One of the strongest claims we make for discussion is that, properly conducted, it is inherently democratic; indeed, the subtitle of this book makes this preference quite explicit. Few writers have advanced this claim more determinedly than the German critical theorist Jurgen Habermas. Over the past five decades Habermas has produced a constant stream of texts that, in their different ways, examine the connections between learning discussion behaviors and practicing democracy. In this chapter we navigate this stream and explore those eddies that represent some of his chief preoccupations.
Habermas believes that postindustrial society has seen the decline of the public sphere (the civic space or commons in which people come together to discuss and decide their response to shared issues and problems) and the weakening of civil society. We review his contention that the key to reversing these negative trends is understanding how people learn communicative action and how they apply that learning in democratic conversation. For us, Habermas is a theorist of democracy who believes that a society is more or less democratic according to the discussion processes its members use to come to decisions about matters that affect their lives. As societies democratize its citizens have fuller access to information and endure progressively fewer distortions to constrain discussion. Truly democratic discussion represents the freest, least restricted communication possible. In Habermas’s view the greater the freedom of discussion that people enjoy, the higher the chance that true critical reason—reason employed to create a just, humane democracy—will emerge.
The public sphere is like an enormous discussion arena. Think of an outdoor café full of people talking about concerns they share in common, or an internet chat room in which people log on to register and exchange their views about something. As people talk with varying degrees of informality about issues that affect them, viewpoints emerge that represent the chief clusters of their opinions. These are the viewpoints that are noticed by politicians, government officials, pollsters, media workers, and so on. As a result the opinions developed informally in the public sphere come to affect how more formal political and legislative deliberations are conducted. In this way the public sphere is “an intermediary between the political system, on the one hand, and the private sectors of the lifeworld and functional systems, on the other” (Habermas, 1996, p. 373).
In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989b), first published in German in 1962, Habermas painstakingly traces how, as society becomes ever larger and more differentiated into complex subsystems, “the communicative network of a public made up of rationally debating private citizens has collapsed” (p. 247). The town meeting, village green gathering, or tribal circle cannot provide effective forums for the kind of public discussion of community concerns that lies at the heart of democracy. Yet democracy cannot exist without a public sphere that allows people to talk out their feelings and opinions and gather their political energies behind a particular movement for change. If there is no arena in which adults can come together to debate and engage in political will formation (the development of strands of opinion and the decision to act on these that sometimes comes after prolonged discussion), we cannot accurately talk about public opinion. This lack of a public sphere is a boon to governments that seek to steamroller a vision of the world they wish people to accept as self-evident. For example, a public sphere that debates long and hard about the morality of invading another country that poses no imminent threat is extremely inconvenient for a regime obsessed with damping down public criticism of its policies.
What are some of the other consequences of the decline of the public sphere? One is the growth of a destructive privatism, a focus on the self. When people have no way to influence discussion and decisions in the wider society they decide to pursue private goals without regard to the effects this pursuit has on others. In such a situation what Habermas calls civic privatism—“political abstinence combined with an orientation to career, leisure and consumption” (Habermas, 1975, p. 37)—is bound to flourish. The diminution of the public sphere also neutralizes intellectual challenges to the dominant order. When intellectuals act as social critics to reveal and uncover the existence of social inequities they need a public to receive, consider, and then sometimes act on such critiques. With no public to debate the arguments and evidence they offer, no philosophical commons in which their analyses can be heard, intellectuals are rendered impotent. By definition, intellectual work is premised on the existence of a public sphere to receive and respond to it. This sphere can only exist when supported by constitutional safeguards that ensure and encourage the free expression of critical opinion. In order to perform their proper critical function intellectuals therefore “rely on a half way constitutional state” and on “a democracy that for its part survives only by virtue of the involvement of citizens who are as suspicious as they are combative” (Habermas, 1989a, p. 73).
Although the decline of the public sphere is a disturbing trend, Habermas is hopeful it can be countered. In his view communicative action—people learning to understand each other’s viewpoint so as to come to an agreement—is both a ubiquitous dimension of human existence and a crucial hedge against the total collapse of the public sphere. Habermas argues that if enough people in society are intentional about their engagement in communicative action then the public sphere can be revitalized.
