Reading Response to "Discussion as a Way of Teaching"

I have many different thoughts after reading chapters 1 and 2 from Discussion as a Way of Teaching by Stephen Brookfield. Throughout the reading I kept asking myself how a teacher could direct a conversation in such a classroom as presented in the text. This may not seem like the right question to ask because the text itself states on page 19 that “‘guided discussion’ – if that phrase is taken to mean that students will be guided during the discussion to learn certain content – is an oxymoron.” This statement may be true, if the text’s definition of “discussion” is maintained. However, if the teacher is trying to teach something very specific, I can understand how frustrating such an idea may seem. Later, I went back and reread the text to see if I could find an answer to why this statement feels wrong to me, and I found a piece which I believe may solve it. The issue is not with the method that the text describes, but rather due to a jab at what I would consider another teaching tool, which is what “guided discussion” is.

                On page 19, right above the very sentence that I questioned, the text claims that discussion is not suited to teaching facts and truths that have already been defined. The text apparently disagrees with the idea of “guided discussion” because it is guided only toward a specific idea. As an example of this, the Earth orbits the Sun, and no amount of discussion is going to change this. However, I believe there are situations where a student may have a different way of looking at a fact, or a fact may bring up another related idea. These ideas, no matter how trivial in appearance, I think can help other people to look at the universe in multiple ways. Just because something is treated as fact does not mean it is absolute and thus not up for discussion. A fact is something that has not been proved wrong, and if we are not giving students the opportunity to understand how it has not been proved wrong, then we are doing them a disservice. I believe that such opportunities can be given by discussion, even though it may be guided toward teaching a specific fact.