Knowing America’s History Can Help Students with Election Anxiety
By Tyler Pare, 8th Grade American History Teacher
Elections are stressful.
This seems to be an oversimplified statement. However, it is a type of stress we have all experienced before, whether the election we participated in was for high school class president, captain of the middle school soccer team, or congressional delegates in the United States Congress. Such stress is perfectly natural. After all, voting is quite literally the attempt to comport the world to your beliefs in the face of a majority of voters who may or may not agree with your beliefs.
While elections are the cornerstone of democracy, there is something about them that can foment a sense of uncertainty and angst deep in the pits of our stomachs that goes well beyond the general sense of stress that we all have felt. This greater sense of anxiety might be caused by the belief that if our desired candidate or party fails to win, our hopes are dashed upon the rocks of the victorious party’s will. As adults who vote, we have the capacity to realize that there will be another election in two years or that there are several constitutionally protected avenues to participate in if our side loses so that we can still promote our visions for the future of America. For students, however, it may not be as apparent that there will always be another election, given their limited lived experiences and their knowledge of political history, consequently causing them greater anxiety about politics than it causes adults. It is therefore the role of a civics teacher to show students how the electoral processes work and how elections are subject to a far greater force than politics.
As a civics teacher, I see the discomfort my students have with elections and politics firsthand. Even though they are four years or more away from being active participants in democracy, they are inundated by political ads through their use of social media. Due to this, they are exposed to more political ads than most voting adults. Concordantly, Generation Z and Generation Alpha have unfiltered, front-row seats to all of the political tactics used in modern elections. This includes political ads that center on opportunistic attacks and misinformation. While it is good to be informed about politics at any age, the unfortunate side of this overexposure is that Generation Z and Generation Alpha are the least equipped demographic in our democracy to process the meaning of the attack ads and the torrent of misinformation these ads bombard them with.
It is no wonder that most of my students shut down or show little to no interest in my government and politics units. They go into these units conditioned to think that elections are just formalized shouting matches where one side castigates the other as evil. This understanding only exacerbates the natural stress we all feel during elections. However, students may feel more anxious and helpless than adults do when it comes to elections because they cannot vote. Furthermore, the way they are exposed to politics through social media may lead them to think that they cannot make a difference even if they were to get involved and vote in an election.
It is this anxiety and dismissal of elections by my students that has led me to change the way I approach my civics units. Rather than solely focusing on the institutions of our government, I tend to focus more on the political history of America and how history itself acts as a guide to relieve election-related anxiety. I explain to students that through the course of our history, America has seen countless political parties, political movements, and social upheavals and that each one of these events has challenged us to come to terms with the country we swore to be when the Declaration of Independence was signed. My goal is to get students to realize that in the face of every challenge, we have come out the other side as a country that revisits its founding promises and subsequently expands liberty for those who were denied it during a given period of time.
To get students to further understand this unique character trait of our political history, I have them partake in an annotated guide of the Constitution’s 27 Amendments. As we read and translate the 230-year-old language into “modern” English for each Amendment, I have students keep a list of every group that is enfranchised and protected as the Amendments were added over the course of our history. This activity allows students the chance to see that history is a more powerful force than politics or any one election. Students begin to realize that every time one generation in our history got something wrong or denied a specific group liberty, the next generation was willing to step up and make things right when they took hold of the reins of our democracy. By coming to this realization, students begin to evaluate elections not as anxiety-provoking winner-take-all contests, but rather as a single inning in a game to expand liberty for all.
In his farewell address, President Barak Obama eloquently observed about the political history of America:
“…that’s what we mean when we say America is exceptional — not that our nation has been flawless from the start, but that we have shown the capacity to change and make life better for [all]”.
This is what students need to understand about America during election seasons. The perfectly normal stress they feel towards politics needs to be placed within the context of what they can do over the long term to promote their visions for America’s future. We would not be where we are as an experiment in self-government if generations past did not come to realize that all people are deserving of dignity and liberty. The road to making a positive change for those who are denied political liberty is a long and difficult one — but it can be traversed. Having students realize this and study those who have traveled this road will build in them the confidence needed to know that they can make a difference and that they can overcome the political anxiety they feel.
In facing this anxiety, students will join the generations of Americans who did not shrink from political stresses but rather chose to see them as opportunities to shape the course of our country’s history.
Tyler Pare is in his 10th year as a history teacher and currently works at Hollis Brookline Middle School in Hollis, New Hampshire. Passionate about civic education, Tyler enjoys helping students make connections between their lives and American history. Always looking for his next academic journey, Tyler has begun to focus his career on making sure students understand the importance of their role as the next generation that will have their say in the actions of American government.
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