Sometimes, students’ words take our breath away. This happened last spring when I read survey responses from students at Girls Preparatory School (TN). A sixth grader wrote: “If I go into politics, I now have the discussion skills to be the first politician to listen to others and ask questions and value other opinions.” A ninth grader shared: “I feel like I have learned how to disagree with each other’s ideas, not whole entire identities.” These students had just participated in R.E.A.L., the school discussion program I built after working as a teacher and administrator in independent schools.
Learning to listen to others, ask questions, value other opinions—and ultimately, disagree with ideas and not identities—is at the heart of the challenge schools face when it comes to civil discourse during this presidential election season. But these skills are not only relevant during election times: Students need discussion skills year-round for academic engagement, friendship, citizenship, and leadership. Conversation is how school happens, in classrooms and conference rooms, on the field and the quad. In most schools, discussion skills are truly mission-critical—this fall and beyond.
Today’s students are growing up in a world in which civility is at an all-time low, live discussion is scary, and algorithms short-circuit civic literacy. Yet, amid this landscape, independent schools are uniquely positioned to be a countercultural force for good. They have highly relational cultures, diverse communities, and missions that celebrate character and citizenship. To make good on mission statements and intentionally promote civil discourse in our polarized world, schools need to build cultures that celebrate civility as well as systems for teaching discourse skills. This two-pronged strategy will serve schools well far beyond election season.
Defining a Culture of Civility
The civility imperative is deeply relevant to independent schools. In an August 2023 Atlantic article, David Brooks sums up “How America Got Mean,” positing that our current cultural moment—one in which compromise has become a sign of individual weakness rather than collective strength—is derived from a combination of economic, technological, social, spiritual, and academic forces. He notes that this includes the rise of “emotivism,” a phenomenon where “if you feel it, you believe it is right.”
Education thought leader Grant Lichtman’s new taxonomy for 21st century learning relates these trends directly to teaching and learning. His new framework updates Bloom’s taxonomy to make the case that, in today’s world, civility is the foundational skill upon which deep learning and belonging rest.
In connecting the civility crisis to school life, it can be helpful to encourage faculty members to be curious about students’ apparent incivility. It’s easy to be critical and blame parents for kids’ poor manners and apparent intolerance. But it’s worth considering how today’s online experiences concretely influence their actions.
For example, on screens, children don’t have to wait for others to speak before expressing themselves. If they don’t like content, they can swipe or disengage with no consequences. Further, algorithms condition students to expect the world to be full of people like them. When you add those conditions to the biologically hard-wired self-absorption of childhood and adolescence and a world that offers few models of effective civil discourse, it is not surprising that today’s students struggle to engage deeply with each other.
So, how can schools restore and normalize civility? They must first define what it means and looks like in their own school communities. To do so, schools might look to their mission statements and values to identify keywords and phrases that highlight what it means to be civil. Younger students might hear a teacher talk about the definition of civility in this way: “At our school, civility means paying attention to each other and consistently making decisions that benefit the community.”
When working with older students, teachers might consider asking the students to create community norms like Shady Side Academy (PA) has done. Another approach might be to orient around the recently published “Thriving in a World of Pluralistic Contention: A Framework for Schools,” created by a task force led by John Austin, head of Deerfield Academy (MA), with support from The E.E. Ford Foundation. It defines civility in terms of: “conscientiousness of expression, courage of expression, and toleration of expression.”
Leaning into a Culture of Civility
Of course, civility must be modeled and celebrated as much as it is prescribed, and faculty and staff can do things to make it visible and explicit, like greeting each student by name as they file into classrooms. Students need to experience how being part of a community requires a million little personal sacrifices, whether that’s complying with a dress code or listening intently to an idea they don’t agree with.
In the aggregate, these acts of self-discipline are not oppressive; they are the price we pay for the support and relationships in a community. Ultimately, small sacrifices lead to having a macro impact. Civility norms can become the very foundation of belonging, which is the prerequisite for any real discussion across differences.
If a focus on civility allows schools to create the cultural preconditions for the types of conversations we hope to have, then a focus on discourse allows schools to get tactical: How do we teach the skills students need to talk—and truly listen—to each other?
Teaching Discourse Skills
Through my research and work with schools, I’ve focused on how to teach face-to-face discussion skills within K–12 contexts. My two most important findings are that these skills are teachable—and that they need to be explicitly taught before the contentious moments when kids need them the most.
I have found that most educators intuit the “teachability” point but lack the tools and frameworks for intentional, proactive discussion-skills instruction. Traditionally in independent schools, students learn discussion skills organically. Most teachers use discussion as a learning activity (a way to engage with content) rather than approaching discussion skills as a learning objective.
This approach treats discussion like a pickup sport: Everyone shows up with a vague notion of what discussion is (though some students, like extroverts or students who come from discussion-rich households, may have an advantage over others), the teacher sets some local parameters (the topic, the protocol, the grading system), and then everyone “has a discussion.” Over time and under the leadership of master teachers, students get better at “playing the game,” but they are never explicitly taught discussion skills.
A skills-based approach to discussion is more proactive. Rather than waiting for kids to figure it out, it breaks the art of discussion into teachable skills. This focus on skills rather than content underscores that the goal of a discussion in a school context is to teach students how to communicate, not what to say—a critical message in today’s political moment.
Beyond building a common language, what does it look like to adopt a skills-based approach to discussion instruction?
In elementary schools, a skills-based approach to discussion focuses on discrete skills. Just as a child learns to dribble, shoot, and pass in soccer, in discussion they can learn to relate, use evidence, ask, and listen. Come middle school, it’s time to scrimmage. Students begin to string the skills together, making conscious decisions about when to use what skill. When should I pass or shoot? When should I ask or listen? When do I get to decide and when is there a rule I have to abide by? In high school, it's about helping students see discussion as a team sport where they all use different skills to advance a common goal and debrief afterwards (with a focus on how they "played," not whether they "won or lost").
Importantly, a skills-based approach to discussion empowers the teacher to be a coach who watches carefully from the sidelines and offers specific, skills-based feedback rather than a referee who spends all their energy keeping up and calling fouls as the game is played.
The concept of skills-based approaches is not new, even if the application to discussion is. Skills-based approaches underpin the mastery models for teaching and learning embraced by many independent schools and have long been associated with increases in equity, agency, and metacognitive engagement.
My experience studying student results across 50 independent schools suggests a skills-based model for discussion can also build more than academic skills. For example, in the student surveys R.E.A.L. administers every three discussions, we find quantitative and qualitative increases in trust, sense of belonging, and confidence disagreeing.
In our polarized world, a skills-based approach to discussion can help build the skill sets and mindsets students need to have real discussions across difference. For our schools to become communities where civil discourse thrives, we need to build both cultures of civility and skills for discourse. Even in a volatile, uncertain world, two things are clear: The need for civil discourse will outlast the presidential election, and the ability to engage in face-to-face discussion is mission-critical for schools. This is a conversation worth having.