In bionet.women-in-bio bmartin at utmem1.utmem.edu wrote:
: In article <6nja4n$2ku$1 at Jupiter.Mcs.Net>, finch at MCS.COM (Deirdre
: Sholto-Douglas) wrote:
: Non-confrontational does not mean the absence of debate; it infers more
: about the style used. Confronting a student with meanness just results in
: the questioner being considered a jerk by the majority of the audience.
It doesn't matter *what* the audience thinks about the questioner,
what matters is what they preceive about the *questionee*. Was
the individual able to field the question, defuse the situation and
respond adroitly on a hostile playing field or did they fall to
pieces because no one's ever been critical of them before, let alone
in front of others in a public forum?
The questioner may be a jerk, but what people will remember is how
the speaker responds. And since it is impossible to rid the world
of jerks (in *any* venue), it's a good idea to learn how to deal
with them...the time to learn this, by the by, is *before* it happens
in a place where one's reputation can be harmed.
: > Conversely, an individual who argues strongly, logically and
: > is capable of calmly answering or disproving their opponent will
: > not only make their intellectual presence felt, but they will
: > probably earn the respect of their opponent as well.
: The same can be done in a non-confrontational style. These are not
: mutually exclusive.
Perhaps not, but one *is* excluded from controlling another's
behaviour. You can't truly believe that a student is going to
face nothing but non-confrontational situations during the
course of their career...and to fail to instruct them, and allow
them the experience of dealing with such, prior to it happening
in Real Life is a disservice to them.
In an ideal world, everything would be stress-free and open
discourse, in the Real World, however, there are back-biters,
career assassins and knee-jerkers...and they have a knack of
appearing just when one has presented something which threatens
their established beliefs. These sorts will go on the attack
without thinking twice or blinking once. And their preferred
venue is the public one.
A student who has not been challenged prior to crossing swords
with one of these folks will most probably wilt. You've,
no doubt, seen it happen. I suspect everyone here has watched
someone fall to pieces at a podium when challenged. It's horrible
to watch when you *don't* know the person, excrutiating if it's
one of one's students breaking down.
This is not an Ideal World, we owe it to our students to
expose them to the Real One.
Deirdre
--
| Deirdre Sholto-Douglas | e-mail: finch at mcs.com |
| | |
******* The only acceptable substitute for intelligence *******
is silence.
