(Teaching) Levels of Conflict

It was a dark and stormy night when my (now ex-) boyfriend and I had a level 5 conflict.

{A Level Five Conflict (according to David Kaufer's article “A Plan for Teaching the Development of Original Policy Arguments”) is when the participants of an argument hold differing global values (by global, he means values that people hold consistently across different topics).}

It started out as a normal phone call.

 “How was your day?”

“I miss you!”

And so on... But then I made a reference to the Bible. That was the beginning of the end. He scoffed at my remark, and at first, I thought that he was joking – he loved to tease me. Then I found out that he was serious. Of course I knew that he was a Christian and that we shared many values, but this was the night when I found out that he didn't believe that the Bible was truly the inspired Word of God. We argued back and forth for about 45 minutes.

“It's true!”

“Is not!”

“Is so!”

Finally, I realized that I wasn't going to change his mind. (And obviously, he wasn't going to change mine.) The problem was that we held different global values, and neither of us could be swayed. We'd both been brought up and were set in our ways. Thus, the Level 5 Conflict became the end of a (well, let's face it) bad relationship.

Conflict and arguments are seen everywhere in our society. Even scholarly articles can be an argument of sorts.

Mark Moran's article “TheTop Ten Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia” is an argument that is exactly what it sounds like: a list of reason why Wikipedia is not to be trusted. While his article is geared toward students, it can apply to any Wikipedia users.

Moran's article can be seen as a simulation – according to Rebecca Jones' article on “Finding the Good Argument” – because the writer engages in a single argument and expresses his claims about that argument. Moran doesn't do too in depth about many of his claims and he doesn't provide a counter argument at all. Moran's claims weigh heavily on his scale of what is appropriate for school papers.

“Wikipedia can actually be a constructive tool in the classroom if understood and used correctly.”

This statement is made by Moran near the end of his article. This statement could be seen as a violation of The Usage Rule, as defined by Jones' article, because it completely subverts his arguments. He doesn't counter this statement with a “But...” and his entire article left no room for exceptions. Throughout the article, Moran is very adamant about not using Wikipedia and not trusting it and how it isn't scholarly. Even the title includes the word “Cannot” instead of “Shouldn't” which would have allowed for exceptions. For him to include this sentence kind of throws the reader for a loop, for it doesn't seem to belong and it can therefore be construed a misleading.

“Reliablility”

“Rely”

“Standards”

“Credibility”

“Trust”

These value terms (possibly considered ideographs) are some of the terms that are used throughout Moran's article. These terms, however, are more often than not paired with “Cannot” and “Don't.” Because he uses terms that have such strong associations in the minds of most readers, he can more easily manipulate the readers into agreeing with him.