Here’s my second comment (in case they get out of order).
I’d like to frame the question about safety like this: all teachers need to figure out how to impose without imposing too much. Does the CPI method get the balance right?
Any time you insist on waiting for your turn to talk, using evidence and arguments to evaluate claims, or sticking to the topic at hand, you’re imposing your beliefs about (1) how we ought to communicate, (2) what counts as evidence, and (3) how broad the topic is. I’m not saying this to be pedantic. I actually believe that these procedural facilitation moves are substantive because all three of them relate to things about which reasonable people disagree: in some cultures, interrupting is part of the dance of the conversation; in some kinds of social justice-oriented spaces in the US, people are discouraged from critically evaluating some kinds of claims that are being made; I’m sure that if you and I were to talk for long enough we’d have at least one disagreement about the scope of our topic.
The CPI method does involve these kinds of impositions, but something like this is inevitable if you’re educating (or even merely socializing) children. One difference between the way these kinds of impositions happen in CPI contexts than in most other educational contexts, though, is that the method itself allows the participants to evaluate them. You can have a CPI about questions like the following:
how should we interact with people from cultures where interrupting is the norm?
when someone reports that they have experienced a traumatic event and cites that as evidence for a philosophical claim, how should we respond if we disagree with the philosophical claim?
what criteria should we use to determine the scope of a topic?
The answers to those questions can then influence future CPIs in the group.
Let’s talk about the imposition of controversial, political beliefs. I’m going to contrast the CPI method with the Socratic method. There are two methods that Socrates used: he sometimes questioned people until they realized that they did not know what they were talking about; he sometimes used questions to lead people to a particular answer. I’m talking about the second method, which is often used by activists and proponents of religions to get people to believe their claims. I’ve used that method during activism, but the only times I’ve used it with students are when (1) I’m trying to get my students to understand an idea rather than to believe it and (2) they’re old enough to understand the difference. So I might use it with college students when I’m trying to teach them Kant’s formula of universal law or Mill’s defense of utilitarianism, but that’s because we can then critique the steps of reasoning. I would not use it to teach 8-year-olds that God doesn’t exist. It’s too manipulative.
That kind of persuasion is unavailable to facilitators in the CPI method because facilitators aren’t allowed to argue for positions. Their role is to keep everyone on track, clarify positions, make sure that people are respecting each other, push students to critique positions that are being accepted uncritically, etc. This is one reason why a lot of facilitators don’t enjoy facilitating topics that they’re passionate about. It’s hard to be in an environment where you can’t do activism for your favored position.
To be clear, there are still ways to subtly shift a discussion in the direction you want without actually advocating for a position. You can, for example, keep redirecting students to your favored position or ask for counterarguments for a position you personally dislike. But if someone does that, they can be critiqued from within the method because they’re not doing a good job of facilitating a CPI. And, at any rate, this is something that could happen with any method of teaching children. An advantage of training facilitators in the CPI method is that we are explicit about disallowing those moves.
To be honest, I expected that I’d get criticisms from the other direction: the CPI method isn’t a method for convincing students to accept a particular set of propositions, so how is it supposed to convince students to become EAs? My answer to that question would have been that I’d like it to be part of a larger educational project that includes all of the other things I mentioned in the second to last paragraph of section 3 from my forum post above.
Here’s my second comment (in case they get out of order).
I’d like to frame the question about safety like this: all teachers need to figure out how to impose without imposing too much. Does the CPI method get the balance right?
Any time you insist on waiting for your turn to talk, using evidence and arguments to evaluate claims, or sticking to the topic at hand, you’re imposing your beliefs about (1) how we ought to communicate, (2) what counts as evidence, and (3) how broad the topic is. I’m not saying this to be pedantic. I actually believe that these procedural facilitation moves are substantive because all three of them relate to things about which reasonable people disagree: in some cultures, interrupting is part of the dance of the conversation; in some kinds of social justice-oriented spaces in the US, people are discouraged from critically evaluating some kinds of claims that are being made; I’m sure that if you and I were to talk for long enough we’d have at least one disagreement about the scope of our topic.
The CPI method does involve these kinds of impositions, but something like this is inevitable if you’re educating (or even merely socializing) children. One difference between the way these kinds of impositions happen in CPI contexts than in most other educational contexts, though, is that the method itself allows the participants to evaluate them. You can have a CPI about questions like the following:
how should we interact with people from cultures where interrupting is the norm?
when someone reports that they have experienced a traumatic event and cites that as evidence for a philosophical claim, how should we respond if we disagree with the philosophical claim?
what criteria should we use to determine the scope of a topic?
The answers to those questions can then influence future CPIs in the group.
Let’s talk about the imposition of controversial, political beliefs. I’m going to contrast the CPI method with the Socratic method. There are two methods that Socrates used: he sometimes questioned people until they realized that they did not know what they were talking about; he sometimes used questions to lead people to a particular answer. I’m talking about the second method, which is often used by activists and proponents of religions to get people to believe their claims. I’ve used that method during activism, but the only times I’ve used it with students are when (1) I’m trying to get my students to understand an idea rather than to believe it and (2) they’re old enough to understand the difference. So I might use it with college students when I’m trying to teach them Kant’s formula of universal law or Mill’s defense of utilitarianism, but that’s because we can then critique the steps of reasoning. I would not use it to teach 8-year-olds that God doesn’t exist. It’s too manipulative.
That kind of persuasion is unavailable to facilitators in the CPI method because facilitators aren’t allowed to argue for positions. Their role is to keep everyone on track, clarify positions, make sure that people are respecting each other, push students to critique positions that are being accepted uncritically, etc. This is one reason why a lot of facilitators don’t enjoy facilitating topics that they’re passionate about. It’s hard to be in an environment where you can’t do activism for your favored position.
To be clear, there are still ways to subtly shift a discussion in the direction you want without actually advocating for a position. You can, for example, keep redirecting students to your favored position or ask for counterarguments for a position you personally dislike. But if someone does that, they can be critiqued from within the method because they’re not doing a good job of facilitating a CPI. And, at any rate, this is something that could happen with any method of teaching children. An advantage of training facilitators in the CPI method is that we are explicit about disallowing those moves.
To be honest, I expected that I’d get criticisms from the other direction: the CPI method isn’t a method for convincing students to accept a particular set of propositions, so how is it supposed to convince students to become EAs? My answer to that question would have been that I’d like it to be part of a larger educational project that includes all of the other things I mentioned in the second to last paragraph of section 3 from my forum post above.