We can rebuild civility by teaching kids how to debate, properly, in school
Campaign debates are usually viewed through a partisan lens, but commentators from across the political spectrum agreed that the first presidential debate of 2020 was unacceptable and uncivil— a relentless bombast punctuated by interruptions and insults. Columnists fromGeorgeWill to staff writers fromthe Atlantic to The NewYork Times have issued calls to cancel or dramatically reshape the remaining presidential debates. The vice presidential debate Wednesday was less raucous, but still the ruleswere flouted.
The Trump-Biden debate Sept. 29was a real debacle, reflecting the degradation of our national conversation that’s fueling dangerous political polarization. As Republicans shift right and Democrats move left, we increasingly view the other party as a “threat to the nation’swell-being,” according to a PewResearch Center report. The first presidential debate showed just howfar off course this trend has taken us. Basic debate ruleswere ignored, leading to an unstructured, sometimes angry free-for-all.
The inclination may be to shut down or give up on debates, but the real lesson is thatwe need more, not fewer debates in our society. It’s just thatwe need those debates to adhere to agreed upon formats, including listening to opponents and grounding persuasion in evidence and reasoning. In a large, diverse country, Americans have widely differing viewpoints, and structured debate is a means for people to disagree respectfully and productively. We cannot overcome the dangerous polarization trend in this country either by denying our disagreements or by hoping to bludgeon our opponents.
Perhaps the best place to foster debate is in American schools. As the leading educators at a public school in Brooklyn and a Chicago-based national education services organization, we believewe should be equipping our students— the future American electorate— with the thinking and reasoning skills necessary to make, respond to and evaluate arguments.
Our government leadersmay have forgotten howto debate effectively, but our schoolteachers can play a vital role in guiding us back to norms for civil, productive disagreement.
The benefits will be twofold: Our kids will learn howto engage in robust discussions about pressing issues, and the next generation of American voters will come to demand more fromtheir leaders.
Our students need to understand that, donewell, debate is a criticalway to inquire deeply into and engage personally with issues that matter. As educators, we can showthem this by hosting classroom debates on essential questions within the school curriculum or on public controversies affecting students’ lives. Butwemust take the rules seriously: Intentionality about evidence standards, refutation requirements and speech burdens place guardrails on the discussion, focusing it on the facts and what they mean. We need to teach not only rules and methods, but also why embracing them is essential to robust, productive debate.
These lessons aren’t just about teaching kids to engage; they’re about teaching them to demand more of their leaders. That our democracy has sunk so far below civil, reasoned political discourse is reflecting something back to us about our education system. To paraphrase Shakespeare: The fault, dear reader, may not be in our (TV) stars, but in ourselves. To change the decision calculus of our politicians, our best hope is to educate amore critical, evidence-examining, openminded, rational American polity. Brookings Institution senior fellowRobert Litan develops this line of thinking in his recently published book on debating in schools, “Resolved.”
Unfortunately, educators have shied away from giving argumentation and debate a prominent place in public schools. Some teachers are averse to controversy. Some have awell-intentioned but misguided view that academic argument entrenches division. Others are unfamiliar with the pedagogy.
After the first presidential debate, Harvard University political scientist Danielle Allen observed that few of us have experience with debates anymore.
“To think of conversation with structured rules, to practice taking turns and so forth— once thatwas something thatwas practiced extensively throughout the American educational system,” she said. Not anymore. “There’s less time in school in these areas and less opportunity for young people to practice these kinds of skills.”
But structured efforts to use argumentation and debating as important tools in our classrooms can teach students the foundation and rules of debate, and can restore our ability to productively process disagreement. For too long, we have been looking for a path around division and disagreement. The best path forward is to travel right through them: by teaching in our public schools and demanding from our leaders reasoned, evidence-based argumentation, through civil and routine debate.
Les Lynn is the founder and director of Argument-Centered Education, which helps schools become effective in organizing and implementing instruction around debatable questions at the center of K-12 curriculum. Eric Tucker is the co-founder and executive director of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter Schools. He leads EquitybyDesign.org and is a co-founder of the Educating All Learners Alliance.