She visited me recently in a dream, Miss Lane, my ninth-grade English teacher, describing the difference between “immature” readers and the “mature” kind.  As she crisply explained, immature readers are mostly just interested in the plot of the piece—a straightforward sequence of action and a leading character they can identify with as the “hero” of the story. Mature readers, on the other hand, pay attention to setting and the social and economic status of the characters, their backstories and inner lives. Mature readers also notice the narrator’s voice and point of view, and how even the most objective narrator comments on the characters in subtle ways and shapes the reader’s perceptions. They recognize that the main character—the protagonist—may not be a “hero” in the sense of someone we are meant to admire and emulate, but rather a flawed or even villainous character meant to teach us something valuable about the world and the human condition.

Delving more deeply, mature readers are open to considering new ideas and perspectives drawn from the experiences of characters very different from themselves, while immature readers may find that effect unpleasant or even threatening. 

Many decades have passed since I sat in that class, and in Mrs. Shea’s ninth-grade speech class, where we did debate prep and learned about the kinds of rhetorical fallacies that degraded our arguments and resulted in points deducted during competitions. These errors included making unsupported statements, which often rely on appeals to emotion where facts are unavailable; cherry-picking or relying too much on anecdotal evidence; trying to wear down the opposing team by repeating an unsupported assertion until they concede and move on; faulty cause and effect arguments;  ad hominem attacks that try to discredit the person rather than the idea (usually because the idea is hard to refute); citing dubious, unqualified or even fabricated sources; and arguing from a false premise, in which the debate question is reframed dishonestly, or misleadingly reduced to only two mutually exclusive options.   

One that still activates my BS detector is known as “begging the question,” a kind of circular argument in which someone simply restates the premise as evidence of its validity; a very simple example might be when someone says “We should do ‘action A’ because it’s the right thing to do.” Given the benefit of the doubt, “action A” might in fact be the right thing to do, but in rhetoric it doesn’t count as proof. At best, it could be an expression of sincere feelings, but at worst, it’s the flippant equivalent of “because I say so.” It’s too bad that the meaning of “begs the question” has gotten muddled in recent years, as scriptwriters and media folks have used it as a fancy way of saying “raises the question” or “prompts me to ask,” because the original meaning is shorthand for a common and lazy type of false argument. 

At a moment when openness and mental rigor are needed more than ever, we find our country retreating to a world where book banning takes care of that awkward discomfort with unfamiliar ideas and experiences. We just stop speaking with people who disagree with us. Inconvenient science is defunded and suppressed. Policy decisions are announced with gratuitous snark accompanied by dubious theories, political grievances and, sometimes, fabricated research, while political strategists tell us that facts can’t bridge this divide. As quaint as it may seem, what I learned in those two ninth grade classes comes back to me now as something to aspire to in the pursuit of honest communication.  Not just “civility,” but genuine, grown-up, self-regulating honesty.