What exactly is communicative action? In Volume 1 of his massive The Theory of Communicative Action (1984), Habermas says such action happens when attempts by people to communicate “are coordinated not through egocentric calculations of success but through acts of reaching understanding” (p. 286). When we act communicatively we try to step out of our normal frames of reference to see the world as someone else sees it. We make this effort because we live in a world full of different cultures, agendas, and ideologies. In a sense living with others continually forces perspective-taking upon us. Life keeps presenting situations to us in which we need to understand others’ desires and reach compromises with them. Sometimes we also need to live with the realization that compromise is impossible. The communicative action such compromises and containments call for requires a good faith effort to try and understand another’s point of view.
This communicative disposition is fostered through several of the practices described in this book. “Methodological belief” in Chapter Seven explicitly requires us to put our prejudices aside and try to accept (if only temporarily) a worldview with which we are unfamiliar and perhaps disagree. The same logic informs the practice of “Critical Debate” (Chapter Five). The “Circle of Voices” and “Circular Response” described in Chapter Four both have as an important task the attempt to express one’s comments within the context of another’s perspective. The role of designated listener in Chapter Five requires the student to understand comments from the perspective of the speaker as does the paired listening exercise in the same chapter.
Habermas believes that in social living communicative action is unavoidable. He declares in a 1994 interview, “I never say that people want to act communicatively but that they have to” (Habermas, 1994, p. 111). As long as we live in association with others, and as long as we accept that our lives are better without constant conflicts and disputes, then communicative action is required. This is because there are basic social tasks that can only be accomplished through communicative action. Rearing children, cooperative action of any kind, solving problems peacefully all require us to balance personal preferences with the collective good. Developing the ability to put aside egocentric calculations of success in a society run by money and power is a daunting prospect. Indeed, in Habermas’s view learning to do this is the adult learning task, made doubly difficult by the existence of schooling systems run according to the competitive ethic and by the spread of civic privatism.
When we learn to come to agreement we are, in Habermas’s view, engaged in an inherently democratic process, since true agreement springs from the freely given assent of the parties concerned. Hence, “a communicatively achieved agreement . . . cannot be imposed by either party (whether instrumentally via intervention or strategically via undue influence)” (1984, p. 287). Embedded in any authentic agreement are certain democratic norms. First, the agreement must not be coerced. Those involved must feel that the understanding has been reached of their unforced volition. Second, coming to an understanding must be based on the truthful giving of reasons for various actions. Third, an agreement between people is based on the assumption that the views of others involved in the agreement have some validity. We can see the intentional creation of these kind of democratic speech norms exemplified at different points in this book. For example, the effort to create discussion ground rules described in Chapter Three focuses on the norms just discussed. In addition, use of the CIQ referred to throughout the book will often necessarily lead into the kind of communicative action Habermas refers to. Whenever the CIQ reveals a dynamic in class that involves different subgroups of learners displaying markedly different preferences (for example one groups wants only lectures, one group wants only small group projects, one group wishes to hold most of the class online, and so on), we have to hold discussions that work to resolve these different agendas to the point where all can live with what is arranged.
Habermas contends that raising validity claims is intrinsic to every human conversation and, by implication, to every educational discussion. Validity claims are the basic conditions of speech that people strive to practice when they attempt to communicate in good faith with each other. If I struggle to understand what you’re saying and try to make my comments to you as comprehensible as possible in return, then I am communicating in good faith. If I then try to connect to, build on, and take account of what you have said as I respond to you, I am likewise sincerely trying to build some shared understandings. What Habermas calls communicative action—two or more people trying to come to an understanding or agreement—is premised on their effort to speak in the most truthful, best informed way they can. Hence, “whenever we mean what we say, we raise the claim that what is said is true, or right, or truthful” (Habermas, 1994, p. 102).
