NY Times
"Fistfights at campaign rallies. A congressional sit-in. Angry political trolling on the internet. It's not you imagination: America's partisan divide id deeper today than at any point in nearly a quarter-century, according to a new study."
So begins an article from June 2016, which described a problem that has only deepened as the weeks of this unprecedented, vitriolic presidential campaign have gone on.
Months ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented the worrying effects of all this angry rhetoric on students and classrooms, and, since then, we’ve heard those concerns echoed by teachers we asked ourselves. But even after this election is over, a divided nation will remain — and teachers will always be in a uniquely powerful position to help young people learn how to talk to each other across those divides.
Below, we share some ideas we’ve collected from our readers, The Times and around the web. Use them anytime you and your students are tackling controversial issues, whether in a traditional classroom or online. We welcome your additions to the list.
We also invite your classes to put some of these ideas into practice from Oct. 3 to Nov. 7 via our Civil Conversation Challenge.
During the week of Oct. 3 to 7, we are posting a new Student Opinion question each day about five issues that are dividing Americans this election year.
Those posts will remain open to comment until Election Day, and we invite teenagers from anywhere in the world to share their thoughts and reply to the thoughts of others. The challenge? We are asking them to consciously counter the tone and content of much of what is online around hot-button issues and, instead, model respectful dialogue that fosters understanding of other points of view. And we’ll be calling out our favorite conversations.
Find all the details here, as well as links to each forum as it opens.
So begins an article from June 2016, which described a problem that has only deepened as the weeks of this unprecedented, vitriolic presidential campaign have gone on.
Months ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented the worrying effects of all this angry rhetoric on students and classrooms, and, since then, we’ve heard those concerns echoed by teachers we asked ourselves. But even after this election is over, a divided nation will remain — and teachers will always be in a uniquely powerful position to help young people learn how to talk to each other across those divides.
Below, we share some ideas we’ve collected from our readers, The Times and around the web. Use them anytime you and your students are tackling controversial issues, whether in a traditional classroom or online. We welcome your additions to the list.
We also invite your classes to put some of these ideas into practice from Oct. 3 to Nov. 7 via our Civil Conversation Challenge.
During the week of Oct. 3 to 7, we are posting a new Student Opinion question each day about five issues that are dividing Americans this election year.
Those posts will remain open to comment until Election Day, and we invite teenagers from anywhere in the world to share their thoughts and reply to the thoughts of others. The challenge? We are asking them to consciously counter the tone and content of much of what is online around hot-button issues and, instead, model respectful dialogue that fosters understanding of other points of view. And we’ll be calling out our favorite conversations.
Find all the details here, as well as links to each forum as it opens.
Here are 10 ways to prepare.
1.
Create classroom rules and structures that support respectful and generative
discussion, online and off.
How do
you handle conversations in your classroom in general? What structures and
rules are in place to ensure that they are constructive and civil, yet promote
real learning and growth? How do you invite all voices? What happens when
someone states an unpopular opinion?
Consider
talking about these issues with your students after first asking them to write
anonymously about how teachers and schools in general might improve in this
area. What problems do they see? What memorable experiences, good and bad, have
informed their attitudes toward class discussions? What suggestions for rules,
structures or guidelines might they have? How should schools balance the need for open intellectual discussion about
issues with the need to protect those who may feel marginalized for some reason?
Then,
have a classroom discussion about classroom discussions.
Over
the years, we have published many ideas for talking about sensitive issues, and suggested
structures including journal-writing, the “one-question interview,” fishbowls and four-corner exercises. You might use any of
those methods, or consult this “big list of class discussion strategies” from
Cult of Pedagogy. Or, use a protocol called Circle of Viewpoints that focuses on
helping students consider diverse perspectives on a topic.
Finally,
extend your inquiry from physical classroom conversation to online discussion
by borrowing a recent Reader Idea from a teacher named Kate
Harris.
She
explains how, when teaching a high school World Religions elective, she used
the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris as a “teachable moment” to help her students
observe and critique online conversations. Ms. Harris writes:
Teachers
have to address the political and social issues that divide our nation and
dominate our social media feeds. More important, we need to equip students to
address those issues on their own, to engage with and respond to conversations
and news that may be troubling or challenging, from domestic gun control and
police brutality to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and worldwide
terrorism. So much of our students’ worlds is online. How can we get them to
think critically not only about big media, delivered by giants such as Fox News
and The New York Times, but also about “little media,” or the comments and
tweets that they write, read and repost?
