UW–Madison’s Diana Hess, dean of the School of Education and the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education, was interviewed for a recent episode of the “Fishing for Problems” podcast, hosted by Matt Schneidman.
The episode, titled “Classroom Conversations in an Era of Political Polarization,” is part of a larger series on how to engage students in controversial political topics in the K-12 classroom. The discussion focused on a 2013 paper, titled “Classroom Deliberation in an Era of Political Polarization,” and a 2015 book, titled “The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education,” which Hess co-authored with Paula McAvoy.
During the episode, Hess said she thinks insulating students from the political world in schools is “a huge mistake.” However, she recognized the difficulty of teaching young people to engage politically in today’s “highly polarized, highly partisan political system,” within institutions that “are expected to be — and should be — nonpartisan.”
“You’re always going to have difference,” Hess said. “If you don’t have difference, you don’t have democracy.”
To help students learn how to think about challenging political issues and to talk with people who have different views, Hess said, we need to “see schools as a part of democracy,” not as insulated or separate from it, and we need to use schools as a place where discussion about these issues happens.
“If we don’t,” Hess said, “it’s likely that many students are not going to learn that, or at least they are not going to learn how to do that with people who have different points of view.”
Listen to the full episode on Podbean, here.