Listening to Those Who Hate: A Central Educational Challenge of Our Times

A Gathering for Educative Healing

co-sponsored by the Holistic Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association and the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning of the National Council of Teachers of EnglishApril 12, 2018, 7-9:30 pm

The Open Center for Holistic Learning

Room 3-C, 22 E. 30^th St (between Fifth and Madison), NYC

Donations of $10 (or more) for seats must be reserved in advance, and a small number of free standing room spots may also be reserved

Listening to Those Who Hate:

A Central Educational Challenge of Our Time4

The election of Donald Trump—and the new power and recognition it has given to those consciously and unconsciously practicing hateful ideologies—has raised certain hitherto relatively dormant questions to great educational prominence: How can we recognize, without empowering, the voices of hate in classrooms and elsewhere? How can we have compassion and understanding for those who refuse those very things to others? How can we educatively move those who hate to soften their hearts and open their minds? And, not least important, how can we engage in the excruciating emotional work of attending to the dark and fragmented spots of the human heart while maintaining our own sanity and wholeness?

We can now see more clearly how critically important it is for us to educate ourselves about hate in order be able to educate others out of it. But these questions are too new for anyone to pretend they have the definitive answers to them. The session will begin with a series of short presentations. But most of it will be given over to spontaneous and, we hope, heartfelt dialogue among participants about their encounters with various forms of hatred in their classrooms and elsewhere, and their thoughts as to how we might learn to hear one another anew in these new times. After the initial talks, we will ask the group to share in pairs the experiences and questions that brought them to the session, before joining together again in a large group dialogue for the final portion of the session.

Rhetorical Listening as a Pedagogy for Re-Uniting the Now Disunited States of America

Abigail Michelini, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

 

Understanding Hate: What the Academic Field of Hate Studies Has Shown that Everyone Now Needs to Know

John Shuart, Portland State University and Hate Studies Policy Research Center

 

Some Ways to Educate People Out of Hate and to Counteract the Ways They Are Educated Into It

Rebecca Barrett-Fox, Arkansas State University and the Journal of Hate Studies

 

Empathy for Gender Difference to Circumvent Hatred

Greg Bynum, SUNY, New Paltz

Learning from Hate: The Ethics and Politics of Engagement with Enemies

Rachel Wahl, The University of Virginia

 

The Crisis in Authority Is Everywhere—As Is the Opportunity for a Renewed Democracy: Confronting the Problems of the Personal and the Political Together, by Listening in Hope for a Newly Personalized and Holistic Democracy to Be Generated through a Politics of Interpersonal Attention and Meaning

Bruce Novak, The Foundation for Ethics and Meaning, the Holistic Education SIG of AERA, and AEPL, The Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning of the National Council of Teachers of English

To reserve your place:

1. Pay by credit card at aepl.org at $10 or $25, using the appropriate button.
2. If you wish to reserve seats not in units of $10 or $25, email organizer Bruce Novak at brucejnovak@gmail.com.
3. To reserve a free standing room spot, email Bruce Novak at brucejnovak@gmail.com. 

Donations over $10 per person are tax deductible gifts to the Holistic Education SIG of AERA.

Spaces will be reserved in the order of receipt of email or credit card payment

We expect to sell out quickly, so please act quickly!