An article on Blaze Media by Kathleen O'Toole says in part that the antidote for activist rage is not to keep someone from speaking, but it is instead education.
O'Toole is the associate vice president for K-12 education at Hillsdale College. She says her article discusses the need for people to be able to talk about their disagreements.
"It argues that we've reached the point where it's often not possible in America for two people who disagree with each other politically to get along," says O'Toole.
She said that at Hillsdale College, her colleagues think that — just like the American founders —the ability to debate, disagree, and deliberate with people on the other side of the political spectrum is necessary. She described it to AFN as "an important criteria for our functioning as a country."
"In the article, I point to classical education as a solution to this problem, and I described my own teaching at Hillsdale Academy, a classical school here at Hillsdale College," states O'Toole.
She mentioned Charlie Kirk, who she thinks is an important example for us.
"Kirk was willing to talk to anybody. He was especially eager to talk to people who disagreed with him,” says O’Toole.
She points out some of his character traits that one would see if the time is taken to review his many debates and conversations.
“You can see that he was always charitable, that he was always curious, and that he was always eager to get to the point of disagreement and have the disagreement in a friendly and a civil way,” states O'Toole. “And we can see what happened to him as a result of that."
O'Toole explained that disagreeing with somebody does not necessarily mean condemning them or saying that they have a bad character. It just means there's a point of disagreement.
"In classical education, disagreement is an opportunity for further learning — an opportunity to dig deeper and investigate a little bit more closely, and that's the kind of thing that I think our schools should be teaching students,” says O’Toole. “That's the kind of thing we do teach students in Hillsdale-affiliated schools, and it's the best preparation for citizenship in our country."
