Marcella Effelina (P.S.

: I’ve changed my article)

16718226

We Spend Too Much Time Teaching Students to Argue

By Kate Ehrenfeld Gardoqui Education Week Oct. 1, 2018

SUMMARY

Students from American public schools consume a lot of time arguing on something they
learn and being forced to write persuasive essays for their housework. In this article, author told
that he used to feel passionate about teaching argumentation skills to his students. However, author
started to doubt his perspective about the statement that teaching argumentation is to empower the
students. He was getting the opposite result, he was making students vulnerable and tend to choose
fact that support certain perception of reality, rather than considering the facts to know about the
reality. Soon, author designed a new way of teaching by giving a project, that could help the
students to improve them in mastering analyze data with keen powers of observation before asking.
Students need to learn that the goal is not to win the argument and define reality according one’s
beliefs. We need to plant a whole new perspective that the goal is to see what is around us and
respond carefully but in smart way. If we could achieve this, innovators working as a group will
work together to solve problems, rather than being in a rivalry situation.

THESIS
People nowadays start to argue about the effect in student’s perspective that caused by
teaching a wrong argumentation skills.
CLAIMS
Author claims that the way of teaching of argumentative skills should make students see
everything and respond to it carefully.

REASONS
1. Argumentation skill should help student to analyze facts to understand the reality.
2. We need to plant a whole new perspective that the goal is to see what is around us and
respond carefully but in smart way.
3. One thing teachers can do is to ensure that the time students spend in school is spent
practicing, over and over, the components of problem-solving: gathering and analyzing
 information, making observations, defining problems, collaborating with others, testing
possible solutions, and learning from failure.
4. Innovators working together to overcome challenges, partners in the face of a reality that
we all perceive together, rather than as members of rival factions trying to score points in
an endless argument.

BACKINGS
1. Students susceptible to an epidemic of our time: the tendency to select facts that support
a certain perception of reality, rather than discerning what reality is by analyzing
observations and facts.
2. If we are to survive as a nation, then our students must learn that the goal is not to win
an argument. The goal is not to define reality according to the terms of one's beliefs.
The goal is to see what is around us and respond wisely.
3. Students shine when they work this way. I've seen teenagers in Vermont, after
analyzing student data from their school, define the most critical problem not as "too
many students use drugs," but as "it is almost impossible for people in our rural area to
access psychiatric care." I've seen students argue for novel ways to prevent bullying, to
increase attendance at girls' sports events, to slow the spread of Lyme disease, to route
traffic more safely in the school parking lot. Although all these students made powerful
arguments, their goal was not to argue; their goal was to solve problems.
4. The more that our classrooms are set up with this focus, the more hope there is that our
students will come to regard themselves as American innovators working together to
overcome challenges, partners in the face of a reality that we all perceive together,
rather than as members of rival factions trying to score points in an endless argument.

REFUTATION

Argumentation is a focus of the Common Core State Standards for English. The Next
Generation Science Standards and many social studies standards also emphasize
argument. When you add it all together, it yields a curriculum that pushes students to
frequently frame their work in terms of claims, evidence, and reasoning. In my work
with teachers across New England, I have watched this emphasis expand over the past
decade.

We Spend Too Much Time Teaching Students to Argue

By Kate Ehrenfeld Gardoqui Education Week Oct. 1, 2018

Anyone who has been around American public schools recently has probably noticed
that our kids spend a lot of time learning to argue. First graders practice by writing
claims about the Big Bad Wolf; they might misspell "evidence," but they learn if they
are going to call the wolf big and bad, they better be able to back it up. Third graders
construct arguments about whether it is harder to be an older or a younger sibling. High
school students write persuasive essays on the same topics their parents argue about
online.

Argumentation is a focus of the Common Core State Standards for English. The Next
Generation Science Standards and many social studies standards also emphasize
argument. When you add it all together, it yields a curriculum that pushes students to
frequently frame their work in terms of claims, evidence, and reasoning. In my work
with teachers across New England, I have watched this emphasis expand over the past
decade.