Throughout the book we employ exercises that attempt to implement the kinds of validity claims Habermas describes. “Circle of Voices” (Chapter Four), “Circular Response” (Chapter Four), “Conversational Moves” (Chapter Five), and the “Reflective Analyst” conversational role (Chapter Five) all involve participants struggling to understand what others are saying and then to respond to them on the basis of this understanding. In Chapter Five our section on responding to discussion by affirming, clarifying, and inviting further elaboration is based on the idea that good teachers strive to understand what students are saying and to be as clear as possible in their own comments. Indeed, one could argue that the attempt to use lectures to model democratic talk (Chapter Three) and the giving of individualized feedback (Chapter Fifteen) are two activities that require us to take account of Habermas’s validity claims as we try to make transparent our explanations and assessments. Whenever students ask questions of us we try to accomplish what Habermas claims is a central task of valid communication; that is, to do our best to understand what the question is and why it is important to the student, and then to give the clearest response we can that takes account of what we know about the student’s experience, culture, race, learning style, and so on.
Clearly, not all discussion interactions are examples of communicative action. Indeed, in a society dominated by money and power, a great deal of conversation will be the exact opposite of this kind of talk. People will speak for the purpose of exploiting or dominating others in discussion groups or to justify and support conversational rules that legitimize this domination. The true, fully realized communicative action so valued by Habermas is a rarity in life, something that always needs fostering. For Habermas it is the most endangered human resource on the planet. This is why the role of education, particularly the actions of discussion leaders, is important.
It is striking how Habermas’s unabashed hope in the possibility of two or more people coming to understand each other’s views and then agreeing on a common course of action stands firmly against postmodernism. From a postmodern perspective Habermas is engaged in something of a fool’s errand. If postmodernism teaches us anything (and teaching us something is too directive an activity for many in this orientation), it is that language can never be trusted. Logocentrism—the assumption that a central, unequivocal discoverable meaning exists at the core of speech and writing—is completely rejected. Words are viewed instead as slippery, opaque, and contextual. From a postmodern perspective the thoughts we have can never be expressed in words in exactly the way we think them. Furthermore, despite our best intentions to craft words that convey our meanings as transparently and accurately as possible, the meanings that others take from them will never be exactly what we intend. People’s experiences and history will always skew how others understand the words we use and ensure that they invest them with connotations and meanings we never intended. Hence, postmodernism views comprehensibility, rightness, and authenticity as meaningless criteria in a world of fractured discourses and local meanings.
Despite the postmodern critique of his theory of communicative action, Habermas steadfastly refuses to ditch modernity’s dream of using human reason to create a more humane world. Part of that dream is clearly bound up with the possibility of people learning to speak to each other in honest and informed ways so that they can hold democratic conversations about important issues in a revived public sphere. Since, to Habermas, learning to talk in this way is the best hope we have for creating a just society, there could hardly be anything more important in social life than education, and no more significant educational activity than discussion.
What are the validity claims Habermas is seeking to practice through discussion? The first is “the comprehensibility of the utterance” (1973, p. 18) in which we ask how clear and understandable are the words participants are using. This claim of comprehensibility requires speakers to strive to use language that stands the best chance of being understood by hearers. When we hear a sentence we also try to gauge “the truth of its propositional component” (1973, p. 18); that is, whether or not the words being voiced accurately represent some state of affairs in the wider world. This is the second claim of truth. Is the speaker doing her best to give us the fullest possible information about the matter under consideration? The extent to which the speaker sticks to the rules of talk that prevail in our discussion community is a third feature we pay attention to. This is the claim of rightness. A sentence is judged partly according to “the correctness and appropriateness of its performatory component” (1973, p. 18); that is, whether or not it is stated in a form that is familiar and likely to be understood the way it is intended. Communication is impossible without people observing the intuitively understood norms and rules governing speech, the sort of broadly accepted road map of talk. Finally, we need to know that the people speaking to us are sincerely interested in reaching understanding. This is the claim of authenticity, particularly “the authenticity of the speaking subject” (1973, p. 18). We must be able to trust that others in conversation sincerely wish to make themselves understandable and to understand us in return.
