This Election, It’s Clear What Our Students Need to Be Learning.
More than ever, we need to think critically about politics. But how do we teach future voters to do that?
At one point or another over the last year, we’ve all heard complaints about the lack of meaningful discourse as both major parties move further apart on the ideological spectrum and the election season continues to look more like season one of a cable drama.
Despite the dearth of substance, the American public has an unprecedented amount of content to wade through: not just speeches and debates, but ads, punditry, tweets, snaps, gifs, comments, and memes.
Think about how complex it is to consume information these days. It’s not as simple as, a generation ago, watching a speech on TV or reading the local daily newspaper. There are so many different ways that information is presented in the 21st century, and part of civic duty now seems to include sifting through what’s reliable and what merely reinforces our opinions.
Part of my job is figuring out how exactly to help future voters think critically about the information they’re presented with. I graduated with a journalism degree (where the ability to think critically is practically a requirement for graduation) and entered the education world. Now, I work at ThinkCERCA, an ed-tech startup focused on helping students consume information, think about it critically, and express their points of view effectively. We help students learn how to effectively state a Claim, support it with Evidence, explain their Reasoning, address Counterarguments, and use Audience-appropriate language (ThinkCERCA).
These skills are absolutely essential to meaningful civic engagement — but they’re not always modeled by candidates or in the news. Could you imagine, though, if every pundit or politician backed up their claims with evidence and clearly addressed opposing arguments?
So the question becomes: How do we train students to engage with civic discourse?
To start, we ask them to think critically about the information they’re presented with.
Think about the following graph from FiveThirtyEight that covers the changes in non-agriculture job numbers from a year earlier. It shows how “U.S. employers added 255,000 jobs in July — significantly more than economists had forecast — and job growth in May and June was stronger than initially reported.”
But if a person wasn’t familiar with how to read the graph or didn’t take the time to look at it carefully and consider the context, he or she might just glance at the lines and think there were fewer jobs in 2016 compared with 2015, when in fact this graph shows that jobs increased in 2016 over 2015, but at a lower rate than 2015 over 2014.
And it’s not enough to simply comprehend words or data points. One must also understand the author’s purpose and bias, the context in which the information is being presented, the allusions, how the structure of the information is being used to appeal to a particular audience. You must be able to evaluate the evidence and reasoning being presented — or notice the lack thereof. These aren’t just “reading” skills.
Civically engaged people also need to understand scientific evidence and practices to determine the best policies to support energy needs, genetic research, and technological innovation; they need to understand mathematics to make sense of budget proposals, demographic trends, and statistics on policy impacts; and they need to understand history, law, and geography to determine the best ways for our government to relate to its people and to other nations around the world. A broad base of knowledge allows people to understand the context and meaning of what they read in deeper ways.
Take, for example, this Fox News story about a June 2016 poll that reports a huge increase in the U.S. public’s concerns about terrorist attacks:
A large 84-percent majority thinks most Americans today are feeling more nervous than confident about stopping terrorist attacks. That’s up significantly from 50 percent in 2005 (the last time the question was asked by Fox).
To understand these statistics and make meaning from them for yourself, you need to have knowledge of the historical context and also of how to appropriately compare and contrast statistics. This poll was conducted two weeks after a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando in which the perpetrator claimed allegiance to ISIS before murdering 49 people; in comparison, no major terrorist attacks occurred in the United States in 2005. Viewers must think critically about the context of the surveys and ask themselves: Why are these the two polls being compared?
Not all of the students we work with are voting just yet, but we’re optimistic. If we can help the next generation learn to think critically and engage civically, maybe we’ll see the rise of substantive, meaningful political discourse.
Even if they aren’t eligible to vote, there are many other ways students can express their points of view. They can volunteer for political candidates and causes they support. They can join rallies and protests in support of the changes they want to see in their communities. They can sign petitions and call local representatives to make sure they know which issues matter most. They can write letters to the editor of local or national publications or speak with others in their community about issues of importance to persuade them to believe their points of view.
And, if you are eligible, you can and should vote. Use all of the information you’ve consumed and all of the critical thinking you’ve done about that information to inform your choice at the voting booth.
Our focus is making sure students can state and support their claims effectively; your vote is the most powerful claim you can make as a citizen.
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in learning more about how to help students think critically this election season, give these resources a go:
