Jo-Ellen Pozner : Talking Trump in the Classroom : Inside Higher Ed
Management Professor Jo-Ellen Pozner’s recently published article weighs in on the extremely topical dilemma of how professors can challenge students to contend with thorny or controversial issues without necessarily imposing their own value-based judgments. She also shares her own struggles with political discussion in the classroom, especially in the wake of such controversial actions by President Trump.
An excerpt from the article:
And yet, as an academic trained not to make normative prescriptions, talking about politics feels inappropriate to me. I have felt it difficult to separate my own political views from the issues that underlie them. Imposing my own value-based judgments on a classroom discussion is diametrically opposed to my teaching approach; I tell my classes that I save my moralizing and transmission of values for my own young children, that the content of my students’ value systems is not my affair. And so I have shied away from engaging with the issues we currently confront in my courses.
Recently, however, it has become abundantly clear to me that my approach has been misguided. As educators, it is our responsibility to speak up for things that we find troubling. It is impossible to send students out into today’s working world ready to blow the whistle on unethical behavior in the workplace but unprepared to analyze, debate and act upon their own moral judgments about far-reaching, paradigm-shifting government policy.
Read the full article here»
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