Learning to recognize when, or how far, these validity claims are being met is an unending learning project, one crucial to democratic discussion. If we haven’t learned to distinguish between propogandizing and a genuine statement of deeply held views, or to discern those times when apparent truthfulness masks coercive intent, then our ability to defeat subtle demagoguery within the public sphere is severely curtailed. It is in everyday communicative action that people learn to recognize the manipulation of speech that, on a larger scale, diminishes the public sphere. The chair of a community gathering who, in giving the “sense of the meeting” carefully slants his summary to highlight his preferred view; the facilitator who sums up the main points of a discussion and gives an account that some in the room barely recognize; the spouse or lover in a supposedly open conversation who skillfully manipulates the outcome so that the blame for any marital stress or interpersonal tension always rests on the other’s shoulders—all these communicative actions are violating one or other of the validity claims Habermas emphasizes. In learning how to detect when these violations are happening, and how to bring these to people’s attention, citizens prepare themselves for discussions in the public sphere. They show that they are learning communicative competence.
One of Habermas’s ideas that is most relevant for the conduct of discussion (and that has also drawn considerable criticism) is his stress on the giving of reasons as a universal feature of speech. To him “even the most fleeting speech act offers, the most conventional yes/no responses, rely on potential reasons” (1996, p. 19). If asked, we could supply the reasons we believe something, propose something, or respond to another’s ideas in the ways we do. Reasons, therefore, “are the primary currency used in a discursive exchange that redeems criticizable validity claims” (1996, p. 35). The reasons given for various proposals or assertions can, of course, be false, wrong, exploitative, or immoral. But the giving of reasons is universal. We may appeal to authority (do this because I tell you to) or supernatural powers (do this because the rain God will be displeased if you don’t). We may cite experience as the reason for our beliefs or actions, or we may appeal to formal rules of logic. Sometimes we go back to dogma or text and cite that as the reason for a decision. At other times our reason is that “it’s just common sense.” The point for Habermas is that we always cite reasons to justify our beliefs or actions to ourselves and to others.
Nowhere is this giving of reasons more important than in discussions within a democratic public sphere. Habermas believes that when a speech community functions as it should it is also a democratic community. Hence, the rules that govern communicative action (such as the giving of ideas for the viewpoints and ideas we hold) are the same as those informing the democratic process. If learning to participate in communicative action is a universal learning project, then learning democratic process is its political counterpart. When we learn to give reasons fully and honestly for our conduct, and to talk to each other in ways that are comprehensible, truthful, appropriate, and authentic, we are learning democracy. This is because the standards and rules we use to judge the rightness of our participation in a discussion are the same as those we adopt when assessing the legitimacy of a democratic decision.
As indicated, Habermas consistently argues that the rules of discussion suggested by communicative action are also the basis of democratic process. Readers may well recognize that something like these rules informs the conduct of many of their discussion groups. The rules Habermas specifies are “that (a) all relevant voices are heard, (b) the best of all available arguments, given the present state of our knowledge are accepted, and (c) only the non-coercive coercion of the better argument determines the affirmations and negations of the participants” (Habermas, 1992, p. 260). In other words, good discussion, and therefore good democratic process, depends on everyone contributing, on everyone having the fullest possible knowledge of different perspectives, and on everyone being ready to give up their position if a better argument is presented to them. Taken together, these rules constitute an ideal that citizens can use to judge the effectiveness of political deliberations, and educators can use to judge the validity of education programs and learning activities. Habermas calls this the “ideal speech situation.”
Of course the problem with this ideal is that judgments as to which voices are relevant, how relevance itself is to be determined, how we decide which are the best arguments, and who estimates exactly what is the present state of our knowledge, are both highly subjective and contentious. If we’re not careful we end up asking those in authority to decide these things and privileging the very experts Habermas is trying to restrain. Not surprising, Habermas is quick to recognize this danger. In an interview in Justifications and Applications (1993), he voices his regret at coining the term “ideal speech situation,” calling it “a term whose concretistic connotations are misleading” (p. 164). However, Habermas does not believe that these drawbacks inevitably render rules of discourse as useless. To reject these rules because they can be co-opted and manipulated by dominant groups is to throw the baby of communicative reason out with the bath water of potentially distorted communication. For Habermas the ideal rules of discourse—participants striving to understand others’ perspectives, being open to all views, and being prepared to change their minds based on new evidence or better arguments—offer the best hope of keeping democratic forces alive. We can use these rules to determine whether a speech community (of, say, elected representatives) is reaching its decisions in a fair and morally defensible way.
