Those of us who teach argument know all about teaching counter-argument. Imagine, we tell our students, someone who might disagree with you. Now, what arguments might they make in response to your argument? And how will you annihilate that response?

Jonathan Swift taught us how to do this, and we learned his lesson. Eat the babies! Yaaaassss! How would modern argument look if Swift had never taught us that suggesting infant cannibalism was a perfectly reasonable persuasive strategy?

Teaching counter-argument has that sort of military strategy feel to it. It feels like teaching counter-insurgency or something.

Here is an alternate assignment:

• Have each student go and find an actual person who disagrees with their position.
• The student should listen carefully to that person’s perspective.
• Then the student should write about and describe that person’s perspective. They should also return to the person they interviewed and ask for feedback on how well they have represented that perspective.

What would “argumentative writing” look like if we asked our students to empathize deeply first?