Abstract
This essay focuses on two specific challenges for cultivating open-mindedness in schools: preconscious perceptual limitations and an impoverished view of how humans hold beliefs. An exploration of perceptual limitations such as self-deception and perceptual blindness reveals the need for some type of curricular friction to help students perceive their own (as well as others’) beliefs and perspectives. Conceiving of strong beliefs as embedded in networks of other beliefs and tied to a person’s identity highlights why some of our beliefs can be invulnerable to the powers of rational analysis. The protection these networks provide indicates the need for a curricular tool that possesses the ability to penetrate their hold. This essay proposes that engaging with well-chosen and meaningful narratives in classrooms can help negotiate this set of challenges by providing practice in perceiving, considering, and taking seriously alternative perspectives. In doing so, narratives help cultivate the genuine openness required by open-mindedness.
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Notes
- 1.
The beliefs under consideration in this essay are those that are relevant for public schooling in a pluralistic democracy, and about which reasonable people disagree. They typically pertain to political, social and moral issues salient for citizenship. I also intend the word “beliefs” to include things like principles and commitments.
- 2.
Sockett (2013) notes that in significant ways, schooling itself functions to “blind” us. I laughed out loud when he commented that, “this riddle was obviously thought up by a teacher. You know, I am giving you this mass of information. Now here’s a question to which I demand a right answer: ‘Who is the doctor?’” This seems accurate, and Sockett shows how teachers can structure their classrooms in ways that counteract this tendency. In Sockett’s ideal classroom (2012), teachers cultivate an “epistemological presence” that opens students to question and to explore. Even so, and despite our efforts to counter it, information comes to us in ways that shape and divert our attention. And some situations demand quick evaluation, judgment and action, making exploration impossible. The problem I pose stands, even in a classroom with an “epistemological presence.” It is a problem of human perception, and though teachers and schooling can exacerbate or ameliorate it, the problem remains.
- 3.
My thanks go to Hugh Sockett for this example.
- 4.
New sorts of narrative fictions, such as video games, fantasy role-playing games, live action role-playing games (e.g., Forest of Doors and Civil War reenactments) may also be interesting possibilities.
- 5.
See, for example, Bai’s and Cohen’s (2014) work on short Japanese teaching stories called Zen koans.
- 6.
See Verducci & Katz (2011) for some ideas.
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Verducci, S. (2015). Opening Minds Through Narratives. In: Lewis, T., Laverty, M. (eds) Art's Teachings, Teaching's Art. Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7191-7_4
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