Re-read this essay of mine recently after someone remarked how good it was. I wasn’t sure, but after re-reading it I think they are right – it might need a bit more attention than it gets in its original published form.
It’s funny how an old piece can come back to life for you after someone dear to you checks it out and comments on it. Maybe this one needs a bit of re-working and then it can be sent out somewhere else. I like the idea of the classroom, sans debate, as a site for disruption, rupture, and interrupture. What other things can create such an environment?
Perhaps a genealogy of debate in the classroom is what we really need. How did debates become something that American teachers find easy to assign, and students find acceptable and normal assignments?
Here’s the essay below. It does seem to fit in my larger thinking now about the university classroom. It’s not a passive space. Also, spoiler alert: A teaching university is a research university. But that’s for another post.