Non-Bias Views for the Greater Good

For two and a half hours each Wednesday evening, at the Baruch College in Manhattan, two men, former New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo and Douglas A. Muzzio, a veteran professor have merged the scholarly imperatives of the classroom and the gritty realities of the politics to teach a course entitled “The 2008 Presidential Election: Where We Are as a Nation, Where We Want to Be, How We Get There.”

While I understand that this is a class all about politics, and that this is different then discussing democracy and politics in the music or general ed classroom, when I came across an article in the New York Times today I was more intrigued by the way the class is taught and the approach these two men took when discussing this years big election.

When discussing Governor Palin’s acceptance for GOP Vice President cadency, the majority of the 23 member class scoffed and argued of her inexperience and that she was only a governor of a state with a mere 7,000 citizens. Rather than agree and take his own shots, the former Democratic Governor, merely waved a finger and discussed how a state’s size is not the only thing to consider, he said. A governor is a governor. “The fact that what you do affects more people,” he said, “doesn’t change the nature of what you do”

The fact that Cuomo could pull himself away from his own democratic ideas and beliefs and challenge his students to think critically and open mindedly, is an idea we have been discussing a lot in class and I think it is great that I can actually find examples of this in the real world.

We as educators must know when to set our beliefs aside, when it is important to share our ideas, and when to just listen to our students. It is then that democracy has the ability to flourish in our classroom, and create more well rounded students and educators.