Politics, Politics, Politics...

I make it a professional rule that while I want my class discussions and student assignments to be topical, I don't necessarily want them to be too politically charged. I've had plenty of professors who've made no secret of their political leanings, and have been more than happy to share their views, sometimes to the point of preaching, other times far beyond – I had a history professor once who was such a stanch Republican that he joked that he was impotent during the entire Carter administration.

In keeping with my “keep my personal life out of the classroom” policy, I've avoided inserting my own political views in class discussions and assignments, and in the interest of keeping order, I've tried not to touch on too many politically charged topics. Current events are all well and good, but I don't want to cause any arguments, nor do want to even appear to influence my own students with my own views – there are too many who hold on to the lingering belief that it's wrong to disagree with their professor.

But current events in an election year are inevitably political, and while I've avoided topics on the election directly, it's impossible to avoid the big issues for long – especially when the theme for the assignments happens to be argumentation and debate.

This week, I had discovered three interesting articles which were prime examples of persuasive writing, and clearly demonstrated several of the key elements I had wanted to illustrate – claims, inductive and deductive reasoning, rebuttals, the whole works. The problem? Not only were all the articles on the same topic (capital punishment), they all espoused the same view (they were against it).

Incidentally, I'm not against capital punishment – I support it, albeit only in the most extreme of crimes. The point is that I made sure to explain to my students that these articles were being offered only as examples of argumentation, and the fact that they were all on the same topic was unintentional.

The ensuing discussions were lively, but controlled – students were able to analyze what was said and how it was said without any heated debates going on as to capital punishment. Some of them chose to write about the topic in an in-class essay – some agreed, some rebutted (not very well, in either case, but they're trying), and others were content to analyze the message of one or more articles, comparing and contrasting the various authors' approaches, choosing the best. All told, I was pleased with their results.

As teachers, it is our responsibility to teach our students how to think without telling them what to think. The potential to abuse our authority (even unwittingly) over our students is great, but it is not something that should scare us away from keeping our lessons on-topic and interesting.