i hope this works

I have no idea if this will work, but at least I tried. Regarding the discussion that didn't go as you (Josh) wanted, that's common in my experience as a teacher. Sometimes stuff like that just happens, and there's not much you can do about it. Sometimes it's because of lack of preparation on the part of the teacher, or because the "class" wasn't structured emough to allow the teacher to help the class get to the goals he or she has in mind. In the case of your discussion, if you had been more directive, you could have directly challenged the middleaged guys about their line of thinking. Of course, this would have led the group to deal with issues of black/white thinking instead of what you originally wanted to discuss, but hey. Or, you could have simply told them to stay on task, that the question raised wasn't would it fail or not. Anyway, that's all I'll say for now, since I'm not even sure if this will be posted.