I mourn the decline of the newspaper op-ed page and the era when good citizens felt compelled to routinely read opinions from writers who had very different perspectives than their own.
Persuasion is, I fear, a lost art. People don’t know how to disagree as civilly as they used to. Assigned to make a persuasive argument, students often want to tell me how they feel. Some take offense when I critique their arguments, point out logical fallacies, and tell them that feelings aren’t facts. Sometimes in challenging their liberal or conservative opinions, they seem to feel I have attacked their identity. And they often seem afraid to express dissent from each other.
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, and author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, tweeted:
To me, disagreement is the spice of life. I got my start in journalism as an editorial page assistant seeking out different points of view, and I still very much enjoy having my beliefs and opinions challenged, and in the process sharpened. Some people are so unaccustomed to considering perspectives different from their own that they seek to label them — “woke”; “white supremacist” — take offense, and shut them down, even in educational settings.
I was appalled that a high school English teacher in Chapin, South Carolina was reprimanded
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