"Discussion as a Way of Teaching" Post

Although I have always been an advocate of discussion-based classes, after reading “Discussion as a Way of Teaching,” I am even more adamant about my classroom being primary discussion based. The article simply presents far too many positives in favor of using discussion in classrooms, not to mention the way of life, to not implement the practice.

The second chapter highlighted how discussion brings the classroom to life and this is where I found some of the most interesting material. Bullet number eight under the benefits of using discussion explored the idea of preventing students from losing their voice and being exceptive of all experiences. To me, the most interesting topic in the paragraph was discussing students’ experiences versus knowledge. Brookfield and Preskill state, “They denigrate their personal experiences in deference to ‘book knowledge,’ which seems codified legitimated, somehow ‘more true’ than individual stories “ (23). This statement identified with me so vividly because I find myself often doing the same thing. I defer my own “knowledge” or experiences because information that states otherwise came from a book or official study. I liked how they identified this as a real concern for students in discussions and did not simply overlook it classifying it as trivial or something only the minority of people thought.

Another aspect I appreciated about this article was the honesty of the writers. For example, they discussed how important using memories and personal experiences were to the conversation topics. I agree with this statement, they probably highlighted it more than I expected them to in actuality. Though experience is identified as something very important to discussion Brookfield and Preskill made sure to add a disclaimer. They advocated for it’s serious inclusion in the conversation but also warned, “Experience is problematic. It is constructed by us as much as it happens to us” (24). This article was great in the sense it really affirmed my belief in using discussion as much as possible, but it was realistic about it’s limitations, and also offered some solutions to counteract those limitations. Most importantly they advertised that the use of discussion was not perfect but ever changing and continuing to improve and evolve.