Inappropriate contributions to (online) discussion groups

[financeguy]

I guess the question is where do you draw the line? Things like physical threats are easy. That's a no. False statements? Can't you just correct that with the factual statement? What about grey areas?

A student states simply in a related class that the civil war "wasn't primarily about slavery."

Another student in a polisci class says that those who don't pay taxes or don't have to sign up with selective services shouldn't be able to vote."

A student states that gender is not a social construct.

A student states that genetic rather than social differences affect certain group outcomes.

A student refers to Bush or Obama as "war criminals."

A student refers to a physician who performs abortions as a murderer.

A student says Snowden is (or isn't) a hero. Another says he should be extradited and executed.

A student refers to religion as a "mental problem" and says "discussions about talking snakes, which appliances should be used on Saturday or the receipt of 72 virgins upon death have no place in an school of any kind. These beliefs should be signs of a mental disorder."


I can easily see any number of these getting the "delete" since all are offensive to someone. I'm just curious where you put the line for statements that aren't illegal or otherwise objectively not allowed. (For example, syllabus says posts using the "seven words you can't say on television" will be deleted.)

[downer]

There might well be grey area cases, and I can imagine possible cases where one person's posts would be taken to be demonstrating hate or phobia for a particular group of people. Personally, although I regularly cover issues of race, ethnicity, sex, gender and sexuality in my classes, and I've been teaching online for about 15 years, there has never been a problem. So I don't think these are real concerns driven by real problems, but are more like thought experiments.

My policy has always been that students can express whatever views they want so long as they don't direct them at other students in the class in personal ways. It has worked so far.

[Hegemony]

It depends on how relevant the controversy is to the topic of the class, for one. I imagine that people who regularly teach the Civil War, or slavery, or other challenging topics, have had practice in leading discussions so things don't get too far out of hand. The challenge is very similar online to the challenge of an in-person class on those topics, with the benefit that you can at least think before you respond, instead of being on the spot by having one difficult student raving on and 39 other students looking at you expectantly, and you have 20 seconds to come up with the right thing to say.

I teach a course in which religion figures heavily, and I put all kinds of notices up ahead of time about how we're not there to debate the truth of this or that religious view, or to adjudicate on questions of religion. We're only trying to figure out what happened and why it happened. Occasionally someone does start in with some heavy opinions.  "I was forced to attend Catholic school and I know that the Catholics believe insane things like..."  I say something like, "Remember, we're not here to discuss what religious views are true and which are not.  That's way above our pay grade here!  Theologians have argued about these matters for 2000 years so I don't think we're going to arrive at the truth in 15 weeks..."

Each of the statements profferred by Financeguy would warrant a different approach, but in general I think the key is not to argue True or False, but to start to unpack the claims.  "Some people clearly believe that, and some have other views.  Let's look at what they're using to make their argument..."  It should all be a model of how to approach dogmatic claims, ideally. Because this is far from the last time anyone in the class will hear dogmatic claims.

[Caracal]

A student states simply in a related class that the civil war "wasn't primarily about slavery."

Well, actually, that's pretty easy. We talk about this on the first day of class and repeatedly thereafter and one of the questions I ask is why there are so many claims that the Civil War wasn't about slavery when Confederate leaders kept saying that the Civil War was about racial slavery and their desire to expand it and base their new government around it. I always have students who make arguments that it was really about something else. That's fine. Over the rest of the class we read a lot about this and I've had a number of students tell me that this was something they had always believed growing up as an article of faith and after taking the class, they realized it doesn't make any sense. I've never felt any need to censor students about it.

A student states that gender is not a social construct.




A student refers to religion as a "mental problem" and says "discussions about talking snakes, which appliances should be used on Saturday or the receipt of 72 virgins upon death have no place in an school of any kind. These beliefs should be signs of a mental disorder."

