Speaking freely in the classroom
Ihave been absent from the pages of the Citizen over the last few weeks. The usual end of term workload and a cold meant that I missed out on many things, including writing my weekly 700 words. I have, of course, followed many stories over the weeks and I am sorry to have missed the chance to make some comments.
One story that was particularly interesting to a university professor is the story of Lindsay Shepherd.
She is a graduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University.
I expect that many of you saw that she was severely reprimanded for showing a clip from the TVOntario show, The Agenda, hosted by Steve Paikin in which he interviews a professor who refused to use gender neutral pronouns in his classroom.
The story of Shepherd’s reprimand is interesting on a number of levels.
It raises all kinds of issues that are part of the national and international dialogue about universities and free speech and processes that fail to follow the rules of natural justice.
In fact, as I look back over this past year at my columns, I notice that issues of free speech and civic discourse have been a recurring theme.
Let me start by clarifying the role that Shepherd would have as a teaching assistant (TA).
First, Shepherd is a graduate student which means that she has completed her undergraduate degree and is now pursuing a Masters (the term graduate student can also apply to a student pursuing a PhD).
As part of the graduate student experience, many students are awarded a TA position.
These positions are part of the training that most university professors receive along the way.
It is in TA positions that most professors learned how to grade, how to design a lesson and how to foster intellectual discussion.
Many of us learned how to teach by role modelling the professors that we most admired.
I remember many years ago, a colleague of mine said that teaching assistants are “our junior colleagues” and I always thought that was a great description of their status that recognized the weight of their responsibility.
In my experience, teaching assistants are hard-working, caring, and dedicated to student learning.
Shepherd’s treatment in the interview with her supervisor and two other professors was difficult to listen to because the recrimina- tions came without evidence of a complaint against her (it turns out there wasn’t one) and without any obvious regard for the legitimate effort she was making to give students the necessary background of a controversial issue.
In a larger context, this incident raises more fundamental questions about what is meant by safe classroom spaces and free speech, and our obligations to have difficult conversations.
Shepherd showed the Paikin interview to give the students the context of the debate.
Her responsibility in the classroom, as she herself articulated in the meeting with the professors, was not to provide her own opinion but rather to create a space where students can confront ideas that they will find outside of the university context.
The instructor’s obligation in the classroom is to ask questions that will help students to think about their own views and to challenge their own assumptions.
Why does this person hold these views?
What experiences has this person had that gives them their particular worldview?
What arguments are made in favour of their ideas?
What arguments are made against their ideas?
How do we reconcile these opposing views?
Questions like these should shift the debate from simple assertions of opinion to careful thought about where ideas come from, why they are held, and if they are worthy of staying the norm.
Safe classrooms are places in which difficult moral questions can be debated by applying evidence and critical thought. In this context, free speech is as much a right as it is a responsibility.
Careful, critical thought needs to be applied to ideas. The primary mission of a university is to explore ideas.
As the New Year approaches, I think about the past year and all the challenges the world has faced.
I suppose that my hope for 2018 is that we can find a way to have better conversations about the way we should live together.
My feeling is that it is less about convincing other people that we are right and more about listening to the challenges that other people face.
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