The capitulation-versus-rigor teaching debate can be reframed by attention ecology

Evidence

Like every speaking subject, teachers intuitively sense the necessity of capturing the attention of their audience (in accordance with the captatio benevolentiae of classical rhetoric). The people writing syllabuses bend over backwards to lure ‘the young’ towards ‘serious’ subjects by sprinkling them with supposedly attractive sparkles (introducing a philosophical subject through a reference to something in the news, playing a piece of rap to attune them to poetic metre). And the insults fly between those who accuse them of trivializing knowledge and those who berate them for teaching dry and drying subjects. Thinking of teaching situations in the context of the three dimensions of joint attention mentioned above will perhaps help us to supercede these pointless debates. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 262

Categorization

• XREF: Side of ‘sparkles as captatio benevolentiae’ parses the current teaching debate as a conflict over attention capture — connects to the ADD-material and digital-natives claims. — connects to: Children’s inattention often reflects unlistenable teaching, not distraction — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 260; Small remote gatherings can beat huge in-person lectures as attention ecosystems — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 289; Mindful inner attention lets teachers stop mistaking abstract models for lived reality — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 684