Through the looking glass of depolarization (part I)
The following also appears in Intrepid Ed.
If I learned nothing else during my twenty years as a middle school teacher, it was that humans of that age are intensely social, almost single-mindedly hellbent on securing a slot in the social order. The fortunes of these young people can change quickly. Monday morning might find them unaccountably excised from a previously secure group of friends, leaving them bewildered and bereft. To guard against such eventualities, they lock arms as they march down the hallway like a steamrolling wave of social security. For many years, I was quite sure this behavior was unique. It was not until I had taught these children for two decades and coached forty-one seasons of sports that I realized, however, that I had been mistaken. In fact, the intense need for social affirmation and acceptance that defines middle school is not a stage through which one passes. It is not a skin to be shed on the way out of adolescence. It’s training. We are the products of that training.
We are also the victims of it. We have become a polarized society, bound unconditionally to those on our political team and mistrustful and dismissive of those on the other side. We cling to our teammates, with whom we share a common purpose, and we recoil from our opponents. We display tribal badges to reserve our place on the team and we rage at the sight of our opponents’ markings. The evidence of our national polarization and the dysfunction it causes is everywhere, so obvious now that it hardly requires explanation.
It’s tempting to lay the blame for our current malaise at the feet of Donald Trump, the nation’s most divisive president, because in that case our affliction may be fleeting—or even a thing of the past. Alas, President Trump’s polarizing effect—and his embodiment of our own polarization—affirms a trend that was already well in the works. The forces that drive our polarization are deep. We are hardwired to seek group acceptance, and societal structures leverage that psychology to more deeply entrench us in a morass of division. Our national condition, this debilitating polarization, is not mending, and we owe it to both our students and our society to address the crisis through education.
One could make a transactional case (I come to your school, and in return I get this skill) for empowering students to reach across lines of ideological or political division. In a nation, as the author Bill Bishop put it, of “balkanized communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible,” students will benefit from any training that helps them ford the divide. Will the kid from New England be willing to take that job down South some day? Depends how comfortable she would feel living among the “others” across the Mason Dixon line. As with any other literacy, or a foreign language, it’s reasonable to believe that students who have some facility for cross-cutting communication and collaboration will expand their otherwise narrowing options for employment, housing, and companionship.
Our students individually will require the skills and dispositions to help them reach across lines of divide, but the plain, inescapable truth is that our country also requires this of them. As the nation absorbed the Capitol insurrection of January 2021, a Twitter post read, “Every person knocking down those doors once sat in a classroom.” There will always be conspiratorially-minded people, and we will not eradicate extremism. But an attack on the seat of American government, perpetrated by Americans proudly waving American flags, reveals a societal disconnect so profound that it would be a dereliction of duty for educators to ignore the polarization that fueled it.
Long ago, I heard someone say that schools sacrifice the important for the urgent. We’ve certainly been facing the urgent: navigating a pandemic and helping students make sense of longstanding inequities that have given rise to grief-laden protests. But we must also turn to another (really) important matter: providing the foundation and training to equip our students to eventually ameliorate the polarization that, at this rate, threatens to undermine the very lessons upon which we are focused. Do we think we’ll address climate change strictly through the transmission of scientific facts, willfully blind to the furious political disagreement that topic engenders? How do we propose to do so, when higher scientific literacy is associated with more disagreement about the issue, rather than less? Do we truly aspire to build equitable and inclusive communities? I can’t see how that will happen without acknowledging the polarization that has suddenly – and, for many of us, surprisingly-- turned “DEI” into a highly charged political term.
Education is not necessarily a ticket to depolarization. Ideological polarization is consistently more pronounced among better-educated people, and, according to Diana Mutz, those with graduate degrees have the least political disagreement in their lives. We school people bend over backwards to insulate our communities from all things “political,” when, in fact, it’s a futile effort. Our curriculum is “political.” Our messaging is “political.” We are preparing—or relinquishing our duty to prepare—our students to navigate a “political” world. And certainly, we ourselves are “political.”
