“In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith” – Teach Different with William Fulbright

Transcript

Dan (00:10)

Welcome everybody to the Teach Different podcast. We have a great guest with us today. Actually our second guest who is part of our certificate program rollout, the Teach Different certificate program rollout in spring of 2025, Jason Artman, who’s a social studies teacher who’s going to be introducing himself in a moment, talking a little bit about his background and what he experienced in the program. And then as always on the podcast, we’re gonna take a quote and break it down. And this is an author we have not yet touched, William Fulbright. I did a little research on it, making sure that the quote itself actually came from his mouth. And it’s a very provocative one, looking forward to it. It’s about democracy and dissent. So I’ll leave that little cliffhanger for everybody. Before we get to the quote though, and do a little of the method, wanna bring in Jason Artman. Jason, thanks for being a part of the podcast. And maybe if you just kinda share a little bit about your background as a teacher, where you teach, what you teach, how long you’ve been teaching, and why you got into teaching in the first place.

 

Jason M. Artman (01:23)

Boy, why I got in – that was a long time ago. I’m Jason Artman. I teach high school history and technology and social studies in general at Mendota high school where I’m going into, I finished my 25th year of teaching, so I must be going into my 24th year there. It’s been a little bit of everything, but a handful of years ago, I really got deeply involved in Illinois civics with Illinois civic mentors and when your work there. That’s where I came across Teach Different. So I really taken a passion for when we can get kids talking about things that are going to extend beyond social studies into civic learning and civic life. And that’s where I’m really excited to get into things today.

 

Originally, I got into teaching because I love politics and I’ve probably always been, I guess, an intellectual in mind or an intellectual at heart that I’m always learning. And I love the idea of helping people think things through and think about why they think the way they do. And it seems to be the perfect connection of an awful lot of things in teaching today. And working with young people. I was a lot younger when I started it than I am now, but they still keep you fresh, they still keep you challenged, and they still keep you learning. And that’s where it’s still exciting after 25 years.

 

Steve (03:01)

There was some place you started Jason before you got to where you are now. I got from your math. Was that correct?

 

Jason M. Artman (03:09)

My first school, I student taught at Ottawa High School in 2000, and that’s when I graduated. And then I taught at Streeter Woodland, a small school with a really small social studies department where you really had to be a Jack of all trades. And now I’m at Mendota High School, a little bit bigger. The department is four to five people kind of bouncing around. We all do a little bit of everything or a little bit more than social studies, which is you’ve got to have that flexibility in small schools. So, yeah, I had a little bit of background at Streeter Woodland and spent most of my career at Mendota High School.

 

Dan (03:53)

And just for those unfamiliar with Illinois, is this kind of central Illinois location?

 

Steve (03:53)

Pretty much, yeah.

 

Jason M. Artman (03:59)

Yeah, I’m in the northern part of LaSalle County now and was the southern part of LaSalle County most, you know, in those early years. So it pretty much has been in LaSalle County all the time. If you’re familiar with Illinois at all, we’re just, I’ve gone from just south of I-80 to just north of I-80, right on I-39. So, you know, that’s a great dividing line in Illinois in a lot of ways, whether it’s a dividing line for politics or dividing line for weather or a dividing line for a lot of things.

 

Steve (04:32)

Well, that’s what I was going to ask – the demographics. I mean, how would you characterize the demographics of your students as far as, yeah.

 

Jason M. Artman (04:39)

Well, we’ve still got a rural component to the community. We’re south of the suburbs enough that the suburbs aren’t far away. But I’d also say there’s still an awful lot of blue here. So it’s probably purple. The counties bounce back and forth. It’s tended to, on a national scale, it’s voted more red. But where we are right now, I could see, I could have a heavy agricultural influence when asking a question, or I could have a heavy immigrant influence when asking a question. So I could see both.

 

Steve (05:30)

That’s interesting. People don’t associate that a lot with the middle portion of Illinois, but the immigrant population is substantial. And I had a burning question about politics. Did you ever want to get into politics? What, what, how did you land on teaching or was it something that you always were angling toward?

