Philosophy for Children29

Critical Communities: Intellectual Safety and the Powerof Disagreement
Ashby Butnor
Metropolitan State College of Denver

I was involved in p4c Hawai‘i for many years during
my graduate studies. It was my first introduction to “teaching,” or, more accurately, the facilitation of philosophicalinquiry. I cannot imagine a better way to prepare for a
lifetime of such work, though admittedly, the wisdom,imagination, and openness to the world expressed by myyoung students then has set the bar very high for the menand women I now see on a daily basis. For this reason, I begin each semester anew with the promise of philosophy forchildren; the promise of a term filled with fruitful dialogue
and hard thinking as well as laughter and camaraderie.
What I would call the “p4c pedagogy” has become infused into my undergraduate teaching. The Good Thinker’s
Toolkit, the model of reflective community inquiry, and thedesire to “scratch beneath the surface” are woven into thefoundation of my courses, even when p4c is never explicitlydiscussed. At the beginning of each semester though, there
is one concept that stands out as a recurring challenge:
intellectual safety.
Intellectual safety is often conflated with the feeling ofbeing comfortable. Susan Herbst (2010), in her book Rude
Democracy, writes that, “72 percent of students agreed that
it was very important for them always to feel comfortable inclass.” I imagine this feeling of comfort as similar to feelings of relaxation and belonging, free of stress and doubt,
while being entertained, amused, or satisfied in some way.
Herbst adds to this sense by including the students’ desireto remain “unthreatened intellectually.” While we may all
strive to maintain classrooms absent of physical or emotional threats, a college classroom without intellectual challenges is likely one of complacency and mental laziness.
It is my claim that intellectual growth, for both anindividual and a community, must involve some kind ofdiscomfort. I see this discomfort as a natural by-productof an initiation to interactive, dialogue-driven learning. A

dialogic pedagogy is one in which new ideas, arguments, andpositions emerge through serious, intellectual conversation.
In this approach, all participants are responsible for their own
contributions and accountable to the community of inquirers.
If a student is accustomed to, and thus comfortable with,learning directly from a teacher, a textbook, or a PowerPoint
slide, being asked to think and talk about what one thinks
may be a truly threatening experience. Thinking may be
painful. Being asked to defend a point of view may feel
intimidating. Having to create or change a position can betaxing. For some, even speaking seriously in front of others
may be foreign and disconcerting. Fear, insecurity, and embarrassment may be completely normal reactions to a change
in teaching strategy and, hence, a shift in what is expected ofeach student.
Even for those experienced in community inquiry,
moments of discomfort may be common when engaged indialogue. What is so exciting about interactive and dialoguedriven learning is its open-ended structure. In some sense,one must be ready for anything—for changing one’s mind,
becoming aware of one’s own implicit assumptions, being
attracted to or disturbed by new perspectives, struggling
through a difficult idea, or impressing even oneself withan articulate expression of insight. Along with moments ofdiscomfort are also these moments of excitement, discovery,affirmation, and achievement. It is these “aha moments,” andtheir persistence and reappearance, that make the struggle
and pain worthwhile. It is precisely this sense of accomplishment that comes from the thinking process itself that I want
my students to experience.
I recommend that we reconceive intellectual safety toembrace something more than simply feeling comfortable.
An intellectually safe place ought to be established with therecognition that vulnerability is a central component of theepistemic mission. We are vulnerable whenever we willingly

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Educational Perspectives ❖ Volume 44 ❖ Numbers 1 and 2

put our ideas and positions at risk—risk of being challenged,revised, defeated, or elevated in the course of conversation.
In some sense, we are putting our very selves at risk. We truly give of ourselves in this collective, dialectical process. Not
only do we openly share our own partial interpretations of
the truth, but we must also relinquish our stake in those ideas
in order to fully hear and be present to the positions of others. And all participants must then be invested in a quest fortruth and meaning and willing to follow the inquiry whereit leads. In our search for an understanding greater than ourown, we seek, in the words of Hans-Georg Gadamer, a fusion of horizons. For a genuine fusion, a genuine—i.e., risky,vulnerable, and challenging—dialogue must take place. Thisfusion involves more than a mere merger of ideas. There’s asense of an internal debate taking place; a sense of striving tounderstand different positions in the process of presenting abetter account of one’s own and, further, supporting the best
position overall.
There is, I imagine, nothing more tedious than a classroom of students who constantly agree with one another.
This kind of agreement is not the expression of shared ideas,but, rather, an unwillingness to put anything at risk. In myclassrooms, I want students to become fully invested in thevalue and power of disagreement. Thus, I engage in theformation of what I call “critical communities.” The mission of a critical community is the pursuit of truth throughintellectual engagement with texts, ideas, and one another.
At the heart of such engagement is disagreement. With mystudents, I work to foster and develop the skills necessary tochallenge, critique, and disagree in a constructive manner. It
is the moments of disagreement that push us forward in thedialogue and allow us to get somewhere, however indeterminate that place may be. However, I dissuade them fromseeing disagreement as a facile, two-sided debate. Given
the prevalence of over-simplified and factionalized politicaldebate, this model of disagreement is one that students either
emulate or seek to avoid in their complacent agreement with
one another. Thus, part of establishing a critical communitythat seeks truth and common wisdom is to show themanother way to disagree. Disagreement reveals complexity,
nuance, and subtlety, rather than simplification and overgeneralization. Disagreement raises questions and draws
people together in a search for answers, rather than drawing
the lines of insurmountable difference. A critical community
wants answers, but not easy answers.