To get serious, then, about equipping our students to reach across lines of ideological or political divide, we need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. In recent years, independent schools have accepted that if they are to be places of anti-racist work, the professionals leading that work—teachers—must do their own learning. The same holds for the work that will position our students to ease the crisis of political polarization: it starts with us. What do we adults know about the psychology that drives group behavior? How healthy and varied is our news diet? Do we understand how media leverages our tribal instincts to amplify messaging? As we ask students to enter into discussions with those who hold contradictory viewpoints, have we, ourselves, practiced taking winning off the table by entering into dialogue with the political “other”? Do we even acknowledge that political diversity exists among our faculty?
I once found myself in a faculty meeting in which we teachers were challenged to create a “portrait of the graduate.” The expectations were loose—creativity encouraged—with the goal to visually represent a successful graduate of our academic program. It was backwards design: picturing the end product in order to more precisely and purposefully define the academic program to lead us there. Since then, I have seen many iterations of the “portrait of a graduate” etched into the websites of variety of schools. In most cases, schools use the word “portrait” loosely, relying on text to describe the key attributes of a successful graduate. Perhaps there is also value, though, in taking a more literal approach by showcasing a real human being whose lived experiences might guide our own aspirations.
Arlie Russell Hochschild could be that person. A sociology professor at the University of California, Hochschild authored a masterclass in empathy called Strangers in Their Own Land. Hochschild is liberal—a left-leaning professor in the Prius-driving, organics-eating Bay Area of California. She registered voters in Mississippi as a young woman during the Freedom Summer of 1964, and progressive causes continue to animate her, including paid parental leave, environmental stewardship, and an end to homelessness. Hochschild is principled. And yet, she is curious—deeply, genuinely curious—about people who see the world differently from her. This curiosity carried her to southern Louisiana for several years to puzzle over what she called the Great Paradox: the seemingly illogical attitude of people who disdained and distanced themselves from the federal government, when, Hochschild believed, government care and attention could ameliorate their substandard living conditions. “I was discovering good people at the center of this Great Paradox,” she wrote. “How could kindly Madonna oppose government help for the poor? How could a warm, bright, thoughtful man like Mike Schaff, a victim of corporate malfeasance and wanton destruction, aim so much of his fire at the federal government?” To read Strangers, one is consistently reminded of Hochschild’s relentless attempt to scale what she calls the “empathy wall” that cleaves our society.
This is the wall our students will have to scale, and they will not learn how to do it without help from their teachers. It follows, then, that we educators must take on the work of emulating people like Arlie Russell Hochschild. Having left the classroom two years ago, my job these days is convincing schools that we educators must take responsibility for addressing the crisis of polarization, and in coming articles I’ll lay out some suggestions, based on my experience and on the research, about how we can position faculty to lead those efforts. Friends School of Baltimore, from which I graduated, says, “The world needs what our children can do.” Our country, plagued by polarization, desperately needs what our children can do, if only we can find the courage and commitment to help them do it.
The Trump conundrum: can we criticize the president and still welcome ideological diversity?
Four and a half years ago, I wrote a piece that caused a stir (well, at least within the tiny network in which it circulated). I find myself returning now to that piece, wondering whether it reads differently after the passage of a presidential term and realizing that the questions I ponder daily first presented themselves as I wrote it.
Is it possible for an educator to criticize the words or actions of the president—or a candidate for president, or any other aspiring leader—and still foster a learning environment that welcomes ideological or political diversity? Can we be surgical in our commentary, by critiquing one aspect of a leader’s messaging while still encouraging the support of other elements of that official’s platform? In other words, is there room for complexity, or must we be reduced to either “supporting” or “opposing” the entirety of a candidate or official’s personality and platform? Does reserving a critique—maintaining silence—marginalize some students (or is it now more appropriate to ask whether reserving such a critique has marginalized many of our students in many of our schools)?
Recently, I watched a webinar in which presenters openly criticized President Trump’s campaign to discredit the results of the presidential election, and I was struck by how direct the condemnation was. The webinar was facilitated by an organization that wanted no part of my writing piece four and a half years ago. Has something changed? Would the directness of my writing seem less inflammatory or controversial these days?
