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Theory and Pedagogy for Instructors: Teaching and Learning Argument |
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Which is better, thesis or dialogic argument?
All "Theory for Instructors" pages such as this are introductory essays for instructors learning to apply theory to pedagogy. This page applies the educational theory of Brazilian political philosopher Paolo Freire to argumentative writing. Freire's theory of education recommends dialogic argument rather than thesis argument: dialogic writing, says Freire, helps people combine reflection and action more fully. Thus one can argue that dialogic writing improves student and instructor participation in an authentic democratic society.
Paolo Freire, the American Revolution, and Teaching Argument as Dialogue
Diane Hacker, author of A Writer's Reference and The Bedford Handbook, says what has become obvious to many people in the field of composition during the past thirty years (but not necessarily to those in other fields), that "[m]ost learning occurs during the process of writing" (298). This is true of argument, too--most learning about argument occurs in the context of activity, during the actual process of arguing. Some instructors believe that practicing dialogic argument, which encourages a student to both externalize and internalize debate, is an especially excellent form of argument they can teach students to help them learn to argue well. Freireistas--advocates of the theories and practices of Brazilian educator Paolo Freire--in particular are leading advocates for using dialogical argument in all classes. Freire himself suggests in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that dialogic argument develops freedom while traditional thesis writing can be a reflection of oppression. Is dialogic writing better than thesis writing? Not necessarily. Freire's theories, with a slight revision, can easily support the teaching and use of both thesis and dialogic argument in classrooms.
First, though, a fuller exposition of Freire's theory of dialogical argument may be helpful, along with his political theories of education. He developed his theories in a revolutionary political context--specifically, that of South American Marxism-where thesis writing did, indeed represent a form of oppression (as it may have in earlier educational systems in the U.S.--see, for example, Susan Miller). Our modern context for thesis writing is different, however. Teaching thesis writing helps students learn the modern tools of democracy, and our modern concept of democracy has within it an implicit belief that in any thesis writing, there is someone with whom to argue: i.e., that there is a constant debate among theses, and that debate has a real dialogic power. This understanding of argument has its roots in a philosophy of government developed by the founders of the United States, with political and philosophical roots stretching back to Greece's experiment with Athenian democracy. As Freire's theories have a similar background, it is possible to find a common ground with Freire's appeal to teach dialogic argument with our modern educational model of teaching thesis argument. However, to reach this conclusion, it is helpful first to examine Freire's South American-Marxist understanding of why dialogic argument is good and thesis argument bad.
Instructors: Oppressors, Oppressed, and Liberated
To begin, Freire divided groups of people into three types. One type was the oppressor, one the oppressed, and the third the liberated. To understand what Freire meant by dialogic argument, it is helpful to understand his explanation of these three types. Because of Freire's close association with education, one of the ways in which he explained these three groups was in terms of educators. All three types are well represented in education (as indeed they are in post-secondary education and in the field of teaching writing). In the oligarchic or dictatorial governments of Latin America, Freire read the field of teaching as a classic revolutionary situation in which the "good," rich, often whiter, post-colonial powers oppressed the poor, less educated, darker-colored, powerless using a middle group of functionaries--government bureaucrats, private managers, and public teachers. It is in this social context that Freire developed his theories of argument and how teachers teach it.
START REWRITING HERE: I have, above, changed some emphases. The "oppressed" are no longer comp teachers but rather students--or, at least, those whom we choose to elevate to a college education and middle management. And I put the second to the last previous paragraph in the past tense rather than the present, to help show that Freire's theorizing of this type was in the past in a partiuclar situation; so, consider doing this past tense revision below, too.
The oppressor in education, as described by Freire, is the instructor who believes he or she is part of an aristocracy of intelligence, wealth, power, or merit and who considers students to be blind absorbers of knowledge (or "bankers" of knowledge, as Freire says) who should not be allowed good grades unless they learn exactly what the instructor teaches and only develop the kind of thought that supports the system that the instructor represents. According to Freire's views, in composition courses, oppressive instructors often (but certainly not always) are those who are long-time, tenured professors who use lecture exclusively and would rather not teach composition but must do so because everyone in the department must take a turn. As Freire says, they are individuals who, "closing themselves into 'circles of certainty' from which they cannot escape, ...'make' their own truth" (38). Such an instructor, "as he revolves about 'his' truth, feels threatened if that truth is questioned. Thus, each considers anything that is not 'his' truth a lie" (39).
The oppressed, according to Freire, are those who are not allowed into the power structure but must perform its menial labor. In the world of college instruction, there is no better place to look for oppressed teachers than in the field of composition. In United States post-secondary schools, according to National Education Association figures, the majority of instructors who teach first-and second-year courses are graduate students or adjuncts (an adjunct being defined as a part-time and/or temporary instructor with no guarantee of continued employment at his or her school). According to National Council of Teachers of English figures, the great majority of those who teach composition, in particular, fall into this category. Graduate students and adjunct instructors are at the mercy of an English Department's power structure in what they say and do, and those who cannot fit in often are asked to leave or, more simply, not rehired.
The liberated, according to Freire, are those who have overthrown their oppression and are free to participate with equally accepted intelligence in the power, merit, and wealth of all instructors. An interesting point that Freire stresses is that often the newly liberated, unused to any ways of acting other than the ways of their oppressors, will establish a new oppressive regime. Such instructors talk with their students (and sometimes with other instructors) about being liberated from the old systems but then limit student thinking so it fits their own. "Not infrequently," says Freire, "revolutionaries themselves become reactionary by falling into sectarianism [dogmatism] in the process of responding to the sectarianism of the Right" (37).
However, says Freire, "[t]he radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a 'circle of certainty' [dogmatism].... On the contrary, the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them (39). Thus it is that other newly liberated instructors--those who retain their liberation--learn the real message of such liberation. This message is, in a word--according to Freire--dialogue. In a truly liberated people there must be, he says, a constant dialogue between reflection and action, both among people and within ourselves. We must, says Freire, learn to see each of our actions as purely as possible so that we might reflect upon them accurately, and we must use our reflections to act according to what we have seen. Such instructors in composition lecture little and instead engage students in processes that help them discover themselves as writers and critical thinkers.
Dialogic Argument as Radical Freedom
What does this have to do with argument in particular? Argument--the ability to offer an opinion cogently and powerfully--is the quintessence of a democracy. By definition, argument means disagreement, and thus it plays a central role in the dialogue Freire considers so essential to true liberation. Democracy itself is, of course, a liberationist agenda. However, as Freire likes to point out, the traditional classroom is rife with oppressor-oppressed opportunities because of the traditional relationship between instructor and student: traditionally, the instructor is the person who has all the power and knowledge, and he or she shares it with the student, who is powerless, by giving the student knowledge. This knowledge fits the instructor's view of life. Freire believes that in the liberated classroom, where dialogue among everyone exists, instructors not only teach but also learn from students, and students not only learn but also give knowledge to their instructors. In such teaching and learning, according to Freire and Macedo, students are regularly involved in "interrogation and analysis." Using Freire's ideas, the operable question about composition-classroom instruction and the rhetorical skill of persuasion thus becomes, "How can the instructor teach genuine argument?"
In the field of composition, some instructors continue to follow a traditional method of teaching argumentation. "Traditional" in this case does not necessarily imply the use of literary analysis, the classic rhetorical modes, or the five-paragraph theme--there are some very revolutionary instructors using such methods. Rather, "traditional" means here that such instructors require a student to argue, offer little instruction in how to do it, and expect the student never (or rarely) to disagree with them. Such instruction is worst--is most oppressive--when instructors tend to lecture about the contents (of the literature or the composition textbook), assign papers with no explanation of how to develop them and no samples, and grade summarily--that is, without giving the student an opportunity to revise according to instructor comment. When argument is taught, students in such classes find learning particularly difficult because they are more likely to produce "unacceptable" materials. Musicians like to say that it is easy to play a guitar but difficult to play it well. The same might be said of thesis writing. Freire argues that good dialogue actually precedes intelligent, fully cognizant thesis argument, and that when the latter becomes the immediate goal of education, usually students are taught primarily to mimic the arguments their instructors find valid. To write a thesis paper well--which, Freire would argue, actually requires an intellectually disruptive, antithetical opposition to traditional thinking--students must first engage in thorough, open-ended, and extended dialogue.
