Teaching Controversial Issues: The Case for Critical Thinking and Moral Commitment in the Classroom by Nel Noddings and Laurie Brooks (review)

When community literacy partners work to gether with academic organizers, both groups recognize the uncertainties of risk, the importance of trust, and the necessity of clear communication in accomplishing their goals. Likewise, professors who use service learning must help their students negotiate experiences that are often unpredictable or uncomfortable. In both scenarios, conversations that spark reflection, untangle problems, and guide action are vital. These objectives, and their reliance on open, guided conversation, are central to a new offering by mother-daughter team Nel Noddings and Laurie Brooks: Teaching Controversial Issues: The Case for Critical Thinking and Moral Commitment in the Classroom. In this book, Noddings, an emerita Professor of Education at Stanford and prominent contributor to feminist care theory, and Brooks, a member of the board of Provident Financial Services and advisory boards for North Carolina State and Rutgers universities, point out that teachers today must help students cultivate critical awareness while navigating a minefield of highly controversial issues such as authority and obedience, religion, race, gender, and socioeconomic class. While Noddings and Brooks intend to target K-12 teachers, administrators, and parents, many community literacy scholars and practitioners will appreciate the ideas the authors suggest that enable their readers to more thoughtfully create room for co-inquiry, conversation, and examining resources across different disciplines and perspectives.

Noddings and Brooks' core purpose with this text lies in their dedication to helping students "prepare for active life in a participatory democracy" (2). To achieve this, they insist that adults not shy away from joining forces with students to examine complex and challenging questions. The authors advocate for critical thinking bolstered and emboldened by moral commitment, which, in their words, is "to bring people together—to help them understand each other in the fullness of their humanity" (159). Noddings and Brooks approach this task from an interdisciplinary lens, one that enables them to reach across and through traditional divisions among disciplines, genres, and media. This text provides specific suggestions for educators to implement in their classrooms that help students practice "find[ing] a nucleus of agreement that will provide a starting point from which [they] can work together" to promote open communication and critical awareness (1).

In the first three chapters, the authors examine the philosophical basis for morals, the role of authority, and the importance of critical thinking. As they weave together a discussion of morals in the education system, government, and child development, they reiterate repeatedly the idea that "[critical] thinking … is not in itself a moral good" but that it "should be guided by moral motives" (32). They caution that teachers should "use pedagogical neutrality; that is, they should not tell students what is right or wrong but encourage them to think on each issue critically and to listen carefully to opposing views" (33). To illustrate the points they make, Noddings and Brooks direct teachers to examine key historical moments, figures, and documents, such as the U.S. Constitution, the Holocaust, and the more recent Black Lives Matter movement. In doing so, they encourage teachers and students to not ignore events from the past that have influenced current environments, values, and worldviews.

For service learning, literacy, and composition scholars, Noddings and Brooks' attention to "conversation gaps" will be of particular interest. For participants in an active democracy, communication breakdowns, and the "conversation gaps" created, constitute a significant obstacle, and the authors note that conversation in democratic society is crucial but challenging to maintain. They acknowledge that "[language] is probably the most important influence on our judgment about social class" and even though it is somewhat shameful to admit "we know that we do draw … conclusions" about a person's class by the way they speak (131). For composition professionals, this statement will bring to mind the persistent efforts made over 50 years—ratified by the NCTE 1974 statement Students' Right to Their Own Language—that take on...