Dog whistles and the principle of charity

How to respect our opponents

Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.

Goethe, Faust

In every sphere, including education, certain phrases or topics act as dog whistles, tapping into a groundswell of opinion that can provoke intense reactions. Terms like ‘progressive,’ ‘knowledge-rich,’ ‘no excuses,’ ‘deep dive,’ ‘SLANT,’ or ‘fronted adverbial’ often elicit strong emotional responses. For some, ‘fronted adverbial’ represents soulless, mind-numbing tedium and clunky writing, while for others, the term conjures up the thought that children are – at long last – receiving some of the much needed meta language which makes creativity easier to think about and put into practice. The same term can send wildly differing signals depending on the listener’s lived experience and tribal affiliations.

When I hear folk inveighing against fronted adverbials, my default setting is to recall my own, sadly lacking education and the fact that I was taught practically no grammar whilst at school. My tendency is to assume that the anti-fronted adverbial brigade are determined to cut children adrift from the tools they need to think critically and creatively about language. But, of course, I’m tilting at windmills. No one actually wants the thing I’ve set my face against. But, because neither me nor the poor person I launch a tirade against clearly spells out a position, assumptions are made, noses are put out of joint and bridges are burnt.

Debate in education is as ideologically riven as any other field where there are few certainties and no absolutes; evidence is always contingent. But you’d never know. The pendulum of educational fashion swings endlessly along the prog-trad continuum and we all cheer or boo as it whooshes past. Put simply, the principle of charity is to assume - until proven otherwise - anyone who disagrees with us is as intelligent, informed and ethical as we are and that we should strive to interpret their claims and evidence in the most positive way possible.

This is easier said than done.

Of course, not everyone is as intelligent, informed and ethical as we are, so alongside the principle of charity, it’s useful to apply Hanlon’s Razor, a rather neat set of aphorisms to help us from misattributing others’ behaviour:

1. Never assume bad intentions when assuming stupidity is enough.

2. Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.

3. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

But, however tempting it may seem to wield this razor, we should beware. All too often we assume stupidity or malice when actually the problem is one of interpretation. Often we’re all looking at the same thing but seeing something different:

Jastrow’s Duck/Rabbit puzzle - it’s not actually a duck or a rabbit, it’s just a squiggle and a dot.

Meaning is often ambiguous and uncertainty is the only respectable intellectual position to hold. We all filter new information through our accumulated prejudices, and we are all susceptible to confirmation bias and the fundamental attribution error. We could all do with being a little more tentative in the way we express our opinions on what others ought to do.

But just how charitable should we be? Some claims are obviously wrong, some are based on no or weak evidence, some illogical or unfounded. If we always interpreted ambiguous claims in the most positive possible way, we would be living in a sort of positive-thinking, everyone-should-do-whatever-the-hell-they-please-and damn-anyone-who-tries-to-debate-the-rightness-of-it-all happy land in which unicorns and hippogryphs roam free and unmolested. We should never be tempted to just let silliness slide.

Daniel Dennett offers this advice:

If there are obvious contradictions in the opponent’s case, then you should point them out, forcefully. If there are somewhat hidden contradictions, you should carefully expose them to view – and then dump on them. But the search for hidden contradictions often crosses the line into nitpicking, sea-lawyering and outright parody. The thrill of the chase and the conviction that your opponent has to be harbouring a confusion somewhere encourages uncharitable interpretation, which gives you an easy target to attack.

I’ve waded in against such targets, wielding well-thumbed research evidence and burning with a pure and righteous zeal, on far too many occasions. It never ends well. We may score some points, but the best we can hope for is to amuse our supporters and antagonise our opponents. No one learns.

The antidote to this unhappy eventuality is a list of rules promulgated many years ago by social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport:

1. Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.

4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

In this way, those with whom we argue might just find themselves that little bit receptive to our point of view. By demonstrating that we understand their position as well as they do, and conceding the points on which there is agreement we might persuade instead just squabbling.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the most commonly contentious terms and what they might mean to different people:

We could continue in the same vein indefinitely. The point is, no one actually believes anything in the ‘What they think’ column. We all see our own beliefs as moderate, well-thought through and obviously right. I’ve tried hard to make the views in the “What you think’ column fairly reflect what I think people on the ‘other side’ really think. I may have got this wrong but I’ve done my best to apply the first of Rapoport’s Rules.

None of this is to suggest that there aren’t genuine and profound disagreements within education. There are many approaches which, though well-intentioned, I am convinced do more harm than good. I’m certainly not saying we should all just get along and thread daisies in each other’s hair. Instead, I’m suggesting that if we take the most charitable possible view of what our opponents believe and argue against that, this only makes our arguments stronger and that much more likely to convince those listening in.

The next time one of these dog whistles is blown, instead of leaping rabidly into the fray and smiting evil doers with your sword of justice, take a breath. Try to imagine that everyone involved in education – even those people – has the best interests of children at the heart of what they believe to be right. If we are able to think ourselves into something a little closer to other people’s actual beliefs we may find we have more common ground than we thought possible. We may find that the educational problems we’re trying to solve are not quite as intractable as we thought. We may find that a far wider cross-section of the community has something valuable and insightful to offer than we realised.

This takes time and practice. Anyone who’s followed my social media career over the years will remember my poor behaviour on numerous occasions. I’ve been every bit as guilty of blowing – and being alerted into over-zealous action by – educational dog whistles as anyone else. But close observers may also have noticed that these incidences have reduced considerably over recent years. I’m not claiming I’m now immune or that I’ve achieved some transcendental state to which you mere mortals should aspire, just that I’ve got a little bit better at breathing, having a bit of think and then deciding not to press send.

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This is the bit where I try to engage you in a dialogue. What dog whistles are you aware of? How do you try to find common ground with those with whom you disagree? Hit the orange ‘leave a comment’ button and let me know.