In a less oppressive version of traditional thesis teaching, some instructors provide feedback, the opportunity to revise, samples, and more than adequate help in learning the pattern of argumentation. However, Freire discusses how they they still may insist, consciously or unconsciously, that each student should maintain and support the same or a similar set of beliefs as the instructors' own. In fact, says Freire, such instructors may speak as the oppressed who have been recently liberated, and they may claim that everything they do to their students is for their students. Freire labels this kind of liberationist zeal as being yet another, albeit newer, form of oppression. "A real humanist," he says, "can be identified more by his trust in the people, which engages him in their struggle, than by a thousand actions in their favor without that trust" (60).
The field of composition is known especially for its many "liberated" instructors--those who want students to learn to express and/or discover themselves, their critical thinking abilities, and their strengths in writing. Indeed, the composition classroom with its small size (compared to that of many other undergraduate courses) and its interest in teaching functional practices to students (e.g., writing, thinking, and critical or close reading) rather than content is an ideal setting for what Freire considers liberationist instruction. The liberated instructor encourages dialogue on many levels and in many ways by classroom discussion in which students actively take stances that are authentically their own, by similar small-group discussions and activities, and by homework that encourages students to explore their own beliefs and others'. "The only effective instrument," says Freire, "is a humanizing pedagogy in which the...leadership establishes a permanent relationship of dialogue.... In a humanizing pedagogy, the method [dialogue] ceases to be an instrument by which the teachers...can manipulate the students..., because it expresses the consciousness of the students themselves" (68-9).
What is dialogue as taught and used by a liberated educator? In essence, according to Freire, it is "the way by which [people] achieve significance as human beings" (88). It is "an epistemological relationship," a "way of knowing [that] should never be viewed as a mere tactic to involve students in a particular task" (17). Freire calls it is "an encounter among women and men," "an act of creation," a "liberation of humankind.... Love is...the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself" (89), and it "cannot exist without humility (90). The "'dialogical man' believes in others even before he meets them face to face" (90-91). Dialogue is utilized when instructors "pose this existential, concrete, present situation to the people as a problem which challenges them and requires a response..." (95-6). According to Freire, "the problem-posing method--dialogical par excellence--is constituted and organized by the students' view of the world, where their own generative themes are found" (109). And if critical thinking is the core of what we want students to learn, then, according to Freire, dialogue not only provides the core but is that core. "Only dialogue," he says, a quality "which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication [and] no true education" (92-3). Authentic dialogue is an expression of authentic humanism, he says, and leads to authentic education.
Interestingly, a major new research project at Harvard University supports Freire's method (Hurley). The study, led by Felton Earls and reported in Science in 1997 and subsequently in the American journal of Sociology, compared videos of 11,408 blocks in Chicago with police records in these same 196 neighborhoods and surveys of 8,782 residents. The study concluded that the lowering of crime in a neighborhood, no matter its relative poverty or wealth, depends primarily on "collective efficacy": the active engagement of civic groups in such pursuits as community meetings, individual and group complaints about specific problems, reports to police of criminal or other questionable activities, greater parental control of children, etc. In other words, to have a good neighborhood, people must, as a self-actualizing community, discuss, debate, and explore contraries--to be intellectually involved in a dialogical process. Earls' research is supported by large grants from the National Institute of Justice and the MacArthur Foundation. The research also suggests that the older paradigm--that quality of life is improved in a neighborhood primarily by paying people to keep the streets clean, by renovation, and by police arrests of vagrants and troublemakers--offers only a temporary solution at best. Freireistas would argue that this older paradigm is an oppressive one--and certainly many residents of poor communities argue it. It is a paradigm in which those in power present a thesis argument--a top-down order from those in power who try to force a community to be what it should--rather than a paradigm of community dialogue and resulting community action from the ground up.
