• Did people ask each other questions?
• Did they seriously weigh the other person's opinions?
• Did they speak directly and clearly or in vague generalities which really didn't say much that was new?
• What were they interested in? Learning? Sharing? Convincing? Defending? Bragging?

If you observe closely and long enough, we think you'll find that although human beings talk a lot, we often don't do it very well. We talk at each other rather than to each other. We are sometimes like flat walls that meet each other head on, and just push, push, push…

Your job as a discussion leader is to harness that energy, to keep those sparks flying and to focus them into a flame. It's not easy. It requires much patience and practice, the development of sensitivity and awareness.

There are always questions that you as the leader need to ask yourself.

• Just how much should you lead?
• Are there certain conclusions you want your group to arrive at?
• If so, can you and should you lead them to that conclusion?
• And if they arrive independently at another conclusion, how do you as the leader respond?
• Do you need to know the members' personalities and backgrounds in order to deal with them, or should they be related to solely on the basis of what emerges from the discussion?
• How do you respond if someone says something you find especially repulsive? (e.g.: "Hitler has been maligned by history." "I think dissident Arabs should be shot.")

You need a clear sense of what you are trying to accomplish in your discussion group and how you will do it.

You need to be ready to handle unexpected situations, to react to challenges when you know everyone is staring at you and wondering how you will react.

You need to know the material and have your own excitement to communicate to your group members. If you don't have it they won't pick it up: Nothing makes for a boring discussion like a boring initiator. On the other hand, nothing makes for a successful, exciting discussion like a leader who is enthusiastic about the material, concerned with the participants, and himself eager to learn from the experience. The enthusiasm of the leader cannot take the place of good concrete techniques, but the techniques are hollow motions without that underlying interest and concern.

Nothing can replace a good, solid discussion. It is, like reading and writing, an essential tool within society. Yet, as technological progress creates mass communication at the global level, we as individuals become even less equipped to share open conversation with each other. If anything, it seems that we are slowly becoming crippled in the use of the basic tool of discussion, just as our reading and writing skills are deteriorating.

Your teaching of one group how to engage in civil, decent and productive human discussion, and maybe even to learn about other individuals from it, may not change the world. But don't belittle your own role. It is no small accomplishment to engage a group of young people in discussion which is intelligent, provocative, and based on mutual respect and learning.