One of the things we should have learned in school is how to discuss a topic, even a controversial one. I know, we don't have classes in logic and rhetoric anymore (which I personally find sad, but that's just me), but there are still ample opportunities, in all social-science and language classes at any rate, to develop the skills and abilities to discuss something reasonably. When we look around us, particularly at our political landscape, it becomes painfully obvious that even if these were taught in school, a lot of folks were either sick that day or were simply not paying attention. But that's another topic of another day.
One of the things we should have learned, for example, is that context matters. The expectations that we bring to, say, a newspaper article should be different than those we bring to an op-ed. We should expect less bias and more facts in the former, and not be surprised by more bias and fewer facts in the latter. Each, in its own way, has something to say, but they say fundamentally different things. Or, we might expect an historical novel to be less accurate fact-wise, say, than a history of the events in question, but this may or may not be the case. History is often written by the victors; novels are often written by seekers of truth. Things may be reversed, but to determine that, we need to investigate further to discover what the real story is.
Another thing we should have learned is that evidence matters. (This is one of those places where I think German has a leg up on English. In English we have the word "evidence", but the Germans have both Belege (evidence that supports or refutes) and Beweise (evidence that proves or is categorical). In many of my discussions with English-speakers (native or not), this distinction is too often a source of misunderstanding.) Whatever we maintain; that is, whatever thesis or assertion we advance, should be substantiated in some way by corroborating evidence. This can take many forms, depending on the subject of the discussion. It might be facts (that is, things that actually happened or can be verified as being as they are presented), theories (in the case of more abstract discussions where not all the facts are in), arguments of others (which should be sourced and accessible to other discussion participants), perhaps experience (if verifiable and relevant), or perhaps scientific studies (quantitative as well as qualitative) or similar research, and much more. In other words, we like to get the feeling that our discussion partner just didn't simply make up his or her arguments as the discussion was going along.
And finally, we should have learned that coherency and consistency matter. By coherency, I mean the fact that what is being presented makes sense in some way. A science-fiction novel may be very coherent, but since it lacks verifiability, we tend to push it into the fiction category. This may disqualify it is evidence in a discussion of propulsion technology, but it may be valuable as an outside-the-box example for a discussion of future propulsion technology. Consistency means that that the parts fit together well. There are no big leaps between parts of the argument, that there are no huge logical gaps (like the cartoon of the two scientists discussing a formula on the blackboard where the one says to the other, "... and here a miracle happens ..."), that the discussion is what we might also called focused.
These may appear obvious to many of you, but if you stop take a look around at what is being said and discussed everyday, you quickly become aware of how little of any of these three factors can be found. Maybe since we stopped teaching them, we've forgotten how to use them or why they are important. At least that's the feeling that I get ... unfortunately, too often.
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