Saturday, June 15

Two months to go, and we still haven’t decided in which city to live.  We have now applied at three international schools for Em and Cee: the European School in Bergen, the Violenschool in Hilversum, and the Letterland Primary school in Almere.  Unfortunately, Steve doesn’t want to spend his only year living in Europe in either Bergen, Hilversum, or Almere.  None of them are old cities with Medieval or pre-industrial urban plans.  Understandably, he wants our year in Europe to be different.  He wants to live in a different landscape, to fully escape an auto-dependent suburban lifestyle. 

As we try to make a decision about which city in which to live, I’m reminded of my own work with groups of students, trying to listen for the underlying warrants that support their arguments.  If Steve’s claim is, “I don’t want to live in X,” what warrants undergird this statement?  What warrants underlie the claims I am making too?  Let’s face it, negotiating with another human, where a single consensual decision is required, is difficult. 

I find it fitting that while my field has been incorporating methods of conflict resolution into the teaching of argumentation, there has been so much conflict of opinion and civil argumentation in my marriage.  I have suggested on many occasions that teachers can teach conflict resolution and finding win-win solutions to conflicts of interest through writing instruction.  If it is difficult to construct consensus through discourse even in a marriage, is it possible in wider society?