The (not so) diabolical teacher

At a later point in time, I was told that one of my favorite teachers in elementary school once by parents in a meeting was asked about his attitude towards nuclear power - the subject was highly controversial in those years - and to this question he replied: "The pupils will never get to know my opinion. Unless they have an opinion themselves - then they can rest assured that my opinion is the absolute opposite."
At a time when one of the other major buzzwords was "indoctrination", and where several teachers could have a hard time leaving their personal attitudes in the teachers' room, it was one of his good personal traits that he was so willing to to play the devil's advocate - or the devil's science teacher, if you want to.
I think it would benefit all of us if we were more able and willing to engage in conversations challenged by opinions that differed from the ones we actually have - rather than being confirmed in our own opinions to the extent that they eventually become the only acceptable truth.
(Translated from Den (knapt så) djævelske lærer, published January 17, 2017)

An appeal to normal, moderate people

As the reader might know, I have a habit to collect quotes from people expressing wise things. This post is a part of this tradition - I found it in a tweet from media and tech analyst Benedict Evans who observed that as soon as a topic is outside the boundaries of what normal, moderate people will discuss, the people who have the extreme points of view towards the topic will fill the void where the above mentioned normal moderate people should have been heard.
So this should be seen as an appeal to all of us, who consider ourselves normal, moderate people - to keep letting our voices be heard, even though the extreme points of view do their best to monopolize the bandwidth.
(Translated from Et opråb til normale, moderate mennesker, originally published December 17th, 2015)

Debate or freak show?

In October 2013, I read a piece by Kasper Fogh Hansen, Director of Communications in FOOD, Food Organisation Of Denmark - an interesting feature article in the Danish newspaper Politiken under the heading that "The debate universe of the media has become a freak show", about how it appears to have become increasingly interesting for the media to promote extreme positions, shrill tone and confrontation rather than constructive debate. There are many interesting observations in the feature article - for example (in my translation):

A lot of good stuff is published. But can't you decrease the level of madness? What's the use of having people shouting 'fascists' and 'Leninists' at chefs, artists or simply people with moderately different opinions? And nobody becomes any wiser us 'having the debate'. And it is not important that everyone gets their say - there are plenty of words and websites in the world.

And it does not end here. We have seen it for a long time; it started when it became possible to comment anything on newspapers' websites, where it became obviously that people simply communicate with fewer filters in use when communicating with "the bravery of being out of range" - when one does not see the counterpart eye to eye. And journalists are not substantially better - two debating parties can hardly disagree, before it immediately hits the headlines as the fact that one "rages" against the other. Far too few people can be heard in their attempts to make us talk politely to each other, because the debate is too filled with people screaming at the top of their voice.
(Translated from Debat eller freakshow, originally published October 8, 2013)