High school teachers search for lessons during divisive election

Published 12:00 am Thursday, November 3, 2016

During his Advanced Placement Government class at Beaverton High School, teacher Peter Edwards projected an image of the latest presidential electoral map, with state polling numbers displayed in red, blue and purple.

He explained to students the likely paths that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would have to follow in order to reach the golden number of 270 electoral votes and win the election on Tuesday.

“So if they tie, do they toss a coin?” said one student, laughing.

“Maybe they’d fight a civil war,” offered another.

Based on the current political climate, that second suggestion seemed, to some students, not entirely implausible.

During the past 18 months, teachers in the Beaverton School District and across the nation have been asking themselves a difficult question: what role should the classroom play during an election season that’s shifted the paradigm of public discourse?

“This has been by far the most unusual election,” said Edwards, who has been a social studies teacher through seven presidential campaign seasons over the past 23 years and now serves as department chair.

The unusual dynamic this year has constituted an educational opportunity in itself. But scandals, heated political rhetoric and outsized candidate personas have made it more difficult for teachers to hedge in classroom discussions and focus on traditional issues ranging from health care to tax policy to immigration.

“Usually, by this point we’ve done a thorough job of seeing where each candidate is, but this year there’s been so much going on,” Edwards told his students.

During Edwards’ class last week, students used their Chromebooks to pull up an online quiz on ProCon.org which asked multiple choice questions on more than 75 policy-related issues. Students learned how much they had in common with each candidate’s positions.

As they worked through questions, many students found the issues to be more multifaceted than they expected.

“These are loaded, complicated topics,” said junior Maddie Campbell as she scrolled through the quiz.

Some teachers have kept the focus on local elections as a way of highlighting the political process.

At Aloha High School, government students participated in question-and-answer sessions this week with both U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat, and her Republican challenger, Brian Heinrich.

“It brought the idea of political involvement to life for a lot of the students,” said Scott Baker, a social studies teacher at Aloha. “Everyone can have a place in the process,”

Teachers wonder when to speak out

For some students, participation in the political process has been overshadowed by campaign rhetoric that’s made them feel unsafe. Many have reacted strongly to Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric about undocumented immigrants.

“I’ve never had a student, until this year, cry in class about a possible election outcome, just out of worry for their family,” said Amit Kobrowski, a history teacher at the International School of Beaverton.

Earlier this year, students all over Washington County staged walkouts to protest the actions of a student at Forest Grove High School who put up a sign reading “Build a Wall.”

In some respects, the magnified focus on the candidates themselves has opened a discussion about the qualities expected in a leader.

“For both candidates, how important is ethics and truthfulness? How important is personal behavior? What are the components of leadership?” said Edwards.

Teachers have thought hard about whether to stay silent or take a stand against unconscionable language that wouldn’t be tolerated in high school classrooms and hallways.

“Are you being political if you take a side, or are you being political if you don’t take a side?” wondered Bryan Lurie, head of the social studies department at Sunset High School.

Most recently, a number of teachers spoke out unambiguously after a leaked tape from 2005 showed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump making lewd comments about women that, to many, suggested sexual assault.

“I thought it was really (important) as an adult male teacher to talk about my experience, that it’s not at all what I hear in the locker room. I didn’t want to allow that to be normalized,” said Kobrowski.

“I asked my students, male and female, to talk about that with one another,” he added. “The voices of other students are probably more powerful than my own.”

Traditional models don’t apply

McCreery said his students at Westview are approaching the election with a surprising level-headedness.

“Some of the most mature conversations I’ve had during this election have been with 15-year-olds in my class,” he said. “They know who they support, and there isn’t a whole lot of vitriol.”

Some students with more conservative viewpoints said they often feel like ideological minorities and expressed caution about voicing their opinions at school.

Ellie Aaberg said the gap between what she characterizes as a conservative family environment and a liberal peer group has helped her form more nuanced opinions.

“You can learn and compare both by hearing both sides. You realize what you value,” said Aaberg, a senior who was rooting for John Kasich during the Republican primaries.

After completing the policy quiz, her top two candidate matches were Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

“A lot of us got third-party results,” said Aaberg during class discussion. “We kind of feel disenfranchised from the main parties.”

Pat McCreery, who teaches social studies at Westview High School, has found that the way his students identify with issues doesn’t fit old models of party alignment. For instance, many students who identify as Republican readily support same-sex marriage.

“Younger people have a diversity of views that don’t fit with the political spectrum,” he said.

The proliferation of information on social media has influenced the way students are engaging with current events.

“They will come into class having seen the news filtered to them through their social media. And there’s a certain coarseness to some of what they see,” said Edwards. But in other senses, social media is helping students stay engaged.

“I think we’ve seen trends of people becoming more politically active because issues they care about have been brought up during this election. They’ve paid more attention,” said Edwards.

Many educators are using the classroom as a space to teach about historical context, reminding their students that divisive rhetoric about immigration policy, for instance, is not unprecedented.

“We approach the election an from intellectual and philosophical point of view,” said McCreery, who encouraged his students to watch the debates with a scrutinous eye and look for substance.

During class, Edwards played campaign advertisements supporting both Clinton and Trump. He asked students to consider the rhetorical strategies employed and their effectiveness.

“They attack things that are relatable to most people,” said one student.

“They’re using fear, trying to get an emotional reaction,” said another.

Many teachers explained that they try to shift a preoccupation with personality towards a macro-level examination of that phenomenon itself.

“Everything is now 140 characters,” said Edwards. “Class lasts a lot longer than the length of a tweet, so we have time to try and build that in.”