What are some examples of Freireista instruction? My own primary method in composition classes is to require students to write "dialogic/dialectic papers" in which they must thoroughly represent two opposing arguments and a third one that is either a true compromise or a genuinely different "higher" or third point of view. I also encourage students to work in small groups frequently, developing their own rough-draft versions using their own contents for types of papers I am introducing. Some instructors develop Freireista classrooms by asking students to debate and then set standards the entire class should follow, and then to continue this democratic dialogue in determining what constitutes good and poor writing on any given set of assignments.
Victor Villanueva, a leading expert in the field of composition and a North American Freireista, suggests two examples of types of ssignments that do not threaten students but might create "less dramatic but no less revolutionary change" by making students "more aware of the workings of hegemony" (623-4) . One is to ask students to respond to and discuss opposing readings such as Hemingway and Buchi Ernecheta's Double Yoke, "the story of a black African woman tryng to get through different value systems, cultures, ways of viewing the world," "Ayn Rand against John Steinbeck," or "Louis L'Amour against Leslie Marmon Silko" (634). Another is a metacognitive, self-reflective assignment: "[b]orrowing from Henry Giroux's adaptation of resistance theory, students are asked to consider in their writing the degree to which they can or do resist, oppose, or accommodate conflicts."
On the other hand, Freire's authentic education does not include dialogue that involves "one person's 'depositing' ideas in another," a "simple exchange of ideas to be 'consumed' by the discussants," nor "a hostile, polemical argument between those who are committed...to the imposition of their own truth" (89). Dialogue also does not include instructors forcing their opinions upon students, no matter how much more enlightened the instructors may be. In this regard, Freire quotes Mao-Tse-Tung from Mao's Selected Works, Vol. III (Peking, 1967), pp. 186-7:
All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently...until...most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out.... There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own mind...." (Freire 94)
Three Clarifications: Discipline, the Inner Self, and Students
There are, of course, many points of finesse and clarifications in Freire's philosophy and its application to education. Three bear notice here.
The first is that requiring discipline in a composition (or any) classroom is not in itself an act of oppression, no matter how much some students may claim the contrary. As Freire says, "An act is oppressive only when it prevents people from being more fully human [and] necessary restraints do not in themselves signify...oppressors (57). In a composition classroom involving students' free exchange of ideas and of individual stances on issues, the cacophony of democracy creates a much less rigidly controlled atmosphere and leads to a greater number of emotional disturbances of the conversation (which is precisely one of the reasons why some traditionalists prefer the lecture hall, where teaching can exist in a very tightly controlled, dry continuum of little-interrupted (or very politely interrupted and carefully controlled) intellectual thought. Many who attempt Freire's model of the open-ended, dialogical classroom are stunned by the greater need for encouraging politeness and establishing codes of behavior. However, this is just part of the overall dialogue: it is a mixture of the intellectual and the forms of behavior appropriate to an authentic democracy. Authentic argument at a reflective level cannot occur when emotional or physical expressions repress dialogue.
Another worthwhile point is that all of us have a tendency to seek oppression, just as we all have a tendency to seek liberation: both are natural inner conditions of being human. Oppression exists within us in our attempts to repress or ignore the negative physical, emotional, and mental feelings and thoughts we experience. How often, for example, has each of us felt like simply shouting down a pain in our bodies or, perhaps, striking at a horrible memory or image that keeps returning to us, unbidden, by day or night? For this reason, Freire's "dialogue"--among people and between action and reflection--is not just for primarily external use, but also must become, in Freire's point of view, an internalized process, as well for liberation to be authentic. The teaching of argument as a dialogue helps give voices--concrete, specific meanings--to these internal processes.