 

Jason M. Artman (05:57)

I was, my first degree is in journalism. And when I was an aspiring reporter or a college reporter, I covered politics because I had an interest there and certainly an understanding of it. So I even wrote columns. I wrote a column for the college newspaper when I was at ISU on whether or not two year terms were a positive thing or that my thinking at the time was the politicians were always running for reelection were never, you know, if they’re always running for reelection, how often are they, are they representing? And that was a question I was asking at 20 years old. So I’ve had that interest.

 

Dan (06:47)

And thinking about students, you 24 years ago, we asked this question of Candice, who is in your cohort. Ficus, have you noticed the difference between the kids and how they engage with political issues now as opposed to when you started your career?

 

Jason M. Artman (07:10)

I think the quote we’re going to talk about is going to really go down this path. I think that’s one of the reasons I think it’s something that today, I’m not sure which way this would go in the classroom. I think it’d be a positive discussion for sure. I just can’t predict if the students are going to interpret it more the way I did when I first saw it or if they’re going to interpret it in another way when they look at it, but I would say, boy, long ago or early on, was almost like you apologized for teaching civics. It was something that when it came to teaching government, you apologized that it was something kids had to do. And there are still kids who are going to talk that way and think that way. And I’ve already decided to hate politics no matter what. And heck, there’s adults who do that. But there’s an awful lot of kids and things have changed quite a bit. News can fall in your lap today where you had to actively seek it 24 years ago, 25 years ago. Kids today, an awful lot of them have some knowledge or they believe they have some knowledge, whether it’s actual knowledge or whether it’s acquiring misinformation, disinformation, that’s a whole nother story. But there’s an awful lot of kids who feel they’re informed. And if they feel they’re informed, they certainly feel that they can express an opinion.

 

Steve (08:49)

That is really interesting for an insight, Jason. What social media has done and this access to information, it hasn’t necessarily improved the quality of the discussions and maybe it’s even made it volatile. I think it has, right? But there’s part of that, right? But it does make people think that they do

 

Dan (08:51)

That’s well said.

 

Jason M. Artman (09:10)

Yeah, they’re certainly a part of that.

 

Steve (09:19)

And they’re entitled to an opinion. It empowers them to feel in a way that scares me. I’ll be truthful. Partly, I would like to know that if someone’s gonna have a strong opinion about something, it’d be nice to know that it was thought through. I mean, do we want everybody with an opinion regardless of whether or not it’s thought through? I think the answer I guess is yes, because it shows participation, but no. That it is going to create a lot of difficulties with polarization perhaps. I don’t know.

 

Jason M. Artman (09:54)

Yeah, and I don’t know if that’s a growing pain of where we are because it has come along incredibly rapidly, right? Social media has empowered people in ways. It’s been one of the fastest changes we’ve seen in education, right? It’s come along faster than so many other things. Students don’t have to actively go out and try to find information. The information comes to them. You know, we read a newspaper or watch the news, and if you wanted to ignore it, you ignored it. Walk out of the room or don’t open the paper. But these kids, they’re scrolling on their phone and it’s there. And that’s a whole nother discussion when it comes to social media. know, are we only seeing what we want to see because we don’t follow what we don’t want to see? And is that reinforcing that? Or have we grown so fast that the three of us as educators who have taken on the task of we want to teach people how to become critical consumers of the information around them, that we’re just not there yet. And that this is going to be the impetus to drive a growing number of people to push for that. And eventually we get through this growing pain and we have the informed demographic that we wish we had. I don’t know. And I don’t know that the three of us are gonna be teaching long enough to have the answer to that question. We’re all closer to the end than we are to the beginning.

 

Dan (11:31)

To that end though, I Jason, you’re articulating it, I think so well. know, is it, is the social media stuff, are we going to be able to get out ahead of it or is it going to overwhelm us? Maybe you can migrate into thinking about and sharing, you know, this method that we’re going to do today, the Teach Different Method. In many ways it’s designed to stave off some of our worst instincts of thinking. Could you maybe connect maybe how this method, the Teach Different Method might help kind of ameliorate some of these things that you’re talking about?