Suggestions for implementing these rules have been made throughout this book. We have tried to emphasize discussion exercises (such as “Circle of Voices, “Hatful of Quotes”, and “Circular Response”) that ensure genuine equity of participation. The creation of ground rules for discussion outlined in Chapter Three represents a particular opportunity for focusing students’ (and teachers’) minds on how we should talk to each other. Exercises such as “Methodological Belief” and “Critical Debate” emphasize intentional perspective-taking in which students are asked to see the world through an alternative set of eyes. This can also be accomplished by requiring students to engage with texts and perspectives that are unfamiliar or uncongenial to them (as described in our response to Marcuse’s analysis of repressive tolerance in the previous chapter). Discussing the evidence and perspectives emerging from the results of the Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) also allows a speech community to change its processes. In particular it provides the teacher with a crucial opportunity to model a willingness to change her mind (about classroom assignments, teaching activities, evaluative criteria, deadlines, curriculum and so forth) based on new evidence or better arguments reported on the CIQ.
In addition, one of the conversational roles not mentioned in Chapter Seven that we have added to our own practices is that of textual focuser. This role involves requesting participants to specify precisely where in the text is expressed the particular viewpoint they claim it contains. Doing this prevents learners making claims for authors and books that are really only students’ own opinions. We have also emphasized to students that one of the foundations of academic discourse, and one of our most important responsibilities as teachers, is constantly to ask students, colleagues, and published “experts” for the evidence that supports their particular analyses. One thing you can do early in a discussion is to make it clear to participants that your role that day will be that of evidential inquirer and that you will perform that role by asking students to give evidential support for any and all of their general contentions. You can ask students to hold you to the same standard and request that you give evidence for your own general assertions. Indeed, early on in a course you might specify this as a prime indicator of good student participation (a situation that puts students who are used to earning approval by flattering the teacher in a productively unsettling double bind). The role of evidential assessor can also be added to the conversation roles discussed in Chapter Seven.
In situations where ground rules for discussion have been generated by students, the teacher can also announce that one of her responsibilities that day will be to check whether or not these rules are being followed. Alternatively, different students can be asked to assume this role in different class meetings. Early on in a course, or with learners to whom the idea of ground rules for discussions comes as a surprise (which is the case for the majority of groups we’ve worked with), we believe the teacher has a special responsibility to take on this role. Our general assumption is that teachers have greater experience of discussion process, and certainly the necessary positional authority, to be the best monitor of discussion ground rules in the first weeks of a class.
Teachers can also tell students that as a way of ensuring that rules of discourse are followed they (the teachers) will keep introducing unfamiliar or rarely articulated perspectives that they wish students to review. This reinforces being open to all perspectives that Habermas emphasizes as such an important rule of democratic discourse. Teachers themselves can model this openness by engaging with an unfamiliar text or idea in front of the students. This is most effective if students themselves are asked to bring in to class books, articles, online chat excerpts, Web site addresses, and so on that contain information that challenges the teacher’s arguments. When students do take this opportunity (and they will have to be very sure you can be trusted not to punish them for seeming to challenge your authority in class) the effects can be very dramatic. It strongly affirms the notion that effective participation in discussion entails the deliberate engagement with contrary perspectives.
Throughout this book we have enumerated the many reasons we teach through discussion. Undoubtedly, discussion opens students to alternative perspectives, increases their tolerance for ambiguity, makes them aware of the value of peer learning, and strengthens their emotional engagement with abstract subject matter. But out of all the reasons we commonly give for teaching through discussion it is the fostering of democratic habits we find the most compelling. We endorse Habermas’s contention that discussion groups are ideal laboratories in which students can learn democracy. We believe that discussion-based classrooms offer appropriate environments for the practice of democracy and for a relatively safe exposure to its contradictory and complex dynamics. Discussion as a way of teaching is, for us, the best pedagogy to prepare learners to participate actively, critically, transparently, and hopefully in realizing at least some of democracy’s untapped promise.