High school students today must be put through the gauntlet of confronting
real viewpoint diversity and learning to manage differences if our nation is to
move out of its current polarized paralysis and actually create citizens.

My thoughts about high school came into sharp focus when I recently had the opportunity to share some ideas with the Academic Engagement Network, a collegiate faculty group which seeks to oppose efforts to delegitimize Israel and also to promote campus free expression and academic freedom.

While I knew my words about open inquiry would resonate with most
attendees, I framed them around my own experiences in high school, college, and
now as a professor. In sharing my own story, I was reminded that too many high
school students today are leaving school ill-prepared for life in a raucous,
diverse, and polarized society such as ours. When students head off to higher
education, they enter a world with mob rule and a leftist orthodoxy that dictates
the curriculum in many places and regularly produces young adults who are
utterly incapable of thinking critically, much less able to contemplate belief
systems that challenge their own.

To combat the indoctrination on our nation’s college and
university campuses and train good citizens more generally, I realized that high
schools must be the area of focus for all Americans, for it is in one’s teens
that so much value formation occurs and thus the skills and ability to
question, debate, and think is critically formed.

In my own high school experience in a pluralistic,
non-denominational Jewish day school in the Philadelphia area, I came face to face
with questions that challenged my identity and worldview on an almost daily
basis. At Akiba Hebrew Academy, I had no choice but to form my own opinions on a
wide swath of issues from Sabbath observance to questions of gender equity and
keeping kosher.

The wide band of beliefs and practices at Akiba forced me and my
classmates to not only think deeply about our values, but to understand and
respect the views of those who thought and lived differently than ourselves. Some
days were awkward and uncomfortable, but that is part of the learning and
finding one’s voice. These lessons have been
critical to my teaching, research, and writing and commitment to diversity in
the 25 years since I graduated.

This unusual and deeply pluralistic approach to education is
exactly what is missing in so many curricula around the nation today, religious
or otherwise. Even today, the school states that its students “engage energetically, intentionally,
and consciously with diversity” and actively seek “understanding through
meaningful, respectful dialogue” which results in graduates who are prepared to confront the
complexities of the world. Without such commitments from our schools, where
will young people learn the ability to compromise and accept others’ views as
valid and legitimate? It certainly won’t happen in college.

Regrettably, the kinds of formative experiences that I had in high school are hard to come by amid the proliferation of speech policing and the decline of civics education across the country. Sadly, survey data have found that a majority of high school students (52 percent) now believe it would be acceptable to disinvite speakers if some students might perceive the speaker’s message as offensive or biased. Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of students support instituting codes of conduct that restrict potentially offensive or biased speech on their respective high school campuses. And 86 percent of students support “safe spaces,” or areas of campus designed to be free from allegedly threatening actions, ideas, or conversations. The idea of shutting down and limiting speech that could be “hurtful” to some is unacceptable in a learning environment and antithetical to education itself.

High school students need to be taught the value of
debate, free speech, and civil discourse; they are clearly not. When asked
about the acceptability for students to protest and shout down a speaker, 31
percent of high school students recently reported that shouting down a speaker
is permissible always or some of the time. Another 46 percent believe shouting
down a speaker is rarely acceptable but can be acceptable nonetheless. Over
three-quarters of students today (78 percent) support trying to silence
disagreement, while just 22 percent say is it never acceptable.

While my own education was messy and tumultuous, it
made me a more thoughtful and well-rounded person. I had an unusual experience
that should actually be the norm, and those of us in the education profession need
to confront our students with the fact that they will and should occasionally
feel upset, uncomfortable and unsettled by new information and perspectives.
That is how learning happens: through shattering norms and bursting echo
chambers so that ideas may flow freely. A good scholastic program should have
something in it to upset and challenge everyone, and high school is where we
must do this.

Samuel J. Abrams is professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

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