In the minds of many dedicated civic educators, two deep instincts are clashing as Donald Trump dominates the news media and the Republican presidential race.<\/p>\n
One instinct is to try to be as neutral\u00a0as possible about issues and candidates.\u00a0It’s dangerous for an arm of the state, a public school, to take sides on\u00a0political issues. Citizens\u00a0are forced to pay for public education. Kids are especially impressionable and form a\u00a0captive audience in the public school classroom. Teachers have great power since they can\u00a0influence students’\u00a0educational progress and economic success.\u00a0Arguably, the most ethical\u00a0way for a public school teacher to treat students\u00a0and their families is as bearers of authentic political views that should be respected in the classroom. Furthermore, students can learn a great deal\u00a0by wrestling with genuine ideological diversity. Arguing from diverse perspectives is a challenging educational practice that teaches reasoning,\u00a0interpretation, and perspective-taking. Finally, we suffer from a particular problem today: ideological polarization and a\u00a0failure to interact productively across partisan lines. The social studies classroom–as Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy<\/a> show–almost always harbors ideological diversity and can be a precious place to cultivate productive discussions.<\/p>\n The other instinct\u00a0is to preserve\u00a0the constitutional republic by teaching students to honor and protect\u00a0its core principles when they are threatened from within or without. The ultimate test of civic education is the\u00a0graduate’s\u00a0readiness to resist assaults on human rights and the rule of law–if necessary, with her\u00a0life. We must learn to be\u00a0upstanders, not bystanders. In the Federal Republic of Germany, this outcome is called “civil courage.” A measure of successful civic education might arise\u00a0if a new authoritarian ordered a particular minority group to wear the equivalent of the Nazis’ yellow star. In that case, every<\/em>\u00a0citizen who had learned Zivilcourage<\/em> would\u00a0put the star on.\u00a0In the US, civil courage\u00a0is a central goal of\u00a0certain civic education programs, such as Facing History and Ourselves <\/a>(whose roots were in Holocaust education), but it’s also consistent with provisions in many state standards documents.<\/p>\n This year, one of our major parties is likely to nominate a man who has been called, by leading figures in his own party,\u00a0a threat to fundamental constitutional principles and human rights. Under such\u00a0circumstances, the two agendas I’ve presented above come into conflict.<\/p>\n For instance, normally I’d recommend\u00a0k-12 teachers to assign their students to debate the issues in the presidential campaign. I think they should often assign students to sides so that they\u00a0don’t just argue from their own beliefs. But would you assign a\u00a0student of Mexican heritage or\u00a0a Muslim student to take the side of Donald Trump? If not, why would you assign any<\/em> student to that role?<\/p>\n In 2012, according to a CIRCLE poll<\/a>, 72% of high school government teachers required\u00a0their students to watch a presidential debate. I endorse\u00a0that idea. But when the debate was like last night’s fiasco,\u00a0how should the assignment be presented and how should the experience be debriefed? More than one of the candidates behaved in ways that would be completely unacceptable in an 8th grade classroom. Should the teacher note that?<\/p>\n Andy Sabl wrote<\/a>\u00a0some years ago:<\/p>\n Professors worship at the altar of \u201cmaybe.\u201d We prize the intellectual courage to say, \u201cI\u2019m not sure what\u2019s right.\u201d In the process, we slight what the Germans have learned — the hard way — to call civil courage: saying that you do know what\u2019s right even when those around you are getting it backward. Training students in supple thought, do we undermine decent character?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u00a0agree, especially during the year of Trump. But\u00a0it’s not\u00a0easy to decide precisely what counts as an\u00a0assault on essential\u00a0values rather than\u00a0an expression of free speech in a rough-and-tumble competitive democracy. In Germany, the label “civil courage” gets used<\/a> for people who stand up for immigrants–and also<\/a> for people who criticize immigrants in the face of\u00a0what they decry as political correctness.<\/p>\n