_________
2. Take
the ‘Speak Up for Civility’ pledge from Teaching Tolerance.
Though
it is a pledge intended for teachers and other adults,
you might share it with your students as well:
I
pledge to discuss this election with civility, to treat people whose opinions
differ from mine with respect, and to focus on ideas, policies and values. I
will encourage others to do the same. I will speak up when I hear name-calling,
stereotypes and slurs. I will do this because children are listening, and it’s
important that adults model good citizenship.
The
organization’s ideas for teaching Election 2016 can also
be useful, and those under the heading of “getting along” can be applied far
beyond this election season.
_________
3. Read
and discuss articles that explore the problem of a divided America.
Your
students might annotate as they read, then use one of
the discussion models listed above to talk about their reactions. Here are just
a few places in The Times to start:
• The Age of Post-Truth Politics and a response from a teenager — a Student
Summer Reading Contest Winner, Michelle Kim — who wrote:
After
reading this op-ed piece, I am more aware of my own attitude and more wary of
this polarization — the “us” versus “them” mentality that often reduces
comments sections into battlegrounds, when passionate ideals are not tempered
by a willingness to explore possibilities in order to approach fact.
To what
extent do your students experience these divides? What can their generation do
to close them?
_________
4.
Consider commenting standards — and test what you learn via the Times
Comment-Moderation Quiz.
In “What Your Online Comments Say About You,” Anna
North writes about some questions researchers recently asked:
When we
comment on news stories, most of us hope to say something about the topic at
hand — even (or maybe especially) if it’s that the author got it all wrong. But
what do the comments we leave say about us — about our beliefs, our biases and
how we act when the ordinary rules don’t apply? And how do our comments affect
the beliefs of others?
Read
that article, and, for more context, perhaps the Room for Debate forum “Have Comment Sections on News Media Websites Failed?”
Why do we seem to be able to say things online that we wouldn’t say in person?
Where do students see especially glaring examples of that?
The
Times, including The Learning Network, has commenting standardsput in place to maintain
civility. You might share them with students, along with a related Times post,
“The Top 10 Reasons We Deleted Your Comment.”
What do they think of these rules? Could they be useful elsewhere on the
internet? Why or why not?
Then,
test how well they have absorbed those standards by taking a Times quiz created by our comment-moderation team. If you were a
moderator, which responses would you approve and which would you reject? Why?
Finally,
have students choose a Times article that interests them and that has many
reader comments. Scan the comments, noticing which ones are “reader picks” and
which are “Times picks.” What do they notice about the conversation? Is it
generally civil? Do they think people are actually talking to each other, or do
you think they are more talking at each other? In their
opinion, can online conversations ever change minds?
You
might start with a recent Op-Ed essay “Will the Left Survive Millennials?” Among the
many comments, this one by Andy B:
Has
anyone noticed that despite our increasing diversity, we are becoming a more
isolated society? More prone to stare at a screen than to engage our neighbors
in conversation. That same screen provides easy access to surround oneself with
an echo chamber that allows for an ever growing sense of entitlement to impose
one’s opinion on others above all else. Both sides have moved so far away from
one another that honest constructive debate is next to impossible. For the sake
of our American experience, let’s hope we can eventually find a unifying force.
Imagine what could be done as a society if we unplugged and engaged again.
_________
5.
Practice empathy.
Do your
students know who Glenn Beck is? He is a conservative radio host and media
personality who surprised many this summer when he urged his fellow
conservatives to understand the Black Lives Matter movement. He then published
an Op-Ed essay in The Times that begins:
In a
recent speech to a
group of conservatives, I made what I thought was a relatively uncontroversial
point about the commonalities between Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter
activists. I thought this was a simple idea, but the criticism was immediate
and sharp: How dare I try to understand the “other side”?
But as
people, wouldn’t we all benefit from trying to empathize with people we
disagree with?
Have
them read what he has to say — and read some of the 919 comments Times readers
made in response. What do they think of the argument he makes? What issues
about which they feel passionately might they seek to understand from an
opposing point of view?
_________
6. Back
up statements with evidence and sources.
“These days it seems like politics and
propaganda take precedence over rational discussion, especially when the
conversation goes online, “ writes Chris Sloan in an essay at KQED Education on
“Teaching the Art of Civil Dialogue. He
suggests “teaching argument the way it’s been conceived since Aristotle’s
time.”
