The "teachable moment" presented by the Gates-Crowley affair has now become fodder for virtually every commentator. While listening to the radio yesterday I heard an insightful point (sadly,I missed the identity of the insight's author). The gentleman on the radio program argued that the problem with teachable moments is that everyone thinks that it's a time for their perspective to be taught to others. In other words, everyone recognizes the utility and potential of a teachable moment, but thinks themselves teachers, rather than students. The success of such a moment then would be measured by the degree to which other Americans become convinced that my perspective was the best one all along. I don't think one needs a Ph.D. to see the problem with a simple teacher-student education model here. What we need to sell to each other (the American people) before we can have a useful national conversation is the concept of learning that is professed in the mission statements of most American colleges and universities; which amounts to a definition of scholarship. Professors, school teachers, cops, business people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, trades people, and laborers all need to operate in such a conversation as "scholars" who neither transmit or receive wisdom exclusively.
On the first day of my introductory course, I warn the largely first year college students that I have no licence or formal education or training as a teacher. I remind them that their high school teachers were required to earn a state licence and to engage in ongoing education and training to keep their jobs, while I as a tenured college faculty member need neither a licence nor formal training in the art and science of teaching. To further make my perspective clear I tell the students not to call me Mr. or Dr. or Prof. Duquette, but rather to use my first name, Jerold. Although I do usually admit that I'll respond to "your Grace," "He who must be obeyed," or "my captain-my captain" as well.
Why do I do this? Well, in addition to making clear my super coolness, I do it because at a university everybody is engaged in scholarship, which involves investigation and learning. Those paying and those being paid are all working together to understand and develop knowledge and to refine their knowledge acquisition skills in the process. There is plenty of teaching going on (we hope), but it is not a unidirectional phenomena. Students who expect me as a professor to transmit information to them and then to simply verify that they got it by testing them have probably underestimated the dynamism of their high school teachers' job and completely misunderstand their relationship to me as their professor. I have always said that I've been a student all my life; I just went pro after college.
If Americans are going to benefit from a national conversation, they must first acknowledge that each of us comes to the table with important knowledge and that the success of the conversation depends on each of us being willing and able to transmit our knowledge clearly and civilly, as well as to comprehend, analyse, and evaluate the knowledge being transmitted by others. If anyone thinks or is thought to be merely teacher or student (in a college seminar room or a serious national conversation), then neither teaching or learning can be optimally achieved.
Does this mean we have to give serious attention to absurd perspectives by extremists? Essentially, yes. We do have to try to understand what pushes some folks to extreme beliefs. While this won't likely rehabilitate their beliefs, it should reduce our animus toward the extremists. It is important to stress that understanding, in and of itself, is in no way equivalent to endorsing.