Teaching Controversial Topics - A Classroom Guide

Teacher Name:

City, State:

Interview Topic: Introducing controversial topics in the classroom

What first comes to mind when you are preparing to introduce a potentially offensive topic in the classroom?

Do you set ground rules or place limits on the content of the discussion?

Do you require each student to speak or give his/her opinion on the topic?

How do you handle difference in opinion between students?

How do you, as the teacher ensure that you remain unbiased in these situations?

Is there a time you can recall that you did not remain unbiased? What effect, if any, did it have on your lesson?

Do you believe there are topics that should remain outside the classroom at all times?

Additional comments:

What’s offensive to one student can be inoffensive to another. Because there’s no predicting which topic will or won’t rile somebody, the only way to prepare is no to prepare.

The mantra for class discussions is that even if we don’t see eye to eye

we can always talk heart to heart. Listening to your classmates is an act of caring. If you are a good listener, you’ll have many friends. If you are a poor listener, all you’ll have is acquaintances.

Every class has its windbags or gasbags. The trick is to let them hold forth but not to the point of taking so much air time that the rest of the class tunes out. To get everyone into the game, as when, for example, we’ve watched a film in class or read aloud a passage from an essay, I’ll go around the room one-by-one to get everyone’s comments. If this is done routinely, the message is clear: come to class ready to speak.

I teach what is generically called Peace Studies. My bias is that alternatives to violence exist. The goal of the course is offer students some information on those alternatives, whether the violence is military violence, domestic violence, racial violence, legal or illegal violence, corporate violence, academic violence, homophobic violence, sexual violence, verbal violence, emotional violence. I don’t hesitate to tell students that I am a pacifist and an anarchist and that I have biases for nonviolent solutions to conflicts. I tell them also that I welcome all opinions, that I’m eager to learn their biases and that I’d rather have a dozen students who actively disagree with me than passively agree.

A free exchange of ideas is essential for quality learning. Caution is sometimes needed, though, as when a student’s feelings would be hurt on any given topic. A discussion of suicide would be out of place if days before a student’s parent took his or her own life