Academic Lens: Modeling Civil Discourse

In an era where only 28% of Americans express satisfaction with our democracy – a stark decline from 60% in the early 1990s – educators face a critical challenge: how to teach about the 2024 election in an increasingly polarized political environment outside of the confines of our community. This challenge presents itself through two distinct but interconnected imperatives: first, creating environments and other spaces that foster meaningful political discourse and understanding across differences, and second, actively engaging students in democratic processes. Every educational community – particularly a boarding community by its nature – comprises faculty, staff, and students from diverse geographic backgrounds, political persuasions, worldviews, and life experiences. This diversity provides educators with a unique opportunity to lean into respectful discussion and civil discourse.

In a recent Harvard Graduate School of Education podcast, Lecturer Eric Soto-Shed emphasizes that avoiding election-related conversations represents a missed opportunity for schools at a crucial moment when young people are beginning to engage with democratic processes. "We can't avoid these hard conversations because they're going to happen anyway. It's just a swipe away on a phone." Rather than leaving students to navigate political discourse alone through social media and news channels, he advocates for leveraging the structured, nurturing environment of the classroom to facilitate meaningful discussions about differences and important issues.

History teacher Mark Flaherty recently reflected on how he creates space for open political discourse in his classroom. “It's much easier to create a space based on respect and curiosity in person than it is in, let's say, a digital forum. I came out hot and heavy, asking kids what their political identities were to destigmatize talking about politics as well as to normalize political affiliations. We set ground rules for discussion, of course, but the most important exercise in my class was to establish a shared goal for discourse: identify the issues and develop solutions. Establishing this goal gets at some of the learning objectives I created but also removes the ‘us vs. them’ mentality that can so easily influence political discussions in the states.”

Research on cognitive flexibility, highlighted in Adam Grant’s book Think Again, offers valuable insights for educational communities during this politically charged time. As humans, we often fall into what Grant calls our "preacher, prosecutor, or politician" modes – defending our positions, attacking others' views, or simply trying to win approval. Instead, we must cultivate what he terms “scientist mode”: approaching conversations with curiosity, humility, and a willingness to revise our understanding. In the Proctor context, dining hall tables, dorm common rooms, and classroom discussions can become laboratories for applying the lens of thinking like a scientist to examine even our most deeply-held beliefs. Psychologists find that many of our beliefs are cultural truisms: widely shared but rarely questioned. If we take a closer look at them, we often discover that they rest on shaky foundations," Grant notes.

This approach invites us to examine our own habits of thought. Have we ever deeply considered why we believe what we believe? Grant suggests that it is intellectually lazy to dismiss someone based purely on how they vote or what they believe. Instead, he encourages us to engage in counterfactual thinking: what if we had been born in a different country, region, socioeconomic reality, or to parents with different life experiences, values, and belief systems? Such perspective helps us explore the origins of our own beliefs with intellectual humility, recognizing how circumstances lead us to form beliefs.

While much research focuses on group differences, we often overlook the larger, equally significant commonalities we share. Recent studies underscore the power of face-to-face dialogue to bridge perceived divides. A meta-analysis of over five hundred studies with over 250,000 participants found that direct interactions with people holding opposing beliefs reduce prejudice in 94 percent of cases. Furthermore, research published examining variables like moral attitudes, human values, and trust found that more than 90 percent of the time, similarities between groups exceed differences.

Flaherty has adopted in his class a framework from the Rotary Club - an organization he has been involved with since high school - called the “Four-Way Test” to help navigate discussions in his Politics of Power and World History courses:

• Is it the truth? - in the context of his class, is the idea backed by evidence?
• Is it fair to all concerned? - the answer here may be no, but then it begs the question of why and pushes the importance of compromise.
• Will it build goodwill and good friendships? - this one pushes the idea of that shared goal and places kindness at the heart of discussion and ideas.
• Will it be beneficial to all concerned? - if it doesn't benefit everyone involved, then what is the point?

Flaherty elaborates on his methodology, “Understanding how someone came to believe the things that they do is, to me, the most critical exercise. It gets students to exercise empathy and understand how someone's background influences their perspectives. Utilizing the ‘four-way test’ allows students to stop, think and consider other ideas and provides a different kind of approach to discussion. Rather than approaching a different idea from an adversarial perspective - it centers thinking around truth, equality, and goodwill, which, I would argue, is far more constructive.”

Harvard’s Soto-Shed highlights research from Tufts University showing that students who receive classroom instruction about voting and voter registration are twice as likely to believe in the efficacy of democratic participation. At Proctor, students are actively demonstrating this through peer-led civic engagement initiatives. Cade '25 and Whistler '25, recognizing the unique challenges boarding students face with voting, organized voter registration assistance and "extra help" sessions for election preparation. The Current Events Club further supported this effort through an assembly presentation on youth voter engagement and evaluating election information sources, while faculty and the Student Life Office have provided ongoing voter registration guidance.

At Proctor, while our community encompasses diverse political perspectives, we unite around a core principle: the freedom to explore and express political identities within our community norms. These values naturally foster civil discourse – honesty acknowledges how our experiences shape our views, compassion recognizes others' unique journeys, respect enables productive dialogue across differences, and responsibility compels us to examine our own assumptions.

Read more about Proctor's Academic Model Here!