Tips for Difficult Classroom Discussions about Politics

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 20:35:08 -0500
election2020

by Laura S. Hussey, Ph.D.

Director, Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

Some nervousness about discussing the election in class is understandable. But chances are that if you are a UMBC professor (because this is how we are!) you have already developed healthy relationships with your students that have shown them that you care for them and respect them as people, and you have established a classroom culture that encourages others to do the same. If this is the case, you are already a good part of the way to having a productive discussion on a difficult topic.

Getting Started

Spend some time as you prepare for the discussion thinking about the range of perspectives that you know (or might imagine) to be represented by the students in your class.

Challenge yourself to try to view the election as they might view it.

What are they likely to see as most at stake for themselves and the important people in their lives?

What are the aspects of their identities and life stories that might have contributed to their political preference?

What emotions are they likely to be experiencing?

What is the experience of discussing the election in your classroom likely to feel like for them?

Spend extra time in this empathy exercise on students whose identities or political views are most distant from your own.

Keep in mind that our political institutions are designed in a way that virtually forces people to choose between just two viable candidate options, but, based on public opinion data, most people:

Are more complex in their motivations than popular caricatures of liberals and conservatives might have us believe.

Have views that are less extreme than those of political elites and social media activists.

Have policy and other views that don’t line up perfectly with those of the Democratic or Republican candidate.

Creating a Productive Discussion Space

Set (tentative) goals for the discussion.

Think about your own goals for your class, as well as what your students might be seeking from the discussion.

Consider either before or early in the discussion asking the students what they would like to accomplish there.

Collaborate with the students to write and agree on ground rules for the discussion. If you did this already at the start of the semester, bring a copy of the rules to refresh everyone’s memory.

In my experience, students do an excellent job of proposing their own ground rules. But if you are looking for some concrete ideas to come in with, consider ones like these.

You may wish to give everyone space for emotional expression, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I also recommend coming prepared with a more analytical learning objective related to the subject matter of your course.

Some students seem to be more comfortable speaking up in discussions of this nature, and some might be feeling emotionally overloaded from the election while still intellectually curious.

An analytical topic could serve a useful cooling-off purpose, if needed, and might also provide a way of modeling how people can discuss political matters productively in spite of their personal differences.

For example, in the first session of my class on the public policy-making process that I taught after the 2016 election, an analytical question I brought with me was one that solicited students’ predictions about how public policy would change (or not) as a result of Donald Trump’s election.

It was a rich discussion because of what we had already covered over the semester about the large variety of factors that can facilitate or, perhaps more likely, frustrate policy change.

Consider taking your students’ emotional pulse at the start of a discussion, to see how they are feeling about the prospect of the discussion and/or about the election itself.

I like to anonymize this as best as I can.

For a few years now I have been using the polling tool, PollEverywhere, which can be used for instant polling from students’ smartphones or computers via text or web browser. Keep in mind that the free version of it limits you to 25 responses per question.

I take emotional pulses with a word cloud question; the resulting picture of emotional words—sometimes with a few nonsense words thrown in—often makes for an interesting conversation starter.

Don’t be afraid to, quoting my friends at UMBC’s Center for Democracy and Civic Life, “show up as a human being” by speaking frankly about your own anxieties, hopes, or other emotions in relation to the discussion. I find this freeing.

It’s also a good idea to be transparent with your students about the values or teaching philosophy that you are bringing into the discussion. If this is something you already do at the start of a semester, which is my approach, a reminder of the most important and relevant ones might be reassuring.

Ensuring Productive, Respectful Civic Discourse

My own view, though I acknowledge those who respectfully disagree, is that judgment of a position should not be conflated with judgment of a person.

While I rarely find this to be a problem, I stay ready as a discussion proceeds to redirect the framing should criticism start to get personal.

“Why might somebody believe that?” is a question I sometimes find useful.

This strategy reflects my great hopefulness about the power of positive personal relationships and a seek-to-understand approach to be conduits for long-term social change as well as short-term harmony, but again, I acknowledge those who respectfully disagree.

Various generic guidelines for healthy communication also apply to difficult classroom discussions.

These include demonstrating with your eye contact, vocal tone, facial expression, and other body language that you are authentically interested in and listening to what another has to say, and being attuned to the signals others are sending through such means.

Sometimes if I am not sure that I understand the point someone is trying to make, I will put it into my own words and ask the person to correct me if I am wrong before I proceed to respond or to invite others to respond.

In practice, I have found that discussions about politics in my classes rarely turn out to be difficult. Maybe this means I am doing something wrong. To some extent, it may reflect that my students tend to share a lot of political common ground. But I think our UMBC values are a big part of it, too, along with the desire that I think most of us have deep down to connect with and get along with each other as people.

Contact the author, Laura Hussey, at lhussey@umbc.edu.