militant and, if we are lucky, our students might become through the power of words — and perhaps in the only way possible — born again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Adamson’s \u201cArgument and Transformation\u201d post reminds me of a recent experience in my\u00a0grade 12 class. A homophobic student bragged how he would spend his Saturday nights driving in a car (crammed with\u00a0six other male homophobes), harassing people he thought\u00a0were\u00a0gay. My discussions with him failed. However, during my lessons on logic, I had him argue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"yoast_head":"\n
Peter Yan: Militant Teaching - The Educated Imagination<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/macblog.mcmaster.ca\/fryeblog\/2009\/09\/25\/peter-yan-militant-teaching\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Peter Yan: Militant Teaching - The Educated Imagination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Joe Adamson’s \u201cArgument and Transformation\u201d post reminds me of a recent experience in my\u00a0grade 12 class. A homophobic student bragged how he would spend his Saturday nights driving in a car (crammed with\u00a0six other male homophobes), harassing people he thought\u00a0were\u00a0gay. My discussions with him failed. 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<\/p>\n