Teaching Controversial Issues in School

One thing that we talked about in my TE 401 class today was teaching controversial issues in school and whether you would want to do this in your own classroom. Controversial issues can range anywhere from having a debate of whether someone should have to buy another student a new pen that they broke when they were borrowing it to who should be responsible for fixing the roads or figuring out whether all schools should have a school uniform. I decided that I wanted to teach controversial issues in my classroom because this would allow students to not only share their own view points, but will have the opportunity to hear other students perspectives and opinions on an issue or problem. Learning how to deal with conflict and controversial topics are important for any person to learn because people will have to interact with people that do not have the same values or viewpoint as them at some point in their life,so if we can teach students how to become informative about topics, learn how to gather facts and information about the topic and how to argue about it in a respectable way that this will be teaching them a skill that will be beneficial to them outside of the classroom.

It was also brought up in our discussion that it is important that the teacher builds a trusting and strong relationship with all their students and that the students can trust one another as well. If there is not a comfortable learning community where students feel safe to share their views and ideas then the discussions and debates will not be as rich or worthwhile then if the students felt comfortable with one another. It is important for the teacher to establish this learning community early, like during the first week of school, and not right before the teacher decides they want to have a debate. A comfortable learning community should begin at the beginning of the year and developed as the school year goes on.

So would you teach controversial issues in your classroom? Why or why not?