 

Jason M. Artman (12:11)

Sure. I think one of the challenges we’re talking about, and Steve and I are heading down the same path, is that when we get to choose by liking and following what messages we see on social media, we actually can narrow out the other point of view and never see it. And the method that we’re using with Teach Different is forcing us to try to see things from an alternate point of view. It’s not asking us to accept it, but it’s asking us to acknowledge that it exists. And that is one step further than social media is doing. Social media allows us to ignore that which doesn’t agree with us. The teach different method through just a couple questions asks us to at least acknowledge its existence, discuss it, and then make our own decision, which is where I think we all want people to go anyway.

 

Steve (13:20)

I don’t have anything to add. I love the word acknowledge. That will eventually eat away at bias. I think there’s something in human nature when you hear another student come from a different perspective or another person and you actually have listened and acknowledged, you’re not going to be as polarized just naturally, just because that other person is there. And you’re dead on about social media and not giving us the other side, you could even go down to the algorithm that knows what you like. You know, it’s not an active decision on your part to be someone who is blocking out other perspectives. That’s what’s scary. Someone’s doing it for you. And I don’t think there’s a part of human nature that wants to be unsure about something or wants to second guess themselves. You know, we need each other for that. And then the method allows for that, because it’s a real time communication technique. So, yes.

 

Jason M. Artman (14:32)

But that idea was around the idea of finding ways to reinforce what you already know. That’s been around since before the social media. mean, there’s plenty of research in that, that when you talk about even my daughter and I go to lot of zoos. We love to go to zoos. She’s a marine biology student, and wherever we go, she’s very heavily into conservation. But when we go to zoos, we notice a lot of people will stand in front of an exhibit and will tell people what they already think they know. Like they’re standing there with their children and they’re telling their children about an animal and what it is and what they think it is. And they might be wrong. And the information is right there in front of them on a little plaque that might be 50 words to read, but they don’t read it, right? Because we want to reinforce what we already know. And when we can reinforce what we already know, we feel good about ourselves. And that experience of going to the zoo is enjoyable for that person. Now, if I want to stand there and correct them, people are going to think I’m a jerk. And all I wanna do is, you know, well, let’s learn it the right way.

 

Dan (15:55)

Yeah. It’s psychologically appealing to agree with someone and agree with yourself and to not have dissent in any way. I purposely use the word that is inside the quote today. Are we ready?

 

Steve (16:15)

That’s what groupthink is. Groupthink, groupthink, yes.

 

Dan (16:20)

Yeah, let’s hop into the quote, because this is just flowing really, really nicely. This is from Senator William Fulbright, Senator for almost 30 years. Fulbright’s scholarship, and he’s famous in so many different ways. The definite internationalist, I believe very much in the United Nations and countries solving problems together. Definitely not an isolationist type. So that’s his prism. Here it is. And this is from a 1966 book, The Arrogance of Power. In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. So Jason, do you want to take a crack at the claim? We’re going to do the claim, counterclaim, and then if questions percolate, shoot them out. What do you think here?

 

Jason M. Artman (17:13)

Sure. I think, and looking at it historically, I certainly see, I think I see where he’s coming from. Faith that the system you’re dissenting against is going to protect you. That sounds very democratic. Freedom of speech. All these things that are part of the Constitution seem to say that if you dissent, democracy actually protects you. So you can have the faith that this system allows for dissent. And to me, that seems to be the claim.

 

Dan (17:57)

And it’s interesting the word faith. I think that is such a powerful word in this quote because it’s a, I don’t want to say a hope, but it’s something in the future that you are using to guide your action. There’s a trust in it.

 

Jason M. Artman (18:20)

Yes.

 

Steve (18:23)

Yeah, there’s a belief. Can I add to that, Dan? And then it’s going to add to yours, Jason, as well. Going even further than the government and the society will protect me. Faith felt like a hope for the future. It’s a belief system that democracy allows us to have that we actually do and can make a difference. Each one of us. And dissent is truly our own feeling about something. It’s an opinion. It’s something that we hold dear. It’s not easy to dissent. I think everyone would agree that that’s going against the grain. If you’re not going to do group think, and you’re not gonna just be one of the crowd and keep yourself silent and safe. You’re going to need a lot of things in your life to keep you going in your low moments because you’re gonna keep needing fuel for that. But I kind of brought it to a hopeful feeling in addition to this hope and expectation that you’re gonna get protected.

