This is one of those posts that I’m starting with no idea if I’ll hit "Save" when I get to the end of it.

The edu-blogosphere is getting nasty this week, and honestly, it pretty powerfully drains my energy to write. Stephen Downes, someone who I usually read all the time, has decided that some of the Technology & Learning bloggers are in it for less than perfect reasons. Honestly, it smacks of the old "A-lister" argument that has been around the internet communities for as long as I can remember. There’s a snarkiness there that I don’t enjoy. The argument behind what Stephen seems to be saying is "Will Richardson and David Warlick have chosen to make a living outside the classroom, so now we have to question any time they do anything." It’s a tough thing… Will and David (and others that Stephen names) have now gotten big enough to get this kind of treatment, I suppose.

Now, I admit, I’m biased. I consider David and Will to be good friends. Do I hope K12Online brings those guys more consulting and speaking gigs? Yep. I do. (And again, full disclosure, assuming Marcie and I can finish it in time, we’re presenting there too.) Moreover, I know how hard they both work, and I know how many people they’ve influenced. David’s keynote at SLA’s Curriculum Conference back in January helped the folks here in Philadelphia really understand what we saw as the possibilities for SLA. Will’s work with us at our faculty workshop in July crystalized what a lot of us were thinking. What I respect about both Will and David is that both of them are humble. Both of them don’t claim to have invented the answers, but they see themselves as spreading the word of practioners everywhere. I am always wary of consultants and speakers who come saying they have all the answers. but neither of them do. They consistantly write and talk about what they see. I’ve always felt that both of them embody the best of the notion of the collaborative spirit that is the internet. But hey, I’m just a B-list blogger… what do I know.

But even the carping that’s going on there is nothing compared to the nastiness around discussions of constructivism these days. I found examples of it on HUNBlog, Learning is Messy, Borderland, and From the Trenches of Public Education. I don’t know if the commentors I see there are doing google searches for Constructivism or not, but there’s not a ton of respect in the commentary I see. It caused Doug over at Borderland to do some soul-searching, and Brian over at Learning is Messy wrote about how nasty and uncivil the conversation became.

I’ve been on the internet since around 1991 (rec.sport.disc gave me my reason to first log on), so I’m no stranger to either of these two phenomenon — the A-lister discussion or the flame-war. And I’m a little surprised by my own reaction to these two arguments. On some level, I suppose it means that the edu-blog world has arrived. We’ve gotten big enough to have the same divisive and petty arguments as every other community on the internet. But what I think makes me so angry and frustrated is that the subject matter is too important for pettiness and strawmen. I was asking myself what I would think if the commentors who showed up there showed up on my site with that kind of anger about what we’re doing at SLA. I learned from my days on USENET that those folks who set up arguments like that are looking for the anger and the responses and will keep coming back again and again, so I’m hoping I wouldn’t take the bait. But it makes me sad to see it.

So here I am at what should be the end of this post… and I’m still searching for something to make this worthy of posting, other than it’s long… and here’s the thing… I’ve longed believed there are two reasons to argue — you can argue to win or you can argue to learn. They look different, feel different, sound different and leave very different impressions on both the debaters and those watching the debate. Some of the most fun, heated, passionate arguments I’ve ever had have been ones where all involved left with their ideas changed and made more rich because we were all arguing to learn — willing to be changed. Arguing to win means not allowing your ideas to be changed… it means listening to your opponents arguments only for what you can attack, rather than what you can learn. Does it have its place? Of course… I’d argue that our legal system is built on the idea.

But not our educational system. In fact, and here’s the funny thing, I’d argue that because arguing to win at the exclusion of learning, it is reductive. It tears down, rather than building up. And therefore, as a rhetorical form itself, it flies in the face of constructivism, which might be the biggest piece of cognitive dissonance yet. So should it be a surprise that those who would attack constructivism would use a rhetorical tool that, in and of itself, is anti-constructivist.

That’s interesting enough to post, I think.