I wrote the piece as a conversation with my students, although I did not necessarily intend to share it with them. And in the end, I did not. I worried about violating the oath of impartiality, and I still believe firmly in the conventional wisdom that we educators should remain nonpartisan in the classroom. But does that mean we should also be amoral? And do we really lack the will or dexterity to help students see that the objectionable rhetoric of a single man does not by extension impugn a whole political party?
For those with time on their hands, I include the piece below, with the hope that readers will share their thoughts with me by dropping a note in the “contact” section of this website. Is there a place, in a school that genuinely wishes to honor ideological differences, for this sort of direct talk? We need to figure this out together.
March 4, 2016
Dear Students,
I recently spoke to you about a Holocaust survivor who used to visit. She was tiny and understated, but when she spoke, the weight of her courage and resilience and overwhelming moral clarity settled down from above. She always left us with a single request: that we act in the face of injustice. This is a message I have dispensed throughout many years of teaching, but it is my turn to speak up.
Civility—common courtesy, you might say—is in short supply in this presidential campaign, and insults have filled the vacuum. Mr. Trump, in particular, has been a reliable source of vitriol. There was a time when I joined the majority of the country in laughing off Mr. Trump’s antics, but I’m not laughing anymore. As his popularity grows—and as we adults fail to weigh in on the matter—I worry that you might start to think that this sort of discourse is becoming the accepted norm. Well, at least as far as your school is concerned, it is not. Our school’s mission guides you toward respectful communication, and you should be proud of your ongoing commitment to maintaining the highest standards of respect as you interact with the world. As you look for examples of respectful communication, though, look beyond the presidential campaign. Because at the moment you will not find respect modeled by some of our nation’s most visible, aspiring leaders.
Note, too, the growing ease with which many Americans openly fear, or demonize, or just disparage, the “other.” We teachers work constantly to stretch your perception of those with whom you have little contact, but this seems to be precisely the opposite approach to the one Mr. Trump has taken on the campaign trail. Those who like Mr. Trump tend to resolutely praise his frankness; they believe he speaks the plain truth. On this count, though, I beg to differ. Mr. Trump tells people what they wish were true, and, in that respect, he reminds me of other, dangerous, charismatic leaders who have indulged wishful thinking. The most insidious of these claims, as far as I am concerned, is that the “outsiders” are to blame for our troubles.
Mr. Trump is now appealing to the simplistic stereotypes that many Americans harbor, particularly about immigrants. His proposals appear to run in direct opposition to the values I have heard you articulate here at school. In your history class, you consider what it means to be American, and you have generally suggested that freedoms, rights, liberties lie at the center of the American identity. You are all well aware—perhaps more so than Mr. Trump—of the protection the First Amendment places on freedom of religion.
Mr. Trump has not just stirred mistrust of Muslims, but of foreigners in general, regardless of religion. His rhetoric models a form of disrespect that is antithetical to our school’s core principles. We don’t just tolerate diversity. We celebrate it. We honor it. We bring in performances to bolster our exposure to other cultures. We learn languages. We unearth differing points of view. We talk about race and gender, and we celebrate diverse family structures. Building cultural competence is central to our school’s mission. So, to be clear, I’m trying to show you that there is a mismatch between Mr. Trump’s comments and your school’s core philosophy. But, I must say that I am alarmed for reasons that stretch beyond that mismatch.
To understand that, we need to get back to our visitor, the tiny woman who survived five different concentration camps. Before the Holocaust, even before World War Two broke out, there was unhappiness in Germany. Germans had troubles, and they looked for solutions. One political party, known as the Nazis, promised to bring strong leadership to the ailing country. Some Germans, as Facing History and Ourselves wrote in Holocaust and Human Behavior, “…liked the Nazis’ message. It was patriotic… and energetic.” That message relied heavily on portraying the “outsider” as a danger to the country. The first Nazi party platform included a proposal to ban immigration entirely. “Outsiders” were to be feared. The seeds of mistrust were being planted.
