As mentioned by others, using ideology in the classroom proves to be a difficult task. Indeed, even Berlin, who champions social-epistemic rhetoric, concedes that this approach “is the least formulaic and the most difficult to carry out.”
In order to free the consciousness of students, “teacher and student [must] work together to shape the content of the liberatory classroom.” I struggle to create this kind of classroom experience. My students seem more interested in the topic of this sequence. However, this interest did not translate to a fruitful class discussion on the readings. When I asked questions, students were hesitant to speak or repeated something that Savage/Vaid said. When I asked more directly about their thoughts, they grew silent and avoided eye contact. Even today when I announced they could focus on any social issue in this essay, no one wanted to offer up a possible topic.
It’s hard not to fill these silences with my own voice, with my own thoughts. I know that when I do share my personal opinion with them, they soak it up like a sponge. To many, my opinion becomes the right opinion, which prevents the joint learning of the student-teacher relationship from occurring (and makes grading essays particularly tiresome when I hear my thoughts again and again).
Interestingly, this idea of differing ideologies in the classroom came up in my colloquium this week. My IOR posed a challenging question to us: What would you have done if you had a student stand up in ardent opposition to LGBT rights and he/she cited religious texts as support?
In the best case scenario, we would want to engage with that student, following the line of his/her thinking, offering rebuttals, and giving that student different aspects to consider. Ideally, thinking about both sides of the argument would help the student become more aware of his/her ideology (where it derives from, how he/she negotiates it when faced with new, and possibly conflicting, information etc.). But I think I would have trouble keeping my own opinions out of a discussion on a topic I feel so strongly about. Could I just stand there and listen to a student respond to a question in a way that seems so “wrong” to me? Could I prevent a lively debate from becoming a heated one? I’m sure I’ll find out sometime during my teaching career.