Deborah Tannen, "The Roots of Debate in Education and the Hope of Dialogue," and:

• Peter Ho Davies, "What You Know," and Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel"
• Susan Faludi, "The Naked Citadel"
• Lani Guinier, "Second Proms and Second Primaries"
• Martha Nussbaum, "Women and Cultural Universals"

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the Tannen link-o-mat.

Davies, Faludi, and Tannen: Violence and Institutions of Learning

In your last assignment, I asked you to consider how a shift in the way that we think about learning might change the way we think about masculinity.  Deborah Tannen showed us our educational system as based on debate and argument, rather than productive discussion.  Susan Faludi presented us with the Citadel, a military institution whose traditions of learning seem based as much on the hazing in the dormitories and the "fourth-class system" as on the books in the classroom.  Peter Ho Davies, in his "What You Know", gives us a fictional story from the point of view of a creative writing teacher contemplating a student's act of murder/suicide, and his attempts to understand the motivations behind it.  In each of these pieces, we see education and violence mingling, sometimes in unexpected ways. 

For your next essay, I would like you to consider the following question:  How and why do acts of violence become connected to structures of learning?  How does power work in each of these situations?  Do you think that questions of what is perceived as masculinity continue to play a role in this problem?  How might we consider these questions outside of a learning institution (the Citadel, the high school, the college), in terms of the larger questions of learning in life? 

(To see the rest of the assignments in this sequence, please visit our sample sequences page.)

Megan Heller

Faludi and Tannen: Gender and Learning

In your last essay, I asked you to demonstrate whether or not a culture's traditions had some inherent right to exist.  In Susan Faludi's "The Naked Citadel," we saw the Citadel's controversial fourth-class system as a means of breaking cadets before rebuilding them, and the conflicts raised when women were introduced into that environment.  She claims that "[W]e are at a psychic and economic crisis point for manhood," both in confronting the traditions of the Citadel and on a larger scale.  Deborah Tannen goes beyond tradition as well to the roots of learning in Western culture, and there finds what could be the same roots for the violence at the Citadel.  Tannen sees Western education as being based in a system of confrontation and aggressive argument, and proposes a compromise between debate and dialogue which would involve less the questions of "wrong" and "right", and more the possibility for constructive agreement and disagreement.  She claims that the current system is based in a militaristic model that is also responsible for the exclusion of women in certain academic arenas.

For your next essay, I would like you to consider the following question:  How might a shift in the way we think about learning change the way we think about masculinity?  As you write, you may also consider the following questions:  Why do you believe that an agressive, militaristic model of education has perservered for so long?  Would the Citadel be able to exist in a revised system like Tannen's, or would its traditions be destroyed?  Finally, a question which could potentially stir controversy:  Do you agree with Tannen?  Is such a change really necessary?  Remember to use at least three quotations per author (one per support; six quotations).

(To see the rest of the assignments in this sequence, please visit our sample sequences page.)

Megan Heller

The Kind of Talk that Defines a Democracy: Tannen and Guinier

Throughout "Second Proms and Second Primaries," Guinier argues that changing the electoral process will improve the quality of communication between the races, between constituencies, and across parties. What would Deborah Tannen make of Guinier's call to "encourage genuine debate"? Is the ideal of democracy that Guinier refers to approached through dialogue, debate, or some other mode of communication? What is the best way for citizens in a democracy to resolve their disagreements?

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Tannen and Nussbaum: Argument and the Achievement of the Good Life

What might Nussbaum learn from reading Deborah Tannen? One question that might arise for Nussbaum is whether our own institutions--especially the educational system--discourage in unacknowledged ways the growth of the "central capabilities." Drawing from your own experience as well as from Tannen's observations, would you conclude that the "argument culture" poses a significant barrier to the achievement of a good life? As you explore this question, please consider as well the character of Nussbaum's reasoning. Does she participate in the argument culture? If Nussbaum does, would you say that she undermines her own credibility? Or could it be that the argument culture is less damaging than Tannen assumes?

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