People tend to think of the Nazis as a malignant growth that suddenly appeared on the German body, metastasizing into an uncontrollable sickness that overtook the nation. In fact, they were elected, fair and square, as a consequence of the German suffering and outrage that lingered well after World War One. Nazis won seats in the legislature, and Hitler was later appointed Chancellor of Germany. Once in power, Hitler did not spring the Holocaust on Germany all at once. Instead, he moved gradually, incrementally, to restrict the rights of Jews in Germany. They couldn’t vote… they couldn’t gather together without a Nazi overseer… bit by bit, Jews lost their rights, and at no time was German society shocked into outrage and action to oppose these moves. This was the legacy that our friend, the Holocaust survivor, thought about daily when she urged us to speak up in the face of injustice.
Last year, as spring sunlight streamed into our dining room, a colleague asked me over lunch whether I thought the Holocaust could ever happen again. I was undecided. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the moral arc of the universe “bends toward justice.” Most of us would suppose that, in the decades since the Holocaust, we have evolved as a civilization, that, even if we are not at peace, we are at least less likely to succumb to utter barbarism on the scale of the Holocaust; we have proceeded farther along the moral arc of the universe. Perhaps. In her book, I promised I Would Tell, Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz warned, “Those of us who survived that other universe where darkness was almost complete have an obligation to warn you, because we know that under the right conditions it can happen again, anywhere, to any people.”
I sometimes wonder if my curriculum is like an obscure constellation that remains slightly out of focus to you; I sprinkle points of light throughout the year, hoping you will connect the dots. In the fall, we asked you to lead younger students through a role-play in which you empowered them to act as upstanders. I evoked that word—upstander—again recently while discussing the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School. Did you connect those two discussions? Will you then, on your own, draw a line to the film Freedom Riders? In it, a reporter asks a young, white man why he thinks it’s his responsibility to press for equality. “I think it’s every American’s responsibility,” answers the young man. “I only think that some are more conscious of their responsibility than others.” I wonder: have we Americans lost sight of our responsibilities? As you navigate your universe, we are here to help you find the constellations that will guide you. After all, morality is not infinitely subjective, and we teachers need to help you connect the dots so that you can continue, with compassion, on your journey.
If King was right that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, it is also true that it doesn’t bend that way by itself.
Go ahead. Get into politics at school.
I once led a workshop with middle-school students that was to serve as a deep dive into the Constitution. In the final run-up to the workshop, I received several anxious emails asking that I avoid mentioning any particular politician. The school looked forward to me teaching the first Article of the Constitution, but there would be no need to name names. The message in being invited to teach about the presidency without naming the president—the same message I have consistently encountered in my twenty years in schools—was clear: we don’t get into politics.
I get it. Politics is messy. But it’s time for schools to stop conflating the examination of politics with partisanship. We have our own biases, and we must work hard to temper those. Agreed. We are not in the business of molding students in our ideological images. But if our collective strategy for maintaining impartiality is to shy away from teaching about government, discussing those who govern, and examining the issues that shape our collective experience, we are doing our students a grave disservice. The political landscape appears littered with landmines, but we must also see the clear opportunities before us.
First, the obvious: it’s a great time to bring civic education to life. An impeachment! A raging debate over the role of the federal government in managing a pandemic! Unprecedented protests! An election! Truly, and I say this without irony, it’s an exciting time to be teaching. At some level, I think we all know we should be seizing the moment, but the moment feels scary. We are afraid of how parents will react when they hear only part of the story about the day’s discussion, we’re skittish about revealing our own biases to students and worried about causing a scene in our classrooms. We can take steps to mitigate these worries, though.
