“Anyone who disagrees with me is a neoliberal racist!”
I've spent much of last year or so feeling baffled at the unpleasant depths to which debate in education has sunk. The approach to which I've always tried to aspire is to advance an argument based on the quality of an idea, and to discuss my (inevitably partial) view of the evidence supporting the that idea. I can often descend to dogmatism but never, I hope, do I completely insulate myself against reality. When someone engages with my argument and advances a convincing counter-argument, I try hard to suppress the negative effects of cognitive dissonance and think about their views. Sometime [...]