Teaching the Election in Politically Charged Times

The 2024 election is anything but easy to teach in a classroom today  where fears range from community backlash, restrictive state policies, and job security. For many teachers, the election is a topic to avoid, but Lecturer Eric Soto-Shed insists we're missing a real opportunity by doing so.

“We’re at a crisis right now in terms of Americans belief in our fundamental democratic system – not for this candidate or that candidate but does the system work…” Soto-Shed says, noting a recent Gallup poll showing that only 28% of Americans are satisfied with democracy. “I think that’s a tragic number. And I think schools are the place where we can get folks not only engaged in the process, but also connected to the process, believing in the process.”

He sees teacher expertise and classrooms as a place to create a nurturing learning environment for students. Teaching the election can foster civic engagement, as data shows students are more likely to vote and trust democratic processes when educated on them.

“We can't avoid these hard conversations because they're going to happen anyway. It's just a swipe away on a phone or click on the dial. And students are going to be exposed to these rhetoric charged topics, really disparaging comments, different points of view. Why don't we use our schools as a place where we can really have real meaningful deep conversation around differences, around important issues?” he says.

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Soto-Shed offers strategies for navigating these challenges, such as focusing on critical thinking skills, connecting election topics to broader course themes, and presenting issues factually without heavy bias. Finally, he highlights the emotional and logistical challenges of post-election classroom discussions, particularly during highly contentious election cycles.

Transcript

Jill Anderson: I am Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. 

Eric Soto-Shed knows how challenging it is to teach the election in classrooms, especially during politically charged times, but he also knows it's necessary. He's an experienced teacher whose work focuses on civics curriculum development and teacher training. As tensions rise in the current political landscape, many teachers face difficult decisions about how or if they should incorporate election topics into their classrooms. Soto-Shed said, "There's ways to talk about the election, even if you face community pressure or restrictive state policies." He stresses how important it is to teach the election for our democracy and to prepare future young voters. First, I asked him whether schools are actively teaching the election now.

Eric Soto-Shed: It's a great question. It's also, I think, a very broad question. The curriculum spans many grades, many subjects, and if you look at it at its broadest level, I think survey data is showing us that the majority of teachers are not planning on teaching the election. But you also need to ask the question, does a ninth grade trigonometry teacher have the same responsibility, capacity, or skillset to teach the election as say maybe an eighth grade civics teacher? I think that we are seeing some reluctance from even our most skilled social studies teachers and civics teachers as well, because this is a particularly charged moment in our political environment. And there's also a lot of policies around what can and cannot be taught in schools. And I would certainly say there are many teachers that are excited and skilled and really digging into the election, but I think there are more teachers that I don't like to see that are dissuaded or don't really see the possibility for them to engage their students around this election.

Jill Anderson: We live in this contentious political climate right now, and I imagined educators would be afraid to discuss this or might be getting discouraged by administrators to go there in their classrooms. What would you say are some of the fears that teachers have when it comes to this topic in their classrooms?

Eric Soto-Shed: I think when you think about the fears, what are the obstacles, what are the things that are getting in the way of teaching? I think the first ones that I would name would be community or social pressures. And this can be particularly prevalent in places where our teachers' political beliefs don't match the communities. This could be conservative teacher in a liberal community, a liberal teacher and a conservative teacher, or oftentimes the most challenging when you know you have parents and families that are walking all across the political spectrum. And I think there's just a real fear of, again, given this charge heightened moment that you'll be exploring things in class with students that will get back to either the family or the community, and you'll get a lot of blow back from that. I think that's one source of the fear.

The second, which I think is to be a hundred percent honest, a tragic moment in our educational landscape is that there are just state and local policies that are forbidding the teaching of certain content that could be related to election. I think we have now at least 18 states that have bans against what we call divisive content. And I think that much of the either issues or rhetoric currently centered in the presidential election might touch on such content. And there's actual real fear for your job, which is very different than blow back because of these policies. In fact, Texas has gone as far as to ban any kind of interaction with elected officials. I remember as a ninth grade civics teacher, I did the classical, "This was Bush two," when I was teaching.

And talked to him about what we're seeing about the policies and what we think about and we're trying to advocate and that got kids excited. We got a letter back from the president, and those types of interactions are now banned in at least one state or that general interaction with election officials. I think the policies create another fear. Then the third I think is a little bit more mundane, but really impact, it's just coverage in terms of teachers feeling like, "Oh, I have certain content, whether it's tested content, standards, content, what principals want to see, what the school initiative is." And the idea of slowing down for something that's not in the curriculum I think is another mild fear that has resulted in teachers not engaging in the election.

Jill Anderson: What are we losing by just avoiding this topic in the classroom?

Eric Soto-Shed: A lot. It's a really profound missed opportunity when we're not engaging with the elections. Let me lift this up in a few different ways. Right now, according to a recent Gallup poll, 28% of Americans are satisfied with democracy. That's down more than half of what it was in the early-1990s where it was 60%, so we're at a crisis right now in terms of Americans belief in our fundamental democratic system, not for this candidate or that candidate, but does the system work? Should I be engaged? Will the system work to support its community members? I think that's a tragic number. And I think schools are the place where we can get folks not only engaged in the process, but also connected to the process, believing in the process. And when we're not talking about elections, we're missing an opportunity under the expertise of teachers and in the nurturing learning environment of a classroom to really bring students and young people into that.

Another, I think really concrete data point comes out for some research where they circle out of Tufts University looked at what happens when teachers teach students about voting and teach students about actually how to register to vote? And those students were twice as likely to believe that voting and participating in democracy is going to work. And it's really evidence that what we do with our young people really will translate into what young voters do as they get involved formally in the political system. I think that's one missed opportunity. I think it's also a missed opportunity for the actual work of schools. It's an opportunity to have real discussions. This is what we're trying to do in our social studies classes, in our English language arts classes and our civic classes is to have real discussions about real issues where different perspectives that really matter and connect to both values and policies and content.

When you talk about authentic work, which we often say should be the driver of education, it doesn't get more authentic than this. And to miss out on that opportunity I think is really unfortunate. If you're going to have these discussions that are charged and polarized and difficult, what better place to have them than in a school setting with an educator with some skill sets, with some training to help facilitate those conversations?

A colleague, maybe four or five years ago really impressed upon me, we can't avoid these hard conversations because they're going to happen anyway. It's just a swipe away on a phone or click on the dial. And students are going to be exposed to these rhetoric charged topics, really disparaging comments, different points of view. Why don't we use our schools as a place where we can really have real meaningful deep conversation around differences, around important issues? And in some respects, what I really believe is that schools, young people, and teachers can actually be a model for some of the grown-ups in Congress who don't seem to be able to talk to each other. If we really want to see the full possibility of schools as, I would say, the exemplary democratic institution, we need to have these hard conversations about real issues that the election is focused squarely on.

Jill Anderson: You mentioned a lot of states, I think you said 18, where there's policies in place that make this incredibly difficult to do. And I'm wondering, can you talk about an election like this at all in a place