 

Jason M. Artman (19:45)

And to take that historically, I think you can take this all the way back to the founding fathers, right? They did not agree on everything in the Constitutional Convention. There were some very, very strong opinions to go a number of different ways, including multiple executives, right? How are we going to represent three-fifths compromise, large states versus small states? That there had to be compromise. And the compromise couldn’t come unless someone spoke out against what was on paper, against what was proposed. There is no compromise unless there are two sides to work towards something, right? And that’s a foundational element of democracy, is this idea of compromise.

 

Dan (20:38)

That’s a great way to say it. I mean, if you look, the entire constitution itself is a product of the clash of ideas of agreement and dissent and then coming to a middle. Yeah, dissent democracy has to have dissent. It’s like the currency of a democracy is dissent. You don’t have that form of government without it.

 

Jason M. Artman (21:08)

That is, I love that sentence you just used, that the currency of democracy is dissent because there is no compromise. There’s no compromise unless there are two different sides.

 

Steve (21:28)

What is happening in our world today with regard to politics and the survival of a quote like this? I mean, I have my own opinions, but that worries me.

 

Jason M. Artman (21:43)

Well, I think that’s where this quote becomes so important in the classroom. Not on day one. It’s not a quote you take on day one of your classroom and think you’re gonna have a quality discussion. This is one for after you’ve established that this is a safe place to talk and this is a safe place to communicate and this is a safe place to express ideas and respect each other, right? You’ve gotta do the groundwork to get to this one. But boy, this is a neat one to use because of the very thing Steve said. There are not a lot of great examples of dissent being looked at as essential to democracy in today’s world news, especially in today’s national news. It’s almost as if right now the norm is probably what we’re going to anticipate is the counterclaim. Dissent will get you in a heck of a lot of trouble. Dissent will get you deported.

 

Dan (22:44)

Dissent is dangerous. It’s not an act of faith. It’s a danger to avoid. How about that one as a counterclaim? I’m watching Turning Point on Netflix about the Vietnam War. There’s it’s a five series one and it that theme animates this that descent destroys a democracy.

 

Jason M. Artman (22:50)

Yes.

 

Dan (23:10)

That’s on my mind right now. Yeah.

 

Jason M. Artman (23:13)

Yeah, where or people look at dissent as anti-democratic, right? And we’re saying it’s a foundation, it’s a cornerstone of democracy. It’s almost as if dissent seems anti-democratic. Where the attitude at times and by some is certainly we’ve had our election, now shut up and accept it for the next four years.

 

Dan (23:40)

You have to obey whoever wins. You have to obey the mandate. You don’t dissent against the mandate. You follow the mandate or you don’t have a society.

 

Jason M. Artman (23:44)

Yeah, and right.

 

Steve (23:51)

All right, so let me get back on the claim then. If the mandate, if the actions of your government are infringing on your constitutional rights, there isn’t a responsibility for someone to go with the program ever. And I think that it’s a continuum on some level. It’s, take the immigration again. You know, we have people being arrested without due process right now. It’s happening by masked people. And on the one side, you have a large segment of our population that’s saying, well, they’re just enforcing the law. You know, and these people are here illegally. There’s a reason that they’re being removed. So, you know, get with the program. This is our new president. This is what we’re doing. However, if there’s no warrant and there’s no due process, we are used to the idea that everybody deserves that process, regardless of who you are, even if you’re not a citizen, that’s been the way that we function. And the thing that I tell everybody who doesn’t see that side, I say this, say, so what’s gonna happen? When we get all of the illegal immigrants out of this country and you have someone that is dissenting and is going against the government for a different reason. Do you think that this system and apparatus is going to be okay with that once you have gotten used to this idea that due process is a privilege and not a right? And I usually get a good point in with that one, but I’ll stop.

