Arguing to
Connect By J.J. McGawn
Making these connections between opposing views stimulates our brains to be more creative and innovative, opening up solutions for problem solving.
When eighth-grade debate student, Teagan W. challenged her own bias and preconceived opinion about eating meat, she had to get creative to argue that eating meat was best. “I enjoyed debating, ‘whether or not people should eat meat.’ Most of the evidence I had going in was on the side that people should not eat meat. But we won arguing the opposing side with a creative argument I came up with about how our agriculture system couldn’t support everyone switching to a
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THE PEGASUS SCHOOL
vegetarian lifestyle because the soil would get worn out from growing that many crops. It wouldn’t be sustainable.” She was pleased with the result and the process getting there. Srini Pillay, Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School describes how our brains fire when we try to map out similarities and make connections between two opposing views. In Psychology Today, Pillay writes, “The more we map similarities between ideas that are very different, the more key
