[Teaching_Composition] Emotion and reasoning

[Charles Nelson]

Doug,

Part of what you wrote must be "fact" because you obviously  
interpreted the LiveScience article differently from me. :)

The article did not suggest that emotion was not part of being human.  
What it focused on was that when someone is inflexible, an ideologue,  
then they refuse to consider other possibilities. In contrast, those  
more moderate in their positions entertained other possibilities. If  
we want our students to look at alternatives, to be flexible in  
entertaining new concepts, too much emotion, an emotional imbalance  
that precludes alternatives, isn't "desirable." Isn't that why many  
composition instructors don't have students write on topics like  
religion or abortion?

I imagine we're closer in our ideas than these words indicate. You  
wrote,

> We *never* get rid of self-contradictions; we *manage* them.  You  
> could sum up our entire
> role as teachers of critical thinking as helping students learn to  
> accept and handle complexity.  A contradiction is an opportunity,  
> not a fatal flaw.

Definitely. On being "emotionally invested," as long as you're open  
to other possibilities, that's fine. Once a topic closes off access  
to self-contradictions, the complexity of reality, when emotion  
dominates instead of balances our reasoning, then that's a topic we  
should not bring into the classroom.