 

Jason M. Artman (25:56)

I think, and I think the scary part, Steve, is that some of that has happened. Right. Look at the universities that are being told they can’t allow their students to dissent. Right. So now the university. The university is going to be punished right through withholding funding. So again, there’s your free speech and there’s dissent and you may not agree with the message. OK, but that whole idea of free speech has been for a long time. I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. Right. And that’s out the window right now. Right. We’re seeing that in a lot of the ways a lot of people who would have felt some safety would have had some faith that you can dissent are afraid to to dissent because there are going to be repercussions and whether it’s not you today or it’s not you we can get, we’re gonna get someone else and we’re gonna get someone to find a way to hurt you. Okay, so I don’t know that we’re not seeing some elements of that right now. It’s not only going after the immigration, the speaking out, right? Speaking out on Israel-Palestine. Those cost universities, an awful lot of letting students have free speech. And we’ve taught the 70s in American history and the 60s in American history. And we know about free speech movements on campus and students who gave an awful lot to help other students earn free speech on campus, whether it is Vietnam, whether it is civil rights, whether it is many of the times that we’ve seen students speak out, right? This is a modern day example and there is no, there doesn’t seem to be the faith that there’s protection of the dissent, right?

 

Dan (28:08)

Mm-hmm. And just to pull it on the other side politically, before what we’re currently experiencing, there was a feeling from one side that there couldn’t be open communication and sharing of ideas without being censored, without being shut down, with the language control thing. And so when you dissented, you were then thought to be a racist or some other terrible label. And there was a lot of frustration there from other groups. So it’s almost like we’re doing this to each other in different ways. And in both cases, dissent is becoming something that people are not tolerating. And unless we come to a collective appreciation of dissent, we continue to be at each other’s throats over a lot of these issues.

 

Jason M. Artman (29:07)

I mean, even the nationalists and Red Scare, right, of the 20s is the same kind of thing. It’s not something that’s new and unique to today’s world. Suppression of dissent is not something that was created in the last four years. Suppression of dissent has been around for a long time, but the difference, and I think where Fulbright was going is…you’re supposed to be able to have some faith in it here. There are certainly places, and when I teach, I teach a lot about the meaning of the message and the purpose of the media to my students. Stalin suppressed, right? Stalin suppressed the message that he didn’t want to hear and made his enemies disappear. And this, if we’re looking at the claim portion of this, we’re supposed to be safe from. In a democracy, we should be able to express without the idea that we’re going to be silenced in one way, or form.

 

Steve (30:18)

I have another way to just think about this for a second to see if it can connect it to what we’ve started. And this was my first thought when I read it, I went right to the counterclaim. What do you think about the counterclaim? And I’m going to mix it with an essential question. Is dissent always an act of faith? Or is there some other motivation that might exist for dissent that you can’t really attribute to someone, you know, hoping that someone’s going to protect them and they’re, you know, they bought.

 

Dan (31:03)

Give an example.Give an example.

 

Steve (31:10)

I don’t want to go with the program that abortion is illegal in my state. So I am going to sit outside the congressional on the steps of the Capitol for two straight months. And I’m going to yell obscenities to these politicians. Why? Because I’m mad and I’m almost tempting people to do something to me. I have lost my belief in a society that would allow abortion to be legal. And I’m just angry. That’s, that’s my motivation is what I’m saying. Is that, does that give any new way of looking at this, that motivation of some people?

 

Jason M. Artman (32:14)

So are there some people for whom dissent is the ends to a means? If I dissent using your example, if I dissent using your example, will I elicit a response? And can I use dissent to get what I want?

 

Steve (32:24)

There you go. Okay.

 

Jason M. Artman (32:37)

Can I create change through dissent? Can I motivate a response? I don’t know. I think even if you look, when Dan said come up with an example, historically I look at the Children’s March in 1963, right? After King comes out of Birmingham jail and the adults are unwilling to be arrested,

 

Dan (32:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jason M. Artman (33:06)

Because of the potential consequences, who is it who gets arrested? It’s the children. The children walk out of school, the children get arrested for leaving school, the children get arrested for protesting. That’s certainly dissent. There certainly is some kind of faith. It happened at a church. There’s some faith there. There’s a lot of, there’s hard to remove faith from the civil rights movement. But at the same time was dissent an ends to a means or a means to an end. And I think with the approach you’re taking there, Steve, is I feel so helpless to do anything else. Dissent is the only form of expression I feel I have.

 

Dan (34:02)

And when you do that, I would argue that it is still an act of faith because you’re desperate. You want something. You want to know that by protesting, you’re going to be heard and that your anger is going to be validated. But I don’t think you’d be doing it unless you thought in your democracy that you would not be arrested for two months sitting at the Capitol and doing that.