Let’s bring parents into the loop. Let’s keep them updated on the conversations their children are having in school and invite them to share their hopes and concerns, rather than defending ourselves from attack later on. Let’s practice what we preach by working, ourselves, to honor ideological differences (see the previous post for more on that), and, above all, let us not be too afraid of making a mistake. We’re uncomfortable, because we feel ill-equipped to handle contentious or wounding speech, should it emerge in a “political” discussion. Yes, this is difficult. But this is also precisely the education our students desperately need. We simply cannot observe our national disfunction, our unwillingness to reach across lines of ideological divide, and conclude that the best course of action is to shield our students from disagreement or contentious discourse.
Schools have twisted themselves in knots, trying to tiptoe down some imaginary line that separates the merely “topical” from the “political.” Everything is political. Free speech, inequality, the locus of government power, climate change… even science itself—they are all political—and in this tricky, anxious, and exciting electoral season we should be purposefully leading our students through the work that will help them more capably navigate our nation’s political divide.
Know your students. Even the ones in MAGA hats.
Recently, I asked teachers in a workshop to discuss hypothetical scenarios related to this fall’s electoral season. One of those scenarios imagined a student proudly brandishing MAGA gear in celebration of a Trump victory, a possibility that left many in attendance feeling anxious. The ensuing discussion revealed a disconnect between left-leaning teachers and the sometimes more conservative families whose children they educate. “To see a child celebrate a Trump victory,” summarized one teacher, “would make me wonder whether I ever really knew these families at all.”
Early in my career a wise mentor conveyed a simple trick to keep me in the good graces of even the scariest of parents: know their children. Connection lies at the heart of our mission as educators, and the most impactful teachers know that job number one is to teach the child, not the subject. Beyond the instinctive moves that guide an effective teacher’s daily interactions with students, we must sometimes do some homework. Many of us, for example, are digging into anti-racist literature as one step down the path of better serving children of color. Getting to know our students is a joyful, instinctive process, but it’s not just a matter of friendly banter. It takes work, and that work extends to the realm of ideological or political divisions.
We have so much on our plates. For some of us, a win these days is simply keeping our masks from slipping and our glasses from fogging. The pandemic is exhausting, and the election is daunting. We certainly don’t need any more work, but, if we’re facing the truth, we have it. We simply cannot in good conscience allow this election to slip past by keeping our heads down and avoiding the drama. (Nor, by the way, should we fool ourselves into thinking our national divisiveness and discomfort will wane one bit in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. We can be sure that no matter who occupies the Oval Office in the coming years, the divisions that plague the country will not heal themselves. Consequently, the mandate to educate our children in a way that empowers them to mend—or at least navigate—those divisions will remain.)
So where does this leave us? If we’re speaking frankly, it leaves many schools in my neck of the woods with a preponderance of left-leaning teachers who serve a more politically mixed clientele of families. This is a source of friction, and it’s the dynamic that fueled the question as to whether a teacher “ever really knew these families.” If the challenge is an ideologically divided country—and possibly an ideologically divided school—the opportunity is, as it always is, to better know our students. This includes the ones who might show up at school in a MAGA hat the day after a Trump victory.
This work need not overwhelm us. We simply need to start by assuming best intentions. If we can chip away at our mistrust of the “other” and assume that a divergent political stance is the product of a sincerely-held belief that we may not yet understand, we can tiptoe in the direction of common ground. When I lead workshops, I suggest that people start with their news feed. Allsides provides a range of news sources for every major story of the day, while the Flip Side focuses on a single event and packages news snippets from across the political spectrum. For a handy mobile app, try Read Across the Aisle, which provides access to the full spectrum of news sources and then helps you monitor where your news choices fall on that continuum. If those steps wet your whistle, wade a bit deeper into the work by engaging in conversation with people who hold contradictory views. Living Room Conversations facilitates such opportunities, and Braver Angels conducts online debates and conversations on contentious topics. This work is not easy—I found it quite taxing to listen to the arguments of fervent NRA members during an online discussion of the Second Amendment—but it is worthwhile. We simply can’t strengthen these muscles without doing some lifting.
Trying out these tools for a few weeks will not magically fill in the gulf that divides us. Doing so might, however, make someone just a bit more openminded, and that mental disposition is a prerequisite for better understanding children who come from families with political viewpoints that contradict our own.