It
seems that everyone agrees that in order to be “college and career ready” our
students need to know how to write argument and back it up with evidence. In
reality, this approach falls short when our own assumptions are challenged;
however, research shows that learning gains are
greatest in these moments of “cognitive dissonance.”
The winners of our annual Student Editorial Contest, in which we invite
students to “write about an issue that matters to you” but back it up with
evidence both from The Times and elsewhere, can provide models for how to do
this. You might invite students to scroll through the essays and find a few
that interest them to see how the evidence is woven in.
And this related lesson plan can help with
tips and ideas. In it, we quote Andrew Rosenthal, former Times editorial page
editor, who made a video for our contest and reminds students to do their
research. He says:
Everyone
is entitled to their opinion, you’re not entitled to your own facts. Go online,
make calls if you can, check your information, double-check it. There’s nothing
that will undermine your argument faster than a fact you got wrong, that you
did not have to get wrong.
_________
7.
Listen better, and ask genuine questions that seek to help you understand
rather than judge.
Hearing
is easy, writes Seth S. Horowitz in the Sunday
Review. But “listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of
digital distraction and information overload.”
Many
teachers are familiar with the concept of “active listening” and, via activities like
“think/pair/share,” have incorporated regular practice in the skill. But
listening can be much more, as this famous essay from the 1930s, “Tell Me More,” describes. In it, the writer
Brenda Ueland says listening is a “creative force,” and explains:
When we
are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually
begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at
your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny
little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it.
One
recent example of listening in action: a new book by the sociologist Arlie
Russell Hochschild that seeks to understand “Why Do People Who Need Help From the Government Hate It
So Much?” The Times reviewer writes, “A distinguished Berkeley
sociologist, Hochschild is a woman of the left, but her mission is empathy, not
polemics.” Have students read the review to understand the role open-minded questioning
and listening played in this “respectful” work, then think about how they might
practice listening to those with whom they disagree.
_________
8.
Expand your ‘filter bubble.’
In a
Student Opinion question, “Is Your Online World Just a ‘Filter Bubble’ of People
With the Same Opinions?,” we challenge teenagers to look at their
social and news feeds and work to broaden them to include new perspectives and
opinions.
Read
our questions and invite your students to think about where and how they get
their news. How diverse are their social media and news feeds in terms of the
ages, races, religions, geographical locations, interests and political
affiliations of the people they follow — and why does it matter?
_________
9.
Consider why ‘us and them’ is so ingrained in who we are.
Our
friends at Facing History and Ourselves frequently
look at questions like these:
• Why
are notions of “us and them” such a consistent feature of human societies?
• When
and why does an “us and them” view of the world become especially appealing or
attractive? When does this worldview develop into verbal and physical violence?
• How
can individuals respond to expressions of hatred, anger and fear? What happens
if we choose to remain silent?
In “How Teachers Can Help Students Make Sense of Today’s
Political and Social Tensions,” Laura Tavares and Jocelyn Stanton
list a number of resources to help teachers and students go deeper.
_________
10.
Learn about and try to counter ‘confirmation bias.’
Confirmation
bias is the tendency to look for information that supports the way we feel
about something. Carl Richards wrote about it for The Times in a 2013 piece, “Challenge What You Think You Know”:
We do
this all the time. In fact, academics even have a name for it:confirmation bias. It’s when we form an
opinion, and then we systematically look for evidence to support that opinion
while discarding anything that contradicts it.
The
first place we go for feedback about what we believe is other people. And who
do we ask first? That’s right, people we know who are already inclined to think
the same way as we do. And friends don’t always tell one another the truth,
even if they disagree. The result is a dangerous feedback loop that actually
confirms our bias. It’s incredibly hard to avoid.
...confirmation
bias may be the reason that our political debates remain intractable. After
all, as you accumulate more evidence confirming your views, you’re less likely
to question them, and less likely to change your mind. As members of competing
political tribes collect more evidence in favor of their favored views, their
opinions harden, and each tribe becomes more convinced of its correctness.
So
what’s the solution? As Mr. Richards writes, “The only solution that I see is
to purposely expose yourself to views that don’t match yours.” In an echo of
many of the other ideas in this post, he suggests purposely seeking out views
from “the other side,” whether via websites, books, radio or television, or
conversations with people across the aisle. And, he says, it’s not enough just
to seek them out:
Try,
just try, to listen, to understand. See if you can get to the point where you
can honestly say, “I understand the argument and can see why they feel that
way.”
_________
Conversation starters:
1) How can you incorporate some of these strategies in fostering difficult conversations in your setting? Please leave your comments below.
