Overview

Refutation is probably the most under-appreciated, under-taught, and the most essential and irreducible of all of the components of academic argument.  To Argument-Centered Education, refutation should be broadly conceived, but very rarely omitted from argument-centered instruction, or held off till later.

Defined capaciously, refutation is anything a writer/speaker does when they differentiate their own view from that of another view.  In effect, when someone is agreeing with a difference, or partially agreeing, or partially critiquing, or anything else they do other than 100% complete agreement, we understand this as “refutation.”  Writers or speakers are asking that their view substitute for the other person’s view — even if their view is the other person’s view plus or minus some small correction, etc. 

Overview

Thanks largely to the 2016 presidential election, the immigration debate in the U.S. has exploded.  What has always been a controversial and multi-faceted issue — literally since the founding of the nation — has become a politically contentious, widely-protested, and complex debate, being played out everywhere from the halls of power in D.C. to the nation’s airports to small town and mid-size city public squares to social media platforms of all kinds.

Argument-Centered Education sees in the public controversy over immigration an excellent opportunity to harness its energy, urgency, and immediacy for the benefit of social science or even informational text oriented English language arts instruction.  By bringing crucial debates such as this one into our classrooms, we teach students the critical thinking and critical literacy skills that they need — that our society needs — to pursue truth, to distinguish fact from propaganda and spin, to make rational and evidence-based evaluations and judgments.  Students become better citizens this way, and they are more likely to be civically engaged.  And bringing debates into the classroom lets us have our cake while we eat it too: these are the same college-directed reasoning and evidence-evaluation habits of thinking that standardized testing — PARCC, Smarter Balanced, the New SAT, the PSAT, the latest iterations of the ACT — are increasingly designed around.  Well-designed and effectively implemented argumentation curriculum on a complex issue like immigration is the key to both civic engagement and college readiness.

A debate has broken out over the past few years in (and beyond) education circles over whether algebra should be a high school graduation requirement.  The controversy in its current iteration was fueled when the Common Core elevated algebra to a privileged position in secondary math education.  Then Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made the case for the standards’ commitment to algebra in a 2011 speech to the National Council of the Teachers of Mathematics.

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear to the country — not just to you guys as teachers — that algebra is a key, maybe the key, to success in college. Students who have completed Algebra II in high school are twice as likely to earn a degree as those who didn’t. Algebra teaches students reasoning and logic leading to academic success not just in math but across the curriculum.

Overview of the Issue

One of Abraham Lincoln’s great achievements as President was to found in 1861 land grant colleges, which evolved into the nation’s four-year public colleges and universities. A college education at a public university has been a ticket into the middle class and upward mobility and opportunity for millions of people. For about 100 years – and most especially after World War II and the passage of the GI Bill – the cost of going to a public college or university was minimal or free.  However, over the past 30 years, tuition at these institutions of higher learning has been climbing steadily.  Today, the average tuition at four-year public college is nearly $20,000 per year.  With room and board, the cost has climbed to more than $40,000 annually. 

Only with his last glance did he see how the door of the his room had been torn open, how the mother ran out in front of the screaming sister (mother was in her underwear because the sister had undressed her to help her breathe more easily when she fainted), and how the mother then ran to the father; on her way to him, her fastened skirts slid one after another to the floor and as she tripped over the skirts, she assaulted the father and threw her arms around him, uniting wholly with him – Gregor’s sight then failed him – as she put her hands on the back of the father’s head and bade him spare Gregor’s life (48-49).

— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (1915)