This article describes, discusses and evaluates Danish organization The Bridge Builders’ training program “The Bridge Builder education” as a form of propaedeutic rhetorical citizenship (Villadsen, 2019) designed especially for a politically polarized society. The Bridge Builders, established by opinion maker, author, former member of the Danish parliament, Özlem Cekic, aims at strengthening the democratic dialogue in Denmark and one of their newest activities is “The Bridge Builder education”, which will tour Denmark in 2022 and train participants to communicate better with people with whom they disagree deeply. The participants will be trained in basic rhetorical theory (e.g. argumentation (Kock 2013) and the topics (Pontoppidan, Gabrielsen & Jønch-Clausen, (2010)) and basic conflict mediation techniques and will be presented with Cekic’ personal experiences of meeting with people who have sent her hateful messages (see Cekic 2018).
Based on the training the participants will be supervised to plan and carry out their own difficult dialogues with people they hold disagreements with. First training takes place in January and this article will investigate and evaluate the process through readings of the teaching material, interviews with organizers and participants, as well as through a participatory lens as the author of the article contributes to the training program with a shorter section on rhetorical
argumentation.