Curriculum

WRIT 150

WRITING ACROSS THE AISLE Instructor: Jim Clements, associate professor (teaching) of writing

Framing debate methods in terms such as “attack,” “defending your point” and “strategy” is evidence that the goal of many debates is not to connect or grow or learn, but to win against an “opponent,” says Clements. A more effective viewpoint, he tells students, is to consider a debate not as a battle but as a dance, with two people engaged in a delicate push and pull — not to beat each other, but to create something beautiful together.

“Your goal is not to tell the other person something you already know; it’s to use the back-and-forth as a site of learning,” he says.

Clements was inspired to create the course after observing that his students often say they feel that nobody listens to each other and that repercussions for “saying the wrong thing” are dire. Rather than sort opinions into categories such as “correct” or “incorrect,” his class aims to discover what belief systems are at the foundation of the positions each of us holds, and how we can listen to each other to understand those systems better, before making our moral choices.

Romano Orlando, a senior majoring in Italian and neuroscience at USC Dornsife and pursuing a concurrent master’s degree in translational biotechnology at Keck School of Medicine of USC, says that as a more conservative student, he found the class to be a refreshingly judgment-free zone.

“I never felt singled out, or that I would get a worse grade for leaning more conservative,” he says. “It was about the content of your writing, not the leaning of your writing.” —M.M.

“L’Écoute” (“Listen”), a beloved, abstract sculpture by French artist Henri de Miller, sits in front of the Gothic church of Saint-Eustache in central Paris. The 70-ton sandstone representation of a giant head gently cupped in a hand encourages passersby to stop and listen, too.