As seen in the Spring 2025 edition of the Oregon English Journal by the Oregon Council of Teachers of English.

Deborah Eisenberg famously claimed “Art is inherently subversive.” From this perspective, one might come to believe that there is controversy or at least potential controversy in anything we ask students to read. While there are certainly texts that are more controversial than others, attempting to avoid controversy has the undesirable consequence of restricting creative thinking.

When my daughter was eight years old, she was reading a simple and “non- controversial” historical presentation of World War II. She put her book down and came to me with this question, “If we thought the Japanese were bad guys, and they thought we were bad guys, then are there really any bad guys?”

I have no idea where she came up with that question, but what was I to do? If I responded that the Japanese were in fact the enemy and thus the “bad guys” then I risked disempowering her from thinking freely and respecting her own thoughts. I would have diminished her input to the discussion she was having with the text. If I acknowledged and gave credence to her notion then I would have given legitimacy to a potentially controversial perspective. What might I have been accused of teaching?

Imagination or knowledge

This interaction with my daughter exemplifies a couple of different approaches toward teaching and the characterization of the relationship between the teacher and the student. On the one hand we could see students as empty vessels that we fill with knowledge. We can impart pre-determined knowledge using all of the effective teaching strategies we have been taught. With this approach, it would be relatively easy to monitor and control teachers and the curriculum they teach.

The down side, however, is the disempowerment of the students. We would be teaching them that their ideas are not important or at least not as important as the pre-determined knowledge. We would be creating a knowledgeable workforce, but we would also be discouraging thoughtful interaction.

There is, fortunately, another approach that is suggested by Albert Einstein when he said, "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." If we want to encourage the development of intelligence, we must urge our students to think and to think for themselves. We have been teaching students for decades that they should be active readers of their stories. They should interact with the characters and make predictions of how they would act or what could happen next. We may even teach students to devise alternative conclusions to the stories they read. For example, a common writing exercise is to read a passage and then tell the same story from a different character’s perspective.

As multiple interpretations become apparent, controversy will arise creating points of interaction between different students, and, significantly, within the individual reader. The controversies may be minor such as a disagreement about how a particular character should proceed to solve their problem. (Should Templeton accompany Charlotte to the fair?) Or the controversies could be deeper, such as whether we should consider the Japanese as “bad guys.”

Whenever we give these kinds of creative assignments, we are exposing ourselves to controversy. Nevertheless, we must continue to make these assignments if we want our students to be creative thinkers. Without creative thinking, would we have gone to the moon, invented vaccines, met Yoda, written on computers, or wrestled with AI issues? Creativity can be messy, but is it not essential?.

Opening the door to readers’ reasoned interactions with text, will strengthen their powers of thinking while also creating grounds for thoughtful discussion about issues of dispute. We must encourage thinking. It is our job, and it is essential for learning.

What next?

Controversy is inevitable. The single most unique characteristic of humanity is the ability to perceive alternative perspectives. Our minds are capable of traveling to times and places that do not and never will exist, let alone all the places that do exist. No matter what literature we choose, controversy will arise, and it should arise.

The human job of those younger than us is to learn, and learning means wondering and asking questions. From their questions, we too learn. We learn about their thinking and their curiosities. We are challenged to consider alternatives if not just to explain them away. If we do not encourage these questions, they will arise anyway, for that is the nature of humanity.

By encouraging the questions, and dare I say, by encouraging controversies, we can better prepare ourselves to manage them. We need opportunities to practice managing the interactions that will inevitably occur and direct students to also ask questions of themselves. We must teach them to have strong minds that carefully consider options with evidence rather than just accept the ones that have least resistance or that are most popular.

Controversy can be difficult and uncomfortable, but it is part of the human experience. Bob Marley said, “You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” Teach our students to be strong.