Implications: In the classroom

Kastley addresses the 'real-life' implications of seeing argument as inquiry towards the end of his article. To Kastley, when students are taught to conceive of arguments in a formulaic manner, when they see what they're doing as a charade, cynical lessons are taught. Lessons promoting subterfuge, deceit, false-pretenses, and agonism all work to pollute the democratic ideals that argumentation should promote. More insidiously Kastley warns, that when a structural conception of argument is taught and lauded, "reason and argument become the cover for the operation of powerful lobbying groups indifferent to the consequences of their actions for others" (239). A blind adherence to a Toulmin-based concept of argumentation can lead to the reentrenchment of unequitable power balances, fear of difference, and inability to respond to a changing world.
Teaching argument as inquiry, then, can unsettle some of those issues by allowing students to be critical of argumentation and its purposes in our society. Instead of reifying these power structures through their argumentation practices, students can begin to question the purpose of argument. They can question what the goals of argument are. They can question how and why argument functions they way it does and to what ends. Kastley sees the need for "a rich and complex sense of the opportunities and limits of argument" (239), and the more we can push these, the more likely argument will be allowed to function democratically as Kastley envisions. In this view, the ideal implications are to unshackle our students' minds, give them the tools they need to push the boundaries of their particular assumptions, and allow them to work productively with people who are different.
Not long ago I would have said "but we'd be doing our students a disservice, they need to know how to argue to make through college." While it's true that academic discourse is extremely conservative and resistant to change (see Haleysrundown's previous post), I have started to see how an inquiry-based approach would not only benefit students in the pursuit of their degrees, but also instill in them skills that do not easily come from an argumentative mindset. Specifically, having a curious mind is something that this model can offer to students in a productive way. As much as any formulistic set of argumentation skills is important, being able to develop questions, find ways to better understand those questions, and let those questions lead to further questions in a productive way is something that no college student should be able to pass on without. The implications, then, for challenging the paradigmatic model for academic discourse, are great. There might be some disagreement (nay, hostility) in emphasizing these types of skills from our students, from other academic units, from society at large, but Humanistic inquiry may be what balances this troubled world.