 

Steve (34:32)

Maybe in that case, but now we have to go to January 6th because that was a level of dissent. We just had a, we did a quote by Martin Luther King with Candace Jason, riots are the language of the unheard. And I’m already seeing a similar theme here. I really do think that if you can call January 6th dissent, and I think that you can and make an argument for that, that I don’t, I wouldn’t characterize that as, they had faith in the democracy. That dissent, manufactured or not by Trump, I think there was something else pushing that. So that’s, I’ll put that out there as a provocative.

 

Dan (35:06)

I disagree. We’re gonna, Jason, you’re gonna be in the middle of a brother fight here. No, I’m just kidding. I think that they had absolute faith that in a democracy, their free speech and rights to protest would be absolutely protected in every way. And that provided the foundation of their bravery and courage to do what they did in their perspective.

 

Steve (35:50)

I think they had faith in their leader and that’s what was fueling them.

 

Jason M. Artman (35:55)

And I don’t know if that…

 

Dan (35:57)

Both.

 

Jason M. Artman (36:03)

It is hard for me to look at things and call what Donald Trump does as democracy. But I think almost in trying to see things from Dan’s point of view here, his followers see him as democratic, even though others don’t. And for that purpose, it might actually play into the quote, into the claim that there was faith there that his followers believe what he is doing is democratic. And they have this belief in such a thing. And while others want to disagree with that, so the others see it as anti-democratic. And they’re going to dissent in their own ways.

 

Dan (36:36)

That’s what I was getting at. You said it better than I did.

 

Jason M. Artman (36:59)

They’re not going to dissent in the same way because they don’t see that as democratic. But when it comes to an individual feeling of what you’re doing, it’s hard to deny that we’ve got groups of people who feel things in different ways and feel that different actions are appropriate in a democracy.

 

Steve (37:21)

I looked up democracy as you were speaking just to see if it was worth it. An essential question. What is a democracy? And the first thing that came up was rule by the people. And so I’m actually hearing your point that Trump is seen as a man of the people. He’s the anti-politician to his father, followers. So I do see that the sentiment of the people is taking their government back.

 

Jason M. Artman (37:54)

And yeah, I think January 6th fundamentally looks like that. Now, it’s been a topic I haven’t wanted to explore. To me, it’s a painful thing to want to explore January 6th and to get into the psyche of why do that. But in the context of this quote, there’s an avenue to talk about a hard topic. Right. This is this is where the Teach Different Method in a safe environment for students can cover hard topics in class because we have talked about through the context of this quote, without offending anybody, while disagreeing with each other at times and trying to seek the common ground, immigration, deportation, January 6th, abortion, civil rights, we’ve hit five hot topics.

 

Dan (38:57)

But because we’re, you know, the trust is here and we’re talking about a quote outside of ourselves that said by William Fulbright, he’s not here today. We’re just talking about his ideas. That’s a subtle but really important part of this method. Your energies are on someone else’s thoughts.

 

Steve (39:10)

That helps.

 

Jason M. Artman (39:12)

Yes. It allows us to talk about the process. It allows us to talk about the idea. It allows us to talk about a lot of things without getting into personality. And that is something that’s very hard for people to do. It also means we’re discussing and not debating. In discussing, we can all get something out of it. And debate implies winner and loser. That’s why I hate the term classroom debate.

 

Dan (39:31)

Yes. I hate it.

 

Jason M. Artman (39:49)

Because someone has to lose. And even if you disagree with some of the things the three of us are saying today, I think everyone can take something from the conversation, which means everyone actually is winning and learning. And that’s what we’re in the business of doing.

 

Steve (40:07)

We’re talking to some teachers, right? This is just how we’re wired, right? It’s amazing how, yeah, go ahead.

 

Dan (40:13)

And we have to deal with, no, I’m just going to say we have to deal with 25 to 30 young people, all of whom have different ideas about these things and try to, as teachers, manage these conversations in a way where everyone feels heard, no one feels shut out. It’s an impossible task. It really is. I got an essential question though that I think might flow from this. In a democracy. When is dissent acceptable and when is it unacceptable?

 

Steve (40:51)

Is there a criteria for dissent being appropriate or not?

 

Dan (40:53)

That would be an interesting.

