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How can I learn to challenge students effectively, without making my view,

or any one view, the right one?

Free-for-All - In this seminar there is a prize

to be won, whether it's the instructor's approval

or one's self esteem. There is no other goal but to

win. If fighting fair won't win, then one fights in

whatever way will win. One wins not simply by

looking smart, but by looking smarter. Thus, important

as it is to look smart, it is equally important

to make the others look dumb.

Beauty Contest - This is the seminar in which

each idea is paraded in all its finery, seeking admiration.

When it has been displayed, its sponsor

withdraws to think up the next idea, paying little

attention to the next contestant. Thus, each person's

ideas bear little or no relation to anyone

else's.

Distinguished House Tour - The model for

this seminar is a tour which takes you to a series of

stately homes. The first might be a good example

of Edwardian architecture and furniture. The

hosts have spruced it up for your visit; they show

you through, explain it, and answer your questions.

Then you get back into the bus and go look

at another house. Perhaps a good example of

Georgian architecture.

Barn Raising - In frontier America when a

family needed a barn but had limited labor and

other resources, the entire community gathered to

help them build the barn. The host family described

the kind of barn it had in mind and picked

the site. The community then pitched in and built

it. Neighbors would suggest changes and improvements

as they built.

This seminar begins with a member telling the

group ideas which might be newly formed and not

yet thought out. Then the community gathers to

build the barn, to put together that idea. As I hear

you say the original idea, it may be something I

disagree with or something I've never thought

about before; but now it becomes my project, and

I set about helping you build it, helping us build it.

After you've offered the idea, you have no more

responsibility for developing it, defending it, or

explaining it than anybody else in the group. If I

have a problem with that idea, the problem

belongs to the whole seminar, not just to you. You

are not the lonely defender of that idea but part of

a task-force whose job is to develop it to its fullest

potential, to make the best possible case for it. It is

not your idea anymore; it belongs to the seminar.

The energy which might have gone into conflict,

or into polite challenge-and-defense, now is

directed toward a common goal.