The 258-page book, Divisive Discourse: The Extreme Rhetoric of Contemporary American Politics, by Joseph Zompetti was published January 2015. In the book, he discusses the extreme rhetoric that currently prevails in American political discourse and its subsequent effects on people to disengage and the political environment to become polarized. Zompetti shares insight into this toxic political environment, sheds light on the extreme rhetorical practices performed in US politics, and offers critical thinking skills for people to better participate despite this.
Below is an excerpt from the book and it can be purchased on Amazon here.
From the book…
Divisive Discourse challenges assumptions about political ideology. The book examines the techniques and contents of the divisive discourse that pervades contemporary American political conversation. It teaches us about extreme rhetoric, thus enabling readers to be more critical consumers of information.
The book provides a framework for identifying and interpreting extreme language. Readers learn about rhetorical fallacies and the strategies used by political pundits to manipulate and spin information.
In subsequent chapters the author examines and analyzes how divisive discourse is used in discussions of specific political issues including homosexual rights, gun control, and healthcare.
Divisive Discourse provides insight into how divisive discourse leads to societal fragmentation, and fosters apathy, confusion, animosity, and ignorance. By exposing the rhetoric of division and teaching readers how to confront it, the book reinvigorates the potential to participate in politics and serves as a guide for how to have civil discussions about controversial issues. Divisive Discourse is an ideal teaching tool for anyone interested in contemporary issues and courses in political science, media studies, or rhetoric.
About Joseph Zompetti
Dr. Zompetti is professor of communication at Illinois State University where he teaches courses in communication and social issues, classical rhetoric, and political communication. Dr. Zompetti’s research interests include the rhetoric of critical cultural studies and the rhetoric of civic engagement.
Resource Link: Divisive Discourse: The Extreme Rhetoric of Contemporary American Politics
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about John Dewey’s argument that humans are intrinsically associated beings; that we form and are formed by others; that, as he wrote in 1927, we must each learn to be human:
To learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community; one who understands and appreciates its beliefs, desires and methods, and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values.
Dewey believed that the marvels of the 20th century created a Great Society, but in order to transform that society into a Great Community we must all recognize ourselves as inherently interconnected and interdependent beings.
So I was struck when I ran across this passage from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s 1945 work Phenomenology of Perception:
I am a psychological and historical structure. Along with existence, I received a way of existing, or a style. All of my actions and thoughts are related to this structure, and even a philosopher’s thought is merely a way of making explicit his hold upon the world, which is all he is. And yet, I am free, not in spite of or beneath these motivations, but rather by their means. For that meaningful life, that particular signification of nature and history that I am, does not restrict my access to the world; it is rather my means of communication with it.
As Sarah Bakewell summarizes in her recent book At the Existentialist Café, Merleau-Ponty believed, “…we cannot thrive without others, or not for long, and we need this especially in early life. This makes solipsistic speculation about the reality of others ridiculous; we could never engage in such speculation if we hadn’t already been formed by them. As Descartes could have said (but didn’t), ‘I think, therefore other people exist.’”
The philosophies of Dewey and Merleau-Ponty stands in notable contrast to much of Western thought, which has more commonly taken “man”, as it were, as an isolated, whole being who by some miracle awoke in this place we call the world.
I can think, therefore I know I exist. I can move my hands, therefore I can prove they exist. But such theories take as a starting point that there is an ‘I’ whose perception and experience can be used for judgement and interpretation of the world. Dewey and Merleau-Ponty seem to argue the opposite – if there is an ‘I’ it is only because the external world does exist. If it were not for the existence of others, ‘I’ would never have come to be.
Perhaps what’s most interesting about these divergent theories are their parallels to child development. A child first becomes aware of themselves, then becomes aware of their influence on the world, and then becomes aware of others as conscious beings. This seems to be a natural course of development. Interestingly, our understanding of dependency seems to run in the opposite direction: a child is very depending on others, an adult proudly independent.
So perhaps it is natural that we first try to understand the world through a centering of the self. That we each imagine ourselves as whole and independent beings, that it is our interpretation of the world which forms reality. And then, gradually we develop as a species to a more interconnected understanding of existence: the world cannot be described by my perception alone, but is formed from the very fabric of our social interactions – from our collective, unique but intertwined, selves.
The 57-page guide, A Guide to Participatory Budgeting in Schools, was a project of the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) and published in 2016. The guide’s curriculum design was created by Valeria Mogilevich, with project support by Melissa Appleton and Maria Hadden of PBP. This thorough guide gives details for implementing a participatory budgeting process within schools. Participatory budgeting is a process where people decide where to spend a portion of a budget by engaging their community- or in this case- their school, and vote on projects to make final decisions. The guide is rich with process details, helpful hints, plan layouts, and useable worksheets. There are 18 lesson plans and 6 worksheets provided in this guide to get a PB process launched in schools over the course of a semester or school year.
Sections include:
– Planning
– Idea Collection
– Proposal Development
– Voting
– Implementation and Beyond
– Worksheets
Below is an excerpt from the guide, you can find it in full at the bottom of this page and directly from PBP’s site here.
From the guide…
So, you’re interested in doing Participatory Budgeting in your school. Great! This guide will help you plan it.
Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process in which community members decide how to spend a part of a public budget. In this case, the community members are students and the budget is the school budget. Students collect ideas about the school’s needs, develop project proposals, and vote on projects to fund. We know Participatory Budgeting is a mouthful, so we’ll call it PB from now on.
The process was first developed in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989. In Porto Alegre, as many as 50,000 people have participated each year to decide as much as 20% of the city budget. Since 1989, PB has spread to over 1,500 cities in Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. In the US and Canada, PB has been used in Toronto, Montreal, Guelph, Chicago, New York City, and Vallejo (California). Most of these PB processes are at the city level, for the municipal budget. PB has also been used, however, for counties, states, housing authorities, schools and school systems, universities, coalitions, and other public agencies.
We heard from a lot of people (through a PB process, actually) that they wanted help bringing PB to their schools. We wrote this for educators and principals looking to incorporate PB into their classroom during the school day.
Why PB?
Participatory Budgeting is great to bring into your classroom because:
It’s democracy in action.
It gives your students a positive civic engagement experience.
It serves as a bridge for your students to be engaged in politics and their community.
It strengthens the school community by building positive relations between students and the administration.
It shows students the benefits of getting involved.
By participating in a PB process, students will:
Increase their ability to work collaboratively.
Develop research, interviewing, and surveying skills.
Develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
Develop public presentation skills.
Increase their awareness of community needs and their role in addressing those needs.
Understand budgetary processes and develop basic budgeting skills Identify ways to participate in governance.
Increase concern about the welfare of others and develop a sense of social responsibility.
How it works
This curriculum is set up to take place:
In 45 minute-class periods
Once a week
Over the course of a semester
The idea is to focus on Participatory Budgeting one day of the week and leave the rest of your week to your regular content. We know that might not sound exactly like you. That’s OK! Everyone’s schedule and needs are different, so you can compress it by meeting more times a week. What you’re seeing here is the most efficient way to get through a Participatory Budgeting process. You can also spend more time on specific phases of the process and stretch it out into a whole year.
“Once you give young people the opportunity to help shape their community, they are incredibly willing and able to step up to that challenge. And students’ expertise is so needed as we work to improve education across the country. Youth-driven participatory budgeting in schools is an excellent tool to harness that expertise to create positive, constructive change.”
-Mia Salamone, Democracy in Action Coordinator, Mikva Challenge, Chicago, IL
“In our school we are low income and there’s negative stereotypes about our school and who we are, yet [our principal] is trusting us to make decisions about our education and never doubted parents and students like me would make the best decisions, and that is being shown by the project proposals we all have the ability to vote on.”
– Stephania Perez, Sophomore, Overfelt High School, San Jose, CA
To learn more about bringing participatory budgeting to schools, check out the guide in full below or on PBP’s site here.
About the Participatory Budgeting Project
The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is a non-profit organization that helps communities decide how to spend public money, primarily in the US and Canada. Their mission is to empower community members to make informed, democratic, and fair decisions about public spending and revenue.
Follow on Twitter @PBProject
Resource Link: Guide_to_Participatory_Budgeting_in_Schools
As we recently announced, NCDD is teaming up with the Kettering Foundation to conduct an Inventory Survey of the D&D and public engagement field, and you’re all encouraged to participate! In addition to just getting a better sense of the state of our field, our hope is to use the results to create a map of facilitators and organizations that can be searched by location, the approaches you use, and the issues you specialize in. The map would be designed to help folks outside of the field connect with your consultancy or organization.
But we can’t build this amazing resource for the field without practitioners taking this easy 15-minute survey, so please fill it out today!
Click here to complete the Inventory for Individuals
Click here to complete the Inventory for Organizations
If you or your organization does any kind of dialogue or deliberation work, we ask that you take the time to complete this survey as soon as possible. Remember, you do NOT have to be a member of NCDD to participate – we want perspectives from as many practitioners as possible.
We look forward to hearing all of your insights in the survey!