 

Steve (41:00)

Or, you know, if you have faith, are you good to go? Like, can you descend on anything? Or what’s the word? Descend on anything? I don’t even know what.

 

Jason M. Artman (41:03)

Ha. That is, boy, is a, right? That’s a test of just how much faith you have in the system. How much dissent you are willing to allow is something else. I mean, look at our Supreme Court today. The dissents coming out of both sides are scathing, right? They seem so much more aggressive than dissidents in the past. However, life terms, do. I’ve always, everything I’ve read of the Supreme Court, they have respect for each other. They spend an awful lot of time with each other. When I’ve read things about past Supreme Courts, even those who disagree, right, have tremendous respect for each other. But boy, the level of dissent coming out right now, you have to have faith in the system. That or you’ve lost all faith in the system and you’d… and you don’t know where else to go.

 

Steve (42:17)

Yeah, they’ve lost decorum. It’s, and it’s not just them in a lot of, even the house of representatives. When you see the videos of just senators, representatives walking out of the room. It’s different. It’s different. We think it was bad 20 years ago. You know, I think we’re on another plane right now.

 

Dan (42:47)

And back to the, as teachers, have the responsibility to create an environment where kids get a way to talk about these things that is healthy, where their disagreement is okay. So if we’re bothered by the system currently run by adults, we have to look to the youth and model the right virtues so that they don’t make the same mistakes.

 

Jason M. Artman (43:11)

Our classroom might be the only place where they get to see it done properly, where someone takes the time and the effort to make sure that it’s civil, because it’s so easy outside of the classroom to digress or to regress into uncivil or discivil behavior.

 

Dan (43:17)

Yes.

 

Jason M. Artman (43:40)

It’s so easy. We see it all the time. We’re seeing the examples of the so-called professionals. We see the same thing. So yeah, Dan, if we’re not going to do this in the classroom, if we’re not going to slow it down, create the safe environment, prove that you can model the tough discussion and still see each other as people and respect each other as people when you’re done, where are they going to get it? It’s got to be somewhere. that’s why I really like what we do with Teach Different. I really like the model. And I like something that I guess we don’t talk about an awful lot. But even when we come to the handout, there’s a piece on the handout that doesn’t necessarily get covered when we go over the questions, where we go, OK, claim, counterclaim, essential question. I love that box down in the bottom center that says, is one of the most valuable things you heard from, or one of the most interesting things you heard from someone else today? And it’s amazing to me, and I appreciate it, and I love this part of what we do, how often students can acknowledge the other side in that. Someone said something. I might not agree with, but it was an interesting thing. It was something that stuck, because if it were social media, we agree, it might not have even appeared there in the first place. But in the end, when students have a chance to reflect and they talk about that interesting thing that someone else said, something that’s gonna stick, it’s not always regurgitating their point of view said by someone else.

 

Dan (45:38)

Yeah, right. And I set five minutes at the end of my conversations, Jason, for three or four kids to share what they wrote in that box. It is a great culture builder.

 

Jason M. Artman (45:52)

It’s a great acknowledgement of each other. I mean, whether you’re purposely doing it or not, you’re going to acknowledge other students for their contribution. And for those other students, that’s going to be a self-esteem builder. Right? I said something that stuck with somebody. Of all the things that got said, my message got through to somebody. That is powerful.

 

Dan (46:18)

it’s huge. Huge.

 

Steve (46:22)

Wonderful.

 

Dan (46:23)

Well, that’s great.I mean, I love how you tied in that little part of that worksheet. It is important to do that along with the heavy thinking of the claim and the counterclaim, the listening, just to make sure that people are listening and acknowledging each other. Well, Jason, really, this was a great conversation. And thanks again for being a part of Teach Different and doing the program in the spring and we’re looking forward to it. I think you were one of the ones interested in moving forward with us and maybe being a mentor to others in the fall and onward. We need people like you to help others work with this. Yeah, we appreciate you.

 

Jason M. Artman (47:02)

Well, thank you very much. I had a good time. It’s a good discussion.

 

Steve (47:13)

Thank you, Jason. It was awesome. All right. Bye bye.

 

Dan (47:17)

All right, take care.

 

Jason M. Artman (47:18)

Take care.