I think there is a way to disagree with a students’ opinion and express your own while not silencing a student. As in “playing devil’s advocate,” I think this could be a good way to bring in differing opinions or your own opinion without it being too overbearing. I feel as if when teachers express their own opinions and make it know that it is their opinion, students might be afraid to disagree. So when discussion feminism, etc. it might be helpful to have the students start the discussion or have students lead the discussion and have the teacher jump in as “devil’s advocate” or to point out some important issues, etc. Thanks for your comments!

I tried not to, and I tried to phrase things more as “I’m playing devil’s advocate” than “I’m telling you how it is,” but I am a very opinionated and pig-headed person, so in issues where I have made up my mind (women’s right, equality, gay rights), I tend not to budge.

Maybe if we had more team-teaching, where you had more than one teacher in the room, we could encourage more open discussion. Teacher are humans, after all, and we’re not perfect… it’s hard for me to be open to ideas that I find utterly wrong, and I know in those situations, I don’t come across as open to other ideas. If there were two teachers in the room, their differing ideas might encourage students to share their own ideas; they would see there can be more than one opinion on a topic.

Sadly, too often teachers have to be RIGHT and are afraid of ever admitting they do not know something (usually relating to their subject; they think in order to keep their “authority” status they need to be completely infallible), but this attitude translates into “there is ONE right answer and the teacher has it — at least in this classroom,” which means the students do not feel comfortable offering their own opinions. That, or this push to standardize test everything to death leads to “there is only one answer/only one way of looking at things, because you can only choose one of the A/B/C/D bubbles on your answer document” and this (lack of) thought process leads to the slow, fatal erosion of critical thinking and independent thought…