Polarization and Classroom Practice, Part II: Mitigating Polarization's Deleterious Effects

by Shawn P. Healy, PhD, Democracy Program Director

Last week, I profiled the political typologies of educators to kick off a four part series on polarization and classroom practice. This week, I’ll revisit the power and prevalence of controversial issues discussions in classrooms, in part, as a means of mitigating polarization’s long-term, deleterious effects.

Our friends at the Center for Information Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University published a 2013 report on youth voting in the 2012 Election titled All Together Now. It highlights the challenge of teaching civics in an era where young people accurately view politics as both polarized and dysfunctional. With challenges come opportunities, and CIRCLE suggests “teaching a new generation to be civil, responsible, and constructive citizens may be part of the solution…” to the aforementioned problems.

Scholarship supports this claim. Diana Hess, Dean of the University of Wisconsin’s College of Education, writes, “…The purposeful inclusion of controversial political issues in the school curriculum…illustrates a core component of a functioning democratic community, while building the understandings, skills, and dispositions that young people need to live in and improve such a community.”

Unlike our politics, teaching with controversy is not subject to a polarized academic debate. Mitt Romney’s education advisor for his 2012 presidential campaign, David Campbell, demonstrates that classroom discussions can actually help mitigate the adverse effects of low socio-economic status on youth civic development.

And University of Colorado Communication Professor Michael McDevitt finds widespread impact of student participation in deliberative discourse. Students emerge more attentive to the news and have a greater awareness of the prevailing issues of the day. They also form a larger discussion network involving both peers and parents. And aiming directly at polarization, students demonstrate a greater propensity to openly disagree, listen to opposing views, and test opinions through political conversation.

The empirical case stated, policies in Illinois are increasingly aligned with effective practice when it comes to teaching with controversy. Our high school civics requirement embeds discussions of current and controversial issues, and our K-12 social studies standards contain a deliberative strand across grade levels and subject areas. Early returns suggest that these policies are being implemented with fidelity, as issues discussions and standards are 84% and 74% fully or partially implemented in Illinois high schools, respectively (see Figure 3 below).

Finally, returning to the 2013 All Together Now report and a companion national survey of civics and social studies teachers, civil discussions of political issues ranks high among the “citizen responsibilities” that are “definitely important” for students to know.

In class, teachers claim that students are encouraged to make up their own mind about issues (100% agree or agree strongly), that they select issues for discussion about which people have varying opinions (99.3%), and that “students should explicitly discuss difficult and divisive issues” (87.9%).

On paper and in practice, teachers are well equipped to bring controversy into the classroom and do so with increasingly fidelity. They are up against a menacingly polarized political environment, the subject of next week’s post.