"What the heck is rhetorical listening?"
That’s what I asked myself when I got an email from a colleague and friend looking for examples of rhetorical listening in high schools. I felt pretty dumb, eyebrows raised, as I typed rhetorical listening into the Google search bar. What I found was that my co-teacher and I use rhetorical listening and facilitate rhetorical listening in our classes all the time.
Rhetorical listening is defined by Krista Ratcliffe as a “stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in relation to any person, text, or culture” (qtd in Delicate Ethics Blog). It’s like the quote from To Kill a Mockingbird.
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
But it’s more than just considering things from someone else’s perspective. It’s also more than just actively listening to their perspective.
One activity we sometimes use in our class is a modified version of a number line. We ask our learners thought-provoking questions, have them rank themselves from one to ten, then have them line up. Once they've lined up, we ask them to defend their position. As people openly share their opinions on specific parts of the question, adding personal experience and nuance to everyone else’s understanding of the topic, other learners are allowed (and encouraged) to rethink their position on the number line. As different people share, learners move.
It feels a little dramatic to say it, but sometimes when this is happening, I get a little teary eyed. The ability to listen, truly listen to someone else, and take their experience and knowledge into account when developing our own opinions... It’s a beautiful thing. Beyond that, it’s even more valuable to be able to take in new information and make a choice about whether we need to change our own opinions or not. We can’t know everything, and that’s okay. What we can do is constantly seek to be better informed and more thoughtful individuals.
At the end of this activity, we will sometimes ask learners to journal using the prompt: I used to think_______. Now, I think ________. This gives them the opportunity to reflect on whether they changed their opinions or not and why. We encourage them to think critically, remind them that they do not need to change their perspectives or positions, but also tell them that it is okay if they do change their minds. That’s what being human is all about. We are only knowledgeable about our experiences and what we have learned. As we are able to take in new information, we can then use that information to change our perspectives or even to add evidence and justification for our own.
I think the next time we do this activity, I would like to add a layer to the reflection that asks learners to think about what other information they need and what questions they still have. I think this will help them to develop the ability to ask critical questions and go out and look for the answers they need.
Do you use rhetorical listening in your classes? Any cool activities I can steal for my own learners? Let me know in the comments.
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