Recently,
a group of students, faculty and community members gathered at De Anza
Community College in the San Francisco Bay area to listen to a
conversation about multiculturalism and political correctness.
The speakers were individuals who were well known at the
college for their opposing viewpoints, but their purpose was not to
debate each other. Rather,
they were placed into a format that encouraged them to rethink how
they talk about these issues and to look for language that would not
put them hopelessly at odds with each other.
The
Kaleidoscope Project originated at the University of Massachusetts in
the mid-1970s, when Barnett Pearce was chair of the Communication
Studies Department there. Pearce
and a group of colleagues were approached by Dan Nussbaum, regional
coordinator for the National Conference of Christians and Jews, to
sponsor a "controversial speakers" series on campus.
The Massachusetts group were reluctant to provide "one
more forum for people to spout off," but the proposal started
them thinking about how they could have a space where public moral
controversies could be discussed without having the discourse
degenerate into hard and fast statements of position. Both Nussbaum and officials at the university agreed to fund
some trials, and the Kaleidoscope Project was born.
Soon
after, Stephen Littlejohn spent a sabbatical term at Massachusetts and
he and Pearce became involved in constructing a theoretical position
from which to proceed. Drawing
upon the work of Bateson and Wittgenstein, the purpose of the
techniques involved in Kaleidoscope is the draw participants out of
their existing "language games" (Wittgenstein's term) and
attempt to show them "news of difference" (Bateson's term).
As it has
evolved, a Kaleidoscope consists of three thirty-minute segments, all
conducted in the presence of an audience.
In the first segment, a representative of one of the sides is
interviewed about that person's position, both by a moderator, and by
the audience. Then, a
"reflecting team" consisting of trained communication
professionals discusses what has just been said with an eye toward
modeling a different interpretive frame for the content, including
coming up with alternative metaphors.
The first person then joins the audience, and a representative
of the opposing side is interviewed in like manner.
In the final segment, both interviewees and the reflecting team
discuss how the change of frame helps to broaden their perspectives on
the issues and talk about how the new way of looking at the
conversation can be taken forward as the individuals continue to
interact with each other.
