It may have appeared that people were just playing with button-sized toys and making origami in Northbrook’s Village Hall on Sunday, but the exercise was intended to give participants a better understanding of how to talk to people who disagree with them.
“This has been eye-opening to me,” said Bev Hides-Moriello. “Wouldn’t it be nice if people in the federal government and the state government did something like this? They might get something done.”
Most attendees were connected in some way or other to Northbrook’s Youth Commission, a student/adult village panel that had hired the Institute for Civility in Government.
The Houston-based company was helping the group take a step toward what they had been charged with by Northbrook Village President Sandy Frum more than a year ago: Make the commission more relevant or close up shop. Chairwoman Carla Slawson-Martens said the teenage members wanted the commission to help them air their grievances with local policy-makers. The group spent $2,000 for a seminar on how to communicate civilly and effectively with those who disagree with them. Adults, including some local leaders, came along to learn, too.
No one mentioned national politics and party affiliation rarely came up, as Institute principals Cassandra Dahnke and Tomas Spath asked people to concentrate on what they had in common rather than their differences.
They staged three exercises that involved pairs of people placing button-sized tiles on alternate sides of a screen, with one “communicator” trying to tell the other, “the listener,” how to arrange them without looking. The most interesting of the three exercises, some said, was the third, in which the participants were surprised to find three of their tiles didn’t match those of their partners.
“We handled it by putting the ones that didn’t match to the side, and focusing on what we had in common,” said Frum, a participant partnered with David Whitlock of the Youth Commission.
“We actually used all of our tiles,” said Whitlock’s daughter Hannah, a student member of the commission. She said she and fellow teen commissioner Lucia Bosacoma had lined up all the odd ones up along the bottom of their pyramid-shaped pattern.
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Dahnke said that when the same exercise was used with some Texas state legislators, one of them realized “he had built a wall between him and his ‘listener’ with all of the differences.
“He said, ‘This is what I do all the time’ when encountering opposing political philosophies. It shook him to his bones.”
Earlier, during an exercise in which one participant talked and the other listened without contributing, they were at times unable to get the message across. The concept of “above of the red button,” for instance, could be both on the far side of that button and stacked atop it.
“You can both be right and totally misunderstood,” Dahnke said.
Participant Bryant Guy said he was reminded of the philosophy of Mortimer Adler.
“You have to make sure you understand the first person’s argument before you’re allowed to make your point,” he said.
The participants also made an origami “peace crane,” and most had to learn from each other to make it right. Northbrook Police Officer Chris Lacina, a long-time Indian Princess leader and an Oakton Community College police studies teacher, helped every member of his group, and it was the same all over the room.
What, Dahnke asked, does a group need to get cranes made?
“Cooperation,” said Frum.
“Officer Chris,” said Kelli Christenson.
Frum said later that something like the seminar might be good for her entire board, but her peers were coming from a good place at the moment.
“There have been meetings when we have been very mad at each other, but it was all over the next day,” she said.
After the session, the participants offered topic ideas for a Youth Commission forum to be held next fall.
Bosacama said that one topic could be pressure on students, between school and extracurricular activities. Laura Matlin said that it might be a good idea to put people on a dais, alongside students, who would be likely to say, “Oh, no, first you have to go to the right school.”
Slawson-Martens said later that she liked the idea of a public discussion on both sides of the school-pressure issue, adding that pressure, however, comes from more than one direction.
“This isn’t just about (Glenbrook North High School),” she said.
Twitter @IrvLeavitt.com