For years, I was passionate about teaching these skills to the high school students in
my own English classes. I had read the research cited in the common core, which
indicates that argumentation skills will help students advance and excel in any career
path. I wanted my students to be the most powerful thinkers and communicators in any
room.
As the years went by, however, a problem became clear: Too many students seemed to
be learning that the first step to crafting an argument is finding evidence to support a
pre-formed opinion. As the internet became ubiquitous, this instinct became more and
more dangerous.
There are few things more perilous than an inability to perceive reality. For his book
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, Laurence Gonzales analyzed accident
reports from fatal incidents and found that disaster follows when people look at the
world, and, instead of seeing what is there, see what they expect to see. Hikers leave
the trail because a break in the trees looks like a turn that they were expecting, and end
up helplessly lost. Rafters who have run a river in low water fail to notice that the water
is high this year, because they are "seeing" the river of their memory, until the current
sucks them into violent rapids. Expectations skew their view of reality, with terrible
results.

Was I teaching argumentation to empower my students? Of course. But by teaching

them to focus on finding evidence to support claims, I was achieving the opposite
effect. I was making them susceptible to an epidemic of our time: the tendency to select
facts that support a certain perception of reality, rather than discerning what reality is
by analyzing observations and facts.

With this in mind, I shifted my focus to the work that needs to happen before one makes
an argument—the work of looking at the world. I designed projects that would allow
students to look deeply at an issue. They would gather data for a long time, researching
in academic or professional journals, conducting interviews, making observations.
Once a wealth of information had been gathered, they would examine it by asking two
questions: What do I see here? What is this telling me? Only after looking at patterns
in the data would they begin to craft an argument.

In this approach to teaching, the skill my students practiced most was not cobbling
together arguments intended to support their assumptions, but rather seeing reality as
accurately as possible. I didn't stop teaching my students to express their views with
evidence, clarity, and eloquence. But the skill I wanted them to master was looking at
texts or data or the world itself with keen powers of observation and listing their
observations before asking, "What does this all mean?"

Now it is 2018, and not a day goes by without a chorus of lamentation about the
fracturing of our society, the evaporation of our sense of shared reality. I don't know
all the answers, but I do know that one thing teachers can do is to ensure that the time
students spend in school is spent practicing, over and over, the components of problem-
solving: gathering and analyzing information, making observations, defining problems,
collaborating with others, testing possible solutions, and learning from failure.

If we are to survive as a nation, then our students must learn that the goal is not to win
an argument. The goal is not to define reality according to the terms of one's beliefs.
The goal is to see what is around us and respond wisely.

Students shine when they work this way. I've seen teenagers in Vermont, after
analyzing student data from their school, define the most critical problem not as "too
many students use drugs," but as "it is almost impossible for people in our rural area to
access psychiatric care." I've seen students argue for novel ways to prevent bullying, to
increase attendance at girls' sports events, to slow the spread of Lyme disease, to route
traffic more safely in the school parking lot. Although all these students made powerful
arguments, their goal was not to argue; their goal was to solve problems.

Teachers can drive this change, and parents can play a role, too. At back-to-school night
this fall, parents all over America can ask their children's teachers these questions:
What kinds of problems will my child work on in this class? Will my child have
opportunities to define problems that need solving?

The more that our classrooms are set up with this focus, the more hope there is that our
students will come to regard themselves as American innovators working together to
 overcome challenges, partners in the face of a reality that we all perceive together,
rather than as members of rival factions trying to score points in an endless argument.

If we can succeed in this, then perhaps our children can teach us to follow their lead.

INTRODUCTARY PARAGRAPH

American public schools made students consume a lot of time arguing on something they
learn and being forced to write persuasive essays for their housework. In this article, author told
that he used to feel passionate about teaching argumentation skills to his students. However, author
started to doubt his perspective about the statement that teaching argumentation is to empower the
students. We need to plant a whole new perspective that the goal is to see what is around us and
respond carefully but in smart way. If we could achieve this, innovators working as a group will
work together to solve problems, rather than being in a rivalry situation. Although all these students
made powerful arguments, their goal was not to argue; their goal was to solve problems. Because
all of this situation, people nowadays start to argue about the effect in student’s perspective that
caused by teaching a wrong argumentation skills.