The question then remains as to how we can createintellectually safe places while simultaneously elevating
the value of disagreement and criticism. How can one feel
intellectually safe while explicitly making oneself vulnerable
to challenges? I believe a crucial first step is empowerment.
Students need to come to value themselves, their community,
their ability to think, and their capacity to cultivate thinking
skills. I see students who are often intimidated, and evenincapacitated, at the possibility of getting something wrong.
This incapacitating level of self-consciousness needs to bedismantled. I begin this process in the simplest of ways;
I begin each term by simply getting them talking. I will
spend the first few weeks of each course with as muchdialogue-driven talking as possible. My expectations for thelevel of discourse at this point are fairly minimal, though I
try to raise the bar gradually. So much rides on a student’s
perceptions of her own abilities and her belief in the kind oflearner she is (typically, a quiet one who prefers lectures!).
If I can persuade each student to articulate her thoughts toothers and to validate those thoughts and ideas with as muchencouragement as possible, students may begin to gain more
confidence. For students who are already accustomed to suchmethods, I may begin to prod them for better responses or
encourage others to disagree or raise an objection to theirpoints. I try to do this in as light-hearted a way as possible,pointing out that laughter and good fun can be part andparcel of intellectual challenge and learning. In addition toinstilling useful habits in each student and modeling a formof critical engagement, this process also builds community.
In a way, we are “in it together.” Students begin to realize
they are embarking on a journey and everyone plays a role inthis expedition. The better we work together, the better thisjourney will become.
The analogy of a journey helps to remind all of us that
we are engaging in a process. As educators, we need to instillin students the idea of learning as a process, and, even better,a communal process by which communities of inquirers
can progress together. Wisdom does not come via instantgratification. It is a slow, arduous process of maturation andskill building of which we are all capable. Establishing intellectual safety requires instilling a necessary amount of confidence to recognize vulnerability as a legitimate and vital
aspect of learning. Understanding that errors, misjudgments,
and revisions are part of the learning process, students may
be more likely to value constructive criticism, disagreement,

Philosophy for Children

and challenges to their current ideas. Furthermore, withgrowing confidence in their abilities and progress, students
will come to be even more motivated to learn, explore, andfind joy in the process itself.
Intellectual safety, then, should not be understood as
feeling comfortable. Rather, it should be conceived as afeeling of trust in oneself and one’s community to honestly
and genuinely engage in thinking together. Gadamer (1980,p. 121–122) describes shared inquiry as the activity in which
we “willingly put all individual opinions to the test while
abjuring all contentiousness and yielding to the play ofquestion and answer.” Here, we see the beauty of dialogue; itis both a testing and challenging of our perspectives as wellas a playful and joyful pursuit for truth through dialogue.
However, it is precisely intellectual safety, the “abjuring [of]all contentiousness,” that allows for this dual identity as bothcritique and play. While we should reject belligerent quarrels
and unproductive squabbling amongst our students, we need
not eliminate intellectual “threats” or challenges. These, wehave seen, are the engines of this enterprise. And lest we
not forget the point of this process, Gadamer concludes thispassage by stating, “shared inquiry should make possible not
only insight into this or that specific thing, but, insofar as
is humanly possible, insight into all virtue and vice and thewhole of reality.” While this may be a bit too lofty an aspiration for our own critical communities, the role of our sharedinquiries is no less important.

REFERENCES
Herbst, S. (2010). Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility inAmerican Politics. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Gadamer, H-G. (1980). Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight
Hermeneutical Studies on Plato.. P. Christopher Smith. NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press.

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