Through the looking glass of depolarization (part II)
The following also appears in Intrepid Ed.
“Hey Mr. Lenci, want to hear a political joke?” Recess ended, and seventh graders arrived in a flurry of Goldfish crumbs and cold air. Abby, armed with her backpack and a sense of humor, bounced on her feet in anticipation. “So you’re ready for the political joke?” I was. “OK, wait for it.” Pause. “Donald Trump!”
At the time—it must have been the winter of 2016, with the Republican convention still many months away—Donald Trump was a political joke among those across the political spectrum, and here was a student of mine, all twelve years of age, piling it on. I was flooded with questions: Do I laugh this off? Does the ideal of neutrality require that I issue some equivocating statement (“Well, not everyone thinks that…”)? Is there some threshold of political gravitas for a candidate to reach, at which point joking becomes political commentary? Has Trump reached that level? If so, do we need to steer clear? What will other students read into my response? Are there any Goldfish left over?
I think often of that moment. Intuition led me to affirm the jokester (“Ha!”) and move on quickly. But what a difference a year would have made. At what moment did Donald Trump transition from business mogul/reality-show celebrity to legitimate political figure? Once that transition occurred, did new rules of engagement apply to discussing him in school? Was his behavior as a private citizen open to critique within the classroom (in the same way a sports star might be)? Were students and/or faculty then prohibited from commenting on his behavior once he had passed into the realm of the “political?” If so, why? What are the guardrails for political commentary in schools or, more broadly, dialogue across lines of difference?
As far as I am concerned—as I said in the first article in this series-- pretty much everything is “political;” the instinct to stay away from topics or discussions that could be deemed “political” is therefore, I believe, unproductive. Setting aside that assertion for a moment, though, we can hopefully agree that it is advisable to prepare our students to navigate—and possibly mend—our polarized society. It follows, then, that we must provide them opportunities over the course of their education to reach across lines of ideological difference. If we are to lead that work among our students, we too, have our own work to do. A school that values this work must engage in thoughtful professional-development that includes purposeful training and reflection on the part of individual teachers. We educators are products of and participants in the same polarized society that looms ahead for our students. We teachers occupy political echo chambers and rely on one-sided media just like everyone else, and we carry our political and tribal allegiances into the classroom. No playbook reminds us what to say in the event that our twelve-year-old student makes a joke out of the future president of the United States, and the challenge of finding our own way through our polarized society—let alone preparing our students to do so—feels daunting. We need guidance.
At some point, we educators need to hold up a mirror and take stock of our own tribal allegiances and political biases… but that introspection can wait. To ease into the work, we would do well to first study the challenge of polarization from a more detached, intellectual level. The Greater Good Science Center’s “Bridging Differences” initiative is an excellent source for pithy and accessible summaries of research into the psychology of in-group favoritism, and a slew of articles, including “Six Techniques to Bridge Differences” would jumpstart a productive faculty meeting on dialogue across difference. The Pew Research Center provides one-stop shopping to examine the trend of deepening polarization, and Open Mind (“a scalable, evidence-based approach to constructive dialogue”) has assembled a robust library of videos, essays, and scholarly articles organized by theme that could also provide fodder for a faculty discussion. There is no shortage of resources to help us educators understand the challenge of polarization from a psychological and political standpoint. If we are to equip our students for this challenge, we must first understand it.
To bring the challenge closer to home, it works well to present faculty with hypothetical scenarios in which an ideological or political divide insinuates itself into the school community. Should a faculty member be permitted to display emblems that could be considered political? How do we respond to a parent who challenges the presence of those symbols in the classroom? What about the parent who bemoans the dearth of conservative viewpoints at school? Tossing out these types of scenarios virtually guarantees a lively discussion. To keep the train on the tracks, though, requires some structure. I’ve been well served by first asking what is challenging about a given scenario before steering the conversation toward the opportunities inherent in each situation.
A couple of months before the 2020 presidential election, when the national atmosphere could not have been much more tense, I included a “what-if” in one of my workshops:
Imagine it’s November 2020. President Trump has won reelection. A jubilant student comes to school wearing a MAGA hat, although hats are prohibited by the school’s dress code. You are feeling personally vulnerable at this moment, and the hat triggers a visceral response within you. You feel paralyzed by the sight of it. How, if at all, do you engage the child?
That stirred the pot. The teachers in that particular workshop were anguished at the prospect of a Trump victory, and the word “jubilant” stopped one attendee in her tracks. “Wow,” she said. “That would honestly make me wonder if I belonged at that school.” For months afterward, I found myself returning to her response and the questions it provoked: What does it mean to belong at a school? Does belonging presuppose agreement? What place, if any, is there for a member of the community who holds viewpoints in opposition to the majority?
It’s time for schools to provide a forum for teachers to consider these types of questions, and school leaders should expect to be able to provide answers to some of them; a lively discussion is, for many, also a waste of valuable time if it leads no closer to a shared understanding of how to equip students to navigate our polarized society. Teachers deserve to know what the word “political” means at their school and whether the school believes that “politics” and education mix or whether they are incompatible. Teachers deserve guidance as to whether it is appropriate to share their own political opinions (like many, I am inclined to say probably not; in his essay, “Making a Case For Teacher Political Disclosure,” though, Wayne Journell makes a very creditable case as to why teachers should share their politics with students).
The most vexing question for many of the teachers I’ve talked to comes down to this: Where does it all end? If we encourage students to honor contradictory points of view, do we in essence welcome an endlessly subjective morality in which, in the name of ideological diversity, nothing is out of bounds? Is discrimination now acceptable? Teachers need to be gently led back out of that rabbit hole by their school leaders. Building our sense of empathy for those who hold contradictory worldviews does not require us to dilute our standards of care and respect. Do we allow a child to carry a Nazi banner into school to prove that competing ideologies are welcome? Of course not. We don’t, because such as emblem is irredeemably offensive, and no reasonable person would consider it to represent a legitimate perspective that deserves to be aired among school children. It’s OK to draw lines in the sand. And to the school leaders or teachers who then ask, But how are we supposed to know what is and is not acceptable in this realm? Who decides? The answer is, you do.
I am somewhat uneasy that, for many educators, the challenge of polarization feels less urgent that it did a year ago when all sights were set on the impending presidential election. There’s less risk of another Abby coming into class with her political joke this fall and, consequently, causing a stir that reminds us of our national divide. But the divide has not gone anywhere, it will not mend itself, and our students must be equipped to face it. If anything, the current, slightly less combustible political moment may in fact be all the more reason for us to carefully and thoughtfully curate opportunities for our students to reach across lines of divide; we may not be ambushed by flare-ups of ideological disagreement, so let’s be sure to offer students opportunities to practice their bridge-building skills for all the flare-ups that will come their way. The journey towards depolarization begins in schools, where the work, by necessity, starts with adults.
