improved when the heart beats rapidly and the lungs take in gobs of air. I know you can’t teach passion. The

contagion of passion is almost always an interpersonal event, a moment when the person-with-others
experiences a dramatic change of attitude because of a strange new emotional intensity about an issue, an idea, a
fact.

Our department now stages debates each semester. They are deliberate attempts at "art" in the service of
pedayogy. We sat down last year and fought frustration with imagination. "How can we turn our students on
to philosophical ideas? Let’s do something that combines philosophical thinking with drama, or if not drama at
a hiph level, at least a raucous atmosphere." We decided to choose three positions on a topic—say "Is There
Life After Death?"—put on our academic robes, march into the Clark Room, and (following a structured debate
format, stating our initial positions from prepared manuscripts, followed by rebuttals) proceed to yell at each
other, insult each other, get the crowd to laugh at our opponents, boo and hiss them, and cheer when one of us
makes a good point.

At the first debate, the audience (our PHI 110 students are required to attend) got a chance at the end to ask
questions or make comments. The atmosphere was still charged. I was consigned to hell twice and once
roundly booed when I said one of my opponents didn’t mind getting thrown out of the Garden of Eden,
because it was obvious he had eaten a lot more than just fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What have the rowdiness, the flying ad hominems and the humorous remarks got to do with thinking
clearly? I’m sure some of you react negatively. "Knowledge is supposed to be its own excitement. Gentleness
of tone reflects a genteel spirit." It seems to me that some case can be made for the association of good manners
and clear thinking, but it is not a case I should like to make for my general education students. They have too
long associated cleverness with quietness, deep-thinking with dull tones. I should like them to experience those
exciting moments when a flesh and bone human being "slam dunks" an idea right over the outstretched
objections of an opponent—and, if necessary, rakes him across the face going down. I want the heart to race
and a yell to go up for that.

Our debates are intended to stimulate passion, or at least to associate it with vital thinking. We prepare the
students for the debate by telling them it is expected that they will demonstrate their feelings about what is
being said. For that to happen, the debaters themselves must be willing to "sacrifice" their proud egos to
taunts, to ridicule, to (somewhat) undeserved hostility. But it works. It works, at least, for that event. We
don’t want it to stop there, however, for the purpose of the debate is to give us talking-points for our classes
and, perhaps even more important, to take the atmosphere of the debate back into the classroom.

I cannot speak for the others, but what I have found is that students do get involved—they discuss the issue
with considerable clarity, and they remember well. The carry-over effect of the debate is there for the using in
the classroom. But, alas, after a few days of referring to it, I leave the topic and settle back into the
assignments. This is disturbing because my fondest hope for the debates is that they will provide a basis for
changing both my approach to teaching and the student's approach to listening and speaking.

So it’s back to booming voice and marvelous explanations. And the students go back to confusing emotion
with ideas. Yes, for the irony is that when one cannot get excited about ideas, one runs a very great risk of not
being able to separate emotion from thought. In the confusion, one says, "Well, I’m not excited about this. It
must not be important."

On the other hand, if there is passion for the ideas, one can more clearly see when extraneous matters
intrude on the ideas. It is clear to me from our debate experiences that when one of us attacks another's person
(ad hominem) and not his ideas, the audience reacts correctly. They laugh and boo, but they separate the man
wounded from his position. Passion does that. It clarifies the ideas to the point of their having to be separated
from feeling.

5o the irony of the debate, one that I am trying to sustain in the classroom, is that the more raucous the
atmosphere and the more intense people become, the less chance there is of confusing lack of feeling with lack

 

of meaning or of confusing pleasing looks with pleasing reasoning.

a
To separate passion from thought, one must be passionate. | BOUGLAS COLLEGE
Bob Miller | ARCHIVES Uusi

Eastern Kentucky University

 

 

Edited and reprinted with permission. For further information, contact the author at EKU TEACHING, Box 7A,
Coates Bldg., Eastern RenNERy REVERSI: Hiehmena, KY 40475-0931.

wa Se  Rouects MOG

October 785 i. \
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