Sizen wrote: ...This, to me, seems like a constructive and educational discussion for both language acquisition and critical thinking, whereas your example seems to suggest that the authors wish for the students to adopt the same viewpoint as them, regardless of their beliefs ...
You appear to believe that my example “steps over the line”; if so, the questions become “just where is the line?” and “who has the moral authority to draw it?”
My (only slightly) exaggerated example was meant to illustrate that there is, indeed, a “tipping point” beyond which someone is going to have good cause for feeling uncomfortable if asked to discuss issues that most adults would readily recognize as being sensitive, controversial, or even deliberately provocative.
As a prime example, last week, in response to my discussion thread “Language as a Political Tool and Weapon of War", fellow member
aokoye felt it necessary to issue the dire warning
“I think even answering the question, "why was this included in the language textbook?" is rife for political discussion” thereby demonstrating that he harbours his own limits and taboos. Our respective levels of comfort can be quite unpredictable. As a second example, I find that
you have misconstrued my example and that you have extrapolated well beyond what a genuinely well-intentioned professor might assign his students.
And yet,
you, aokoye, Tomàs and others would seem to offer yourselves as the
final arbiters in what is acceptable! This is fascinating, particular when one takes into account the following cautionary advice to instructors, taken from the Introduction:
“The material should only be used with classes you know well and where the students are sensitive enough to trust both you and their fellow students. Even then, you must use the material sensitively. Individual students or members of their family or their close friends may have immediate, personal, and even painful, experience of many of the topics. In some cases, you might want to check with an individual student before using a particular topic in class. It is essential that teachers remain alert for difficulties. If a particular issue becomes too sensitive, the teacher must be willing to abandon the topic and be prepared to move on to something completely different.”In
a rare display of alertness to others' sensitivities,
LesRonces, having read the document, commented
"Did you actually read the document he linked to? Those are mostly very important issues that are discussed at length in our L1's. What would be the point in pretending these things don't exist ? To spare the feelings of the hyper-sensitive? ... we all should be able to do what we like so we don't offend any delicate people? ...
People who don't want to deal with challenges are free to do sweet f.a with themselves and their lives. Nobody forces them into work or university. Championing the refusal to be challenged is to champion a survival of the most useless." ... must have overlooked the Introduction ... I guess.
