Explaining Things to People Who Don’t Want to Hear Them

By the time they reach Year 11, most of my students have already made up their minds. About politics, about science, about what matters and what’s a waste of time. It’s not that they’ve deeply studied the issues. It’s that they’ve absorbed enough headlines, slogans, TikToks, and overheard adult arguments to feel like they’ve got it figured out. They’re fluent in attitude. Fluent in scepticism. But allergic to persuasion.

When you try to explain something to them, such as climate policy, the Uluru Statement, or the actual economic mechanisms behind inflation, you can see it in their eyes. The early flicker of defensiveness. The subtle lean-back. The mental unsubscribe. The conversation hasn’t even started, and it’s already been dismissed.

This is the modern problem of communication: what do you do when the people you’re trying to reach aren’t interested in receiving your message?

The Sender-Receiver Breakdown

There’s a simple model we used to teach in media studies: the sender-receiver model of communication. It’s Communication 101. One person (the sender) encodes a message. They transmit it through a channel, such as a lesson, a speech, a tweet, or a TikTok. The other person (the receiver) decodes the message and, ideally, offers feedback. Then the loop continues.

But here’s the thing, the textbooks don’t say loudly enough: this only works if the receiver wants to receive. If they trust the sender. Suppose they’re open to being changed if they haven’t already filtered you out, like spam, before the first word leaves your mouth.

That’s where so many of our conversations fall apart. Not at the level of logic, but at the level of relationship. Not in what we say, but in what they’re ready to hear.

I see this in the classroom, but it’s just as present in public discourse. We have a society brimming with senders, experts, advocates, journalists, commentators, but fewer and fewer people willing to be receivers. More shouting. Less listening. And a creeping sense that we’re all just talking to ourselves, while the world burns quietly behind us.

The Trap of the Already Convinced

When that happens, the natural temptation is to retreat. To focus on the people who already agree with you. To go deeper with your in-group. Refine the message. Polish your arguments. Build better evidence, better data, better decks.

But if the only people hearing you are the ones who already believe, what’s the point? That’s not communication, it’s rehearsal.

As someone who teaches — and, outside the classroom, writes, campaigns, and occasionally rants to anyone who’ll listen, I’ve come to believe that our job is not to speak more eloquently to those who already understand, but to reach the reluctant listener. The person is halfway out the door. The kid is rolling their eyes at the back of the room. The voter who turned away after the first line of your speech. That’s who matters.

Because changing minds isn’t about overwhelming someone with facts, it’s about building enough trust, enough shared context, and enough space for them to leap.

Winning Hearts and Minds

This is where the old idea of winning hearts and minds still holds up. Not in a patronising way. Not in a “we’re right and you need to catch up” way. But in the more profound sense that human beings are not just logic-processing machines. We are emotional, tribal, contradictory creatures. We believe what feels true. We follow people we trust. We cling to beliefs that give us a sense of belonging, even if they’re wrong.

So if you’re trying to win someone over, whether it’s about climate action or the value of public education, you can’t just aim for their mind. You have to show them they matter, that their questions aren’t stupid. That their scepticism isn’t disqualifying. That your intention is not to lecture them but to walk with them to a new understanding.

This takes patience. It takes humility. And it takes letting go of the fantasy that one perfect explanation will “fix” everything. It won’t.

But it can start a crack. A pause. A moment of curiosity.

And that’s enough.

The Moral Obligation of the Informed

There’s a long tradition in philosophy and civic ethics that says if you know something valuable, if you’ve glimpsed the fire outside the cave, to borrow from Plato, then you must return and help others see it too. But that duty doesn’t end with explanation. It includes translation. Adaptation. Evangelism, in the best sense of the word: not converting people to a doctrine, but inviting them into a bigger conversation.

This is not easy work. It is often thankless. You will be ignored, misunderstood, mocked, and dismissed.

But the alternative is worse.

If the people who know the most retreat into private newsletters and academic journals and group chats, while the loudest, angriest, most confident voices dominate the public square, we all lose. Truth doesn’t spread on its own. Understanding is not viral by default. It has to be carried, person by person, conversation by conversation, often uphill.

Keep Finding New Ways

So, what do we do?

We stop lecturing. We start listening harder. We stop assuming we’re the centre of the message, and start looking for shared channels. We stop recycling messages that worked ten years ago and start inventing new formats, new metaphors, new platforms that speak to where people are now.

We teach with memes and stories, not just syllabi and stats. We talk to tradies, grandparents, gamers, and teenagers in their tongue, without watering down the truth.

And most of all, we keep finding new ways to win new audiences.

Because if you ignore the great unwashed, the unconverted, the uninformed, the uninterested,  you miss your most excellent chance to do good. You miss the opportunity to lift people. You miss the whole point of knowing something in the first place.

After all, what’s the use of holding a light if you’re only shining it on people who already see?