A third important point is the student position. Some students perceive themselves as do many instructors: trainees in how to gain the power and privilege of the ruling classes. Others perceive themselves as the oppressed. There is likely some truth and some self-serving fantasy involved in both positions. Students in the more expensive and elite colleges and universities may be more likely to consider themselves trainees being prepared to run society, and while they may like the idea of learning to argue--as they may see it as one of the perquisites of the elite--they also may resist having to listen to other people's arguments unless doing so helps them further internalize the beliefs of the elite.
Some other students--more likely, among those in community and technical colleges and state universities who are working toward a general two- or four-year degree--may be more likely to perceive themselves as the oppressed, for they simply want to participate in society fully at an equal level but feel forced to get a liberal arts education in order to do so, and many requirements in that education may seem to them wasteful of their time, arbitrary, and thus unfair. Such students may find that a composition class--a class teaching function rather than content--appears more useful to their purposes, as they perceive themselves as needing the ability to argue in order to reach their professional goals.
A third group, especially those in certificate or technical-training programs, may perceive themselves as being trained to fit comfortably into a niche in a society that they accept uncritically (or with a general criticism that involves no intent to act against society's dictates). Such students, especially if older and already in the workplace, sometimes are less comfortable with a non-lecture classroom because, according to Freire, the instructor does not tell them what to think.
All three types of students are likely to perceive the immediate instructor in any course as a trainer/facilitator of the ruling class, an oppressor, or a liberator, depending on the student and the instructor. It thus becomes important for an instructor to be aware of this dynamic in the teacher-student relationship.
Dialogic Argument as Democracy
It is not necessary, though, to view Freire's lessons about dialogic argument through the lens of Marxism. In fact, dialogic argument is an ancient and well developed tradition in rhetoric. Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato in particular discussed it. Plato's Dialogues show Socrates used a method of teaching and learning that involving a series of questions in order to uncover logical fallacies. Today this style of questioning, known as the Socratic Method, is used by some to teach: a teacher offers instruction primarily by asking students a series of questions, thus encouraging dialogue among them with little or no argumentative response from the instructor himself. Such questioning is meant to encourage students to feel comfortable in offering a variety of responses, some of which may oppose each other, and thus discovering multiple viewpoints and the complex thought required to support one view or another or to synthesize them. Hundreds of years after Plato, the philosopher and statesman Boethius, having studied Greek and Roman rhetorical systems extensively, came to the same conclusion as Freire over a thousand years later. According to James D. Williams in his highly accessible introduction to the history of rhetoric, "Boethius argued that dialectic was prior to and inherently superior to rhetoric. ...As Conley (1990) noted, this distinction led Boethius to conclude, 'Dialectic...governs the genus of argumentation, and rhetoric [including persuasion] becomes a subordinate part of dialectic'" (Williams 35).
The scholarly rhetorical tradition of dialectic or dialogue was also an important background of the development of the American Revolution by leaders who believed in education for all citizens and a citizenry sufficiently informed to question government and to form its own. Giroux suggests that the purpose of improving students' knowledge is to help them "locate themselves in their own histories" so they become "agents in the struggle to expand...human life and freedom" (10-11), much like the communities mentioned above in Felton Earls' Harvard research project. This is precisely what the leaders of the American Revolution hoped for all citizens of the newly formed United States.
To better connect Freire and the American Revolution, imagine for a moment that
he is alive
in the decade before the Revolution. Picture him talking
of the American colonies as the oppressed and the need for the overthrow of a
political, cultural, and social structure that assumes that landed royalty are
the only people who can have real—i.e., intelligent--thoughts. For
people like Thomas Paine and others to suggest laws contrary to those of the
Crown was seditious, not because they were wrong but rather because the act of
thinking against the Crown—of disagreement—was itself seditious: the only
kind of "dialogue" that was allowable in politics, culture, or society
was that between two peers, and only in matters that did not conflict with what
was ordained by those whose stations were above them.
In this way of viewing Freire is an encapsulation of one of the most important intellectual elements of the American Revolution. Physical freedom and the equality of human beings in law brought with it a concomitant need for dialogue about those laws, and the principle of freedom of speech not only guaranteed that such dialogue could exist but also encouraged it. The revolution of any country from a hierarchical system of power to that of one in which power is dispersed relatively equally among the many--in short--a democratic revolution--leads to Freire's dialogic conditions. In this sense, Freire's theory of dialogic argument lies at the heart of American legal and cultural principles.
In most well developed Western, democratic societies, post-secondary education has a reputation for being a place where one is encouraged to learn how to argue intelligently. Most students accept this principle because, at the least, they perceive it as an element of democracy and of maintaining and improving their own situations in society and at work. Freire also emphasizes--as should anyone who holds dear the principles of democracy--that while thesis argument may still imply an oppressor--oppressed situation, or at least an attempt to have or use power over or against someone--dialogic argument implies equality. He suggests that while teaching thesis argument may too easily imply the learning of a method of those in power, teaching dialogic argument implies the sharing of power.
Instructors may encourage a variety of forms of dialogue, whether by having each student represent several sides to an issue, asking students to debate each other and then reach some kind of compromise or higher synthesis, or to work with textual arguments in the same way. However, the students' focus on content--the subject matter of their dialogue--is very important. According to Freire, "it is necessary to trust in the oppressed and in their ability to reason" (66). He explains that it is in the concrete, particular situation in which each student finds him or herself that she can meet in equal dialogue with others, reflect on what others say, and learn to act according to these new sets of information and reflections she has gained. As Gilbert Ryle says in The Concept of Mind, people who develop a skill "learn how by practice, schooled indeed by criticism and example, but often quite unaided by any lessons in the theory" (qtd. in Hacker 229). By asking students to work with what each knows and believes is it possible to encourage their further democratization, through authentic reflection and action.
Conclusion
Freire tells the story of how, when he was writing his English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he asked for advice on a chapter from an African-American student at Harvard. The student's sixteen-year-old son also read it in less than a day. According to Freire, the sixteen-year-old said, "I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me'" (23). Yet, according to Donaldo Macedo of the University of Massachusetts in the edition's introduction, "[t]he academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible." Macedo suggests the answer lies in people's ideology: those who have experienced oppression understand Freire intimately and easily, while those who have not fail to capture the meanings or, worse, resist them so much that the larger meanings are blurred. However, almost anyone who has been a student and has been convinced at times that a course is being taught or graded unfairly (and indeed, anyone who has been in much more serious situations of oppression) may find echoes of their dissatisfaction in Freire's thoughts about education. In addition, as Villanueva says, dialogue "might have us all recognize our world, the marketplace, as necessitating a wrangle, not just a simple climb" (635). Freire does not suggest mere resistance, but rather a thoroughgoing and authentic revolution that must always have authentic dialogue at its center.
Teaching argument as dialogue is one method of developing authenticity, both simple and profound. It also is a very practical method we can easily apply in our classrooms with immediate, direct benefits. In this way we can begin to explore Freire's and others' theories about dialogue. In addition, such teaching is both justifiable to and popular among large majorities of students and communities: it is consonant with--and deeply embedded in--our own country's core of democracy and the spirit of the American Revolution.
-----
Works Cited
Bullock, Richard and John Trimbur, with
Charles I. Schuster. The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary.
Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition.
----- and D. Macedo. Literacy:
Reading the Word and the World. S.
Giroux, H. "Literacy and the Pedagogy of Political Empowerment. In Freire and Macedo 1-28.
Hacker, Diane. "Following the
Tao." Teaching English in the
Hurley, Dan. "Researchers
cite personal action as urban-crime antidote." New York Times News Service.
Macedo, Donaldo, "Introduction." In Freire.
Plato. The Dialogues of Plato.
Trans.and Ed. B. Jowett.
Villanueva, Jr. Victor.
"Considerations for American Freireistas." Cross-Talk in Comp
Theory. Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr.
Williams, James D.. "The
Foundations of Rhetoric." Preparing to Teach Writing: Research, Theory,
and Practice.
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