Teaching Open-Mindedness for Challenging Classrooms

Abstract

Whether open-mindedness (OM) counts as an admirable epistemic aim of education has been a surprisingly contentious matter. Skeptics point out that OM is only contingently truth-conducive and that open-minded students may be maladaptive to the hostile epistemic environment outside school. Here, Seunghyun Lee contends that, while these critiques are not without merit, they overlook the possibility of epistemic inhospitality within classrooms, and so mischaracterize the significance of open-mindedness in education. Viewing malicious forms of credibility influence — namely from echo chambers and epistemic preemption — as a serious deterrent against our educational efforts, Lee argues that these epistemic practices point to the necessity of open-mindedness in education and, simultaneously, to its difficulty. He concludes by analyzing and offering potential strategies for classroom-based instruction.