A high school history teacher recently reported an ongoing problem in her classroom: Students aren’t arguing in class.
In an annual civics education survey conducted by my organization, the teacher described how the students were “afraid to speak up.” The reason, she wrote, was they “were afraid that they would be judged in a negative way by their peers.”
As America marks its 250th birthday and anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, that quiet classroom may tell us as much about the state of civic education as any test score or curriculum debate.
This historic milestone invites us to reflect on our nation’s founding ideals. Yet it arrives at a moment when respectful disagreement has become increasingly difficult to practice.
At a time when civic education should be preparing young people to participate thoughtfully in public life, many classrooms have become places where both teachers and students hesitate to speak. The challenge facing schools today is teaching the history of American constitutional democracy, while at the same time helping students develop the habits required of self-governance.
Young people don’t acquire civic virtue, knowledge, and skills automatically. These all must be taught, learned, and practiced, both at home and in schools. Students will inevitably encounter viewpoints that differ from their own and will get comfortable with respectful disagreement.
The Declaration of Independence itself reminds us that healthy civic life has always required disagreement. It emerged from debate, persuasion, moral conviction, and compromise. America was founded not on the absence of disagreement, but on the disciplined practice of it.
That practice as of late has been hard to uphold. Since 2021, dozens of states have enacted laws restricting or regulating how topics including or related to American history may be taught in public schools, which PEN America concludes has resulted in “government-mandated silencing.”
A 2023 RAND Corporation study found that two-thirds of K–12 public school teachers have chosen to limit discussions of political and social issues in their classrooms. Across every setting, teachers cited fear of upsetting parents and uncertainty about whether school leaders would support them if concerns arose.
The same pattern appears in the Bill of Rights Institute’s annual surveys of more than 14,000 history, civics, and social studies teachers. In all six years that we’ve been conducting the nationally representative survey, roughly 7 in 10 teachers reported feeling pressure to avoid discussing current events. They identified parents as the biggest source of that pressure.
Teachers aren’t avoiding difficult conversations because they lack conviction. They are navigating competing responsibilities with professionalism and care. But students learn as much from the climate of the classroom as they do from the curriculum.
When teachers become cautious about facilitating difficult conversations, students notice. According to a 2022 Knight Foundation survey, 44 percent of high school students say they’re not comfortable voicing disagreement with teachers or classmates in the classroom.
We see the same trend in our own research. Teachers describe students who hesitate to share opinions or censor themselves during discussions, and students validate this same story from the other side of the desk in student surveys.
The greatest challenge facing civic education is not that students disagree. It is that many young people are learning that remaining silent feels safer than engaging. They don’t want to risk losing their friends or social standing because of a contentious conversation.
When disagreement breaks down, two unhealthy patterns can emerge. First, polarization, where opponents increasingly see one another as enemies rather than fellow citizens. And second, but just as damaging, withdrawal. Students who never learn to express respectful dissent, question assumptions, defend their ideas with evidence, or revise their thinking after hearing others will carry those habits into college, the workplace, and civic life.
Civic education at its best cultivates a disposition of curiosity and friendship that invites disagreement: asking thoughtful questions, listening carefully, evaluating evidence, considering competing viewpoints, and learning how to disagree without questioning another person’s dignity. These skills, acquired alongside knowledge, can stay with young people long past their graduation.
Rather than eliminating disagreement, we need to manage it better. To do so, teachers, parents, and school leaders must rebuild social trust at the local level.
Teachers should be clear about their practice of viewpoint diversity, which challenges students to consider different perspectives. The highest compliment a teacher can receive is not agreement, but independence: Students might leave the classroom uncertain about their teacher’s politics, but they will be more confident in their own ability to think carefully, speak honestly, and listen generously.
Parents and guardians are their children’s primary educators. They can help teachers build classrooms with a diversity of viewpoints by practicing civil discourse at home.
School and district administrators, including superintendents, principals, and district lawyers, must actively support teachers in their facilitation of respectful, balanced discussions. They should model this in school board meetings and district and school town halls. Rather than sending signals that contentious topics should be shut down, school leaders should encourage teachers to facilitate debate in the classroom and defend them when they are criticized for doing so.
As America marks its 250th birthday, we should celebrate how profound disagreement and dissent has fueled American progress, from the writing of the Declaration itself to the 19th Amendment granting American women the right to vote to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. All of these hard-won gains began with argument, but brought the nation closer to what Frederick Douglass called the “saving principles” of liberty and equality for all.
If schools can help students recover the confidence to speak thoughtfully, listen respectfully, and disagree without fear, they will be doing more than recognizing 250 years of American self-governance. They will be preparing the next generation to continue it.