These are sort of both in the same category. I don't really care about students expressing ideas along these lines. In the case of religious history, I think there is a useful discussion to be had about to approach religious claims and counterclaims. Ditto on gender to some extent. It would stop being useful if a student just kept repeatedly arguing those things and kept us from discussing how ideas of gender changed during some time period, or Mormon history.

I think it is also fair to say that some ideas and language can be too distracting all by itself. We can talk about ideas of gender as a social construct productively, but not if somebody says "that's just an idea promoted by lesbian Femi nazis." I would shut that kind of thing down in class or delete a post online. Like downer says, however, I really haven't had to deal with much of that kind of stuff. Certainly, students regularly say things that make we wince a bit, but it isn't usually a big problem.

[financeguy]

I'm a bit surprised to hear that the response to gender is the one you'd censor, especially since it's so easy to indicate a large number of people who are espousing that claim. I get that the person's intent is to use hyperbole to inflame. Would you have a similar response if instead of using the derogatory term for those with this belief, he stated, "I don't think anyone actually believes this at all but intends to use the position that gender is a social construct for various political purposes. Of course I can't get in someone else's mind, but it's such an absurd belief that the idea a functional adult would hold it is not plausible to me." I guess I'm curious is the "delete" comes from the content or presentation.

I actually think most of the examples I put would probably be no biggie to most people in an academic context, which is why I'd be a bit surprised if someone had to delete. The issue I would consider the most likely on that list would be the indication that innate differences in cognitive ability rather than social bias explain some differences in race or gender outcomes. That seems to be the point where no matter how much data there is, it's just not allowed to be addressed. Even then, I'd assume the person would just be ignored or called a racist, not deleted.

[Caracal]

I'm a bit surprised to hear that the response to gender is the one you'd censor, especially since it's so easy to indicate a large number of people who are espousing that claim. I get that the person's intent is to use hyperbole to inflame. Would you have a similar response if instead of using the derogatory term for those with this belief, he stated, "I don't think anyone actually believes this at all but intends to use the position that gender is a social construct for various political purposes. Of course I can't get in someone else's mind, but it's such an absurd belief that the idea a functional adult would hold it is not plausible to me." I guess I'm curious is the "delete" comes from the content or presentation.

Oh only the presentation, that was my point. I was just using that as an example where the language could derail a conversation. That's all I would care about. I'd do the same if someone said that religious people were all inbred cretans who married their sisters, and I might do something similar if a discussion board was becoming an off topic debate about some current issue.

I'd probably ask the other student if they think people in 1900, 1700 and 1200  had all of the same ideas about maleness and femaleness. That might lead to more useful discussion of what the term means and how it is often used in academic and other contexts.

[financeguy]

That makes sense. There's definitely a difference between someone who is presenting an unpopular viewpoint with the purpose of advancing that viewpoint and those who are simply using whatever is the largest spoon they can find to stir a pot for its own sake.

[fishbrains]

I find that other students tend to do a good job of shutting down negative posts or off-topic posts before I even see them, and peer pressure probably works as well or better than my admonishments.

I did have to delete a post concerning the movie Platoon because a student didn't realize that "gook" (used quite often in the film) was an offensive term. She thought it was just a general term for Vietnamese people (I live in an area that is 90+% caucasian). The post argued against the dehumanization of the Vietnamese in the film but kept using the term. Very surreal. Freshizzles. The student was intensely embarrassed and apologized quickly and effectively to the class, and we moved on.

I also deleted an entire first board once because it just went totally off the rails beyond where I could fix it. I sent a "Let's try this again and let's understand the rules" email and things went fine after that. 

   

[mamselle]

I just remembered that when I first saw this thread title I thought it was about how we on the Fora could police ourselves better....

M.

[Caracal]

I just remembered that when I first saw this thread title I thought it was about how we on the Fora could police ourselves better....

M.

There are some parallels. When there is basic goodwill and we are discussing things that are within our bailiwick, we mostly do okay. Sometimes someone's feathers get ruffled about something, but things are generally civil. Things go sideways when you have invective, personal attacks, and the introduction of political and ideological rhetoric.