By Dr. Terry Macaluso, Head of School Emerita

Civil discourse. What is it? Since we can pose the question, naturally, we assume there must be an answer. We’re fairly sure it’s missing from ordinary parlance. Something must motivate us to believe—or imagine—that there is a more effective or satisfying way to communicate.

An analogy: The birth of Western philosophy in Greece more than two millennia ago was just that—the birth of Western philosophy. The earliest philosophers built systems of thought that they hoped would explain the nature of reality, the fact that multiplicity and unity seem to co-exist, the nature of human beings, how numbers work, and why the cosmos is the way the cosmos is. Philosophy was knowledge.

The vast complexity of philosophy gave way to myriad analytical attempts to explain each “entity” independent of its connection to everything else. Philosophy became physics, aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and all manner of specifically focused bodies of knowledge that we recognize today. What was once considered to be the “method” by which to comprehend the universe and the role of humans in it became a collection of distinct specialties, the expansion of which continued to produce more questions than answers. There has been, in the history of ideas, a competition of sorts; each thinker and each discipline aiming to win. This is fundamental to Western life and thinking.

David Bohm, a 20th century physicist, advanced a theory about human-to human communication that accounts for the analogy. Most serious human interaction involves discussion, a process in which individuals gather and take turns saying what they think is true—about anything. When they’ve finished saying the thing they think, they disband.

Bohm is not hopeful regarding the efficacy of discussion. He proposed, by contrast, that something called dialogue could produce powerful collaborative understanding. In a discussion, everyone is trying to win. In a dialogue, there is no competition. In a dialogue, participants suspend their beliefs and assumptions; they come to the conversation hopeful that the collective will be able to produce new understanding.

OUR INABILITY TO DIALOGUE HOLDS HOSTAGE GOVERNANCE AND POLITICS IN THIS COUNTRY, AND OUR ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS ARE SIMILARLY ENCUMBERED.

Civil discourse is dialogue as Bohm characterizes it. Civil discourse may take place in some rarified atmosphere. But it certainly is uncommon. It requires a transformation of consciousness, which Aliya (’30) supports a discussion in Pre-Algebra. Bohm identifies as “proprioception: the ability to think about our thinking.” He goes on to provide an example: “There’s a difference between the actual perception that one has hurt me by what he has said, and the capacity to assess THAT something that was, perhaps, intended to be hurtful, has been said.” (Bohm, On Dialogue)

According to Bohm, thinking is a process, not the instantiation of truth. But we get it backward. “Without the ability to dialogue, we abandon ourselves to a kind of literal thinking that provides for nothing more than banal execution of daily functions—including the profoundly uninteresting function of defending our own limited views, at all cost—and for no purpose.” (Bohm, On Dialogue)

My interest in this topic is inspired by the current state of human engagement in so many dimensions of our culture. It’s obvious that our interactions are limited to discussion. Our inability to dialogue holds hostage governance and politics in this country, and our academic institutions are similarly encumbered.

Nowhere has this been better illustrated than by the spring of 2024, when discontentedness on many college and university campuses grew in response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Of course, this is a historical and painful struggle that is yet to be resolved.

Now what? You will not be surprised to learn that I think schools have a role in this. As humans, we have to be taught to do almost everything we are ultimately able to do. I would put “learning to dialogue” at the top of the list of things students need to learn. But it’s so difficult to do! Why?

We’re afraid of things we don’t understand; fear confounds us and undermines our capacity to realize that thinking is a team sport. The thing is, there’s only one team.

Let’s get practical. How might dialogue be taught?

Imagine a course in which the syllabus was composed exclusively of topics utterly beyond the capacity of any individual student’s experience or comprehension. Consider a course in archaeology. Students receive enough data to launch their investigation—but they have no idea where they’re being led or what they’re looking for. There appears to be a problem to solve, but even that is unclear. As individuals pursue the assignment, it becomes obvious that people working together will likely have more success—just because there are more minds at work, to say the very least. Now, we have four groups of students trying to understand the same thing. They trip over each other. Some people work harder than others. So what? All we need is one potentially useful piece of information—and the natural inclination is to share it because we’re all trying to get to…something that we cannot yet name.

IN A DISCUSSION, EVERYONE IS TRYING TO WIN. IN A DIALOGUE, THERE IS NO COMPETITION.

If we wanted students to seek knowledge for the sake of seeking knowledge, we’d ask them to work together to accomplish a task: to solve a problem, to find a new planet, to compose an opera. If we wanted to teach students how to dialogue, we’d create circumstances in which they need each other to be successful so that they, too, can be successful.

Suppose we wanted to produce citizens capable of maintaining democracy. In that case, we’d teach them that goodness and contentment are achievable only if we depend upon one another to contribute our best thinking, rise above the fear that overtakes us when we feel challenged, and seek the fullness of human interaction in the cognitive company of our peers.

Civil discourse can be taught. Civil discourse can be learned. Civil discourse is the only discourse that leads to the satisfaction of knowing what there is to be known and to the perpetuation of wonder.