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right to vulnerability?

ccassidy's picture

I thought Tuesday’s discussion about whether or not a person has a right to know what I am thinking in the classroom was very interesting.  Personally, I do not think that anyone has right to my thoughts.  There certainly is a requirement to speak for participation reasons but is a requirement the same as a right?  My first Serendip web event focused on silence in the classroom and a possible strategy to overcome that silence but one of the essays I read for this web event talked about the vulnerability to silence. 

           (Here is the reference made in my web event) 

           In the essay, "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children,” Lisa Deplit claims that speaking in class should make us “vulnerable enough to allow the world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of other to edge themselves into our consciousness” (297). 

Re-reading my web event with this new context of a right to hear thoughts made me wonder if anyone has a right to my vulnerability.  It may not be the intention but it can be a consequence.  Forced speech could become forced vulnerability.  This may or may not be the thought process of the people who maintain their right to silence but I thought it was an interesting connection.