Advocating for Devils (Comprehension: Part III)
Eliminating dichotomies forces students to critically think because their responses are no longer objective. There is no paved path forward. There is no beaten-down walking trail. Critical thinking compels students to navigate an untamed mental wilderness where the only correct response is how well the student presents their case.
When dichotomous choices are eliminated, conflict is created, arguments are catalyzed, and passion is elicited. It is the obligation of classroom teachers to encourage and moderate those arguments, but that is not the teacher’s primary function. Rather, the teacher’s role should be that of the Devil’s Advocate. If you’re unfamiliar with a Devil’s Advocate, their purpose is to be a contrarian. In other words, the Devil’s Advocate always takes an adversarial position that contradicts or counters the student’s argument or conclusion. The purpose is to challenge the students’ processes of thinking so they are forced to defend their point of view. It’s to train and encourage them to take a stand — for something — no matter how fucked up, illogical, nonfactual, nonsensical, or absurd it might be.
Teachers, particularly effective ones, wield significant managerial and intellectual authority in the classroom. It's dangerously easy for teachers to subtly, or even overtly, intimidate students into abandoning their views. A raised eyebrow, a contradictory fact, or a single pointed question can be enough to quash a student's opinion. But this isn't about intellectual demolition or domination. Rather, it's about trial-by-intellectual-fire. The Devil's Advocate role is to sharpen, not destroy. We must remember that even in this adversarial stance, our core duty as teachers remains the same: to elicit depth and supply vocabulary. To be explicit, it is not the teacher's role to debate each student or guide students to conclusions that mirror our own beliefs. Our obligation is to prevent the debate from ever coalescing. We are to keep the intellectual friction alive, compelling students to dig deeper and defend their emerging convictions.
Education is functionally a one person activity, but the development of critical thinking always requires multiple. Critical thinking obligates students to talk to other people and argue about a bunch of shit. We have to heed the perspectives, experiences, and facts from people that do not operate our individual minds. And once we’ve argued the shit out of something – once we’ve heard all the evidence, perspectives, and experiences students are willing to offer — it is time to write about what we think.
