You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation - Deborah Tannen

One of the most useful distinctions introduced in this book is the idea that men often think in terms of hierarchy while women often think in terms of connection. Though I would have never thought about my teaching in these terms, it certainly seems to be true that I often emphasize "rightness" in class discussions more than I would probably like to admit.

I was thinking about this today while I was doing dishes: what do you do in a class discussion when someone raises a particularly offensive perspective (racist, sexist, homophobic, etc)? A friend of mine said that she once shut down an entire conversation because a student of hers said something particularly misogynistic, and her reaction was to say, "That offends me. You are not allowed to talk like that in this classroom." When she told me this she was proud, and I was incredibly bothered - annoyed - by her attitude. It shut down the conversation, which, to her, was the appropriate action.

I would like to think that, faced with the same situation, I would allow space for that person to express himself or herself. At first glance, this makes me feel superior to my friend, as my classroom is a space for freedom. I think the ideal outcome of the situation would be that other students in the room would speak up and counter the offensive comment with intelligent commentary and confrontation. But what happens if the students don't take care of it themselves?

My reaction would be to one-up the offending student myself, offering a corrective. But is this necessarily a better strategy than the one my friend employed? I'm not sure.

In some ways, the two strategies (and my negative reaction to the strategy of my friend) can be understood in the terms that Tannen provides: when a student voices a particularly ignorant perspective, I feel morally obligated to make sure that this perspective is shoved to the bottom of the hierarchy of ideas. My friend, on the other hand, would rather silence a conversation than allow part of it to wander into dicey territory. This is a different way of trying to protect the classroom and the students in it - one that conceives of the discussion more in terms of interconnection than hierarchy.

The most important thing, for me, to take away from Tannen is the understanding that it's not necessarily about whose strategy is better (mine or my friend's), but that we're thinking about the fabric of classroom discussion in fundamentally different ways. Even my instinct to rate whose strategy is better seems hierarchical and competitive.