Multivocality and Conflict on the Listserv

Some topics that arise on the list generate conflict and passion in heated messages that can lead to personalizing rather than professionalizing discourse. One discussion thread that became a source of conflict, not just disagreement, had to do with censorship. Part of the debate centered on the extent to which participants thought they would fight to teach books that drew criticism from parents or other members of the community. Some students insisted that they would fight to teach such books even if it endangered their jobs. Others disagreed, arguing that these students were "crazy" and that in the "real world" they would want to keep their jobs. Before we intervened, and even after several attempts to calm and refocus the discussion, students were questioning each other’s fitness to teach, with accusations of wide-eyed idealism and a lack of common sense on one hand and accusations of a lack of integrity and "guts" on the other. While we believe no one suffered permanent or serious damage from these exchanges, and although the incident became fodder for more intertextual connections in class discussions and teaching logs, we did find it necessary and desirable to try to stop the personal attacks with online and in-person requests to participants to return to a more civil discourse, which they eventually did.

This discussion prompted at least one student to pursue the issue by reading an article on censorship for her outside reading report. The student, AD, wrote that she chose the article "based on the listserv discussion of banned books." Another student, LF, wrote in her field experience log about an incident she observed when a parent came to the middle school to protest her child’s being assigned to read The Witch of Blackbird Pond:

I was stunned about the student not being allowed to read the book. I thought that this sort of thing was something that would never happen. I am just amazed. I thought that Miss D__ handled it very well. She let the student read another book. I do believe that I would have done the same thing, but some people on the listserv believe differently.. This is a good example of an oblique reference to the conflict, used to create some emotional distance from the vitriolic discourse several students engaged in while this thread was active. This student apparently felt that a more specific reference to students who disagreed with her views would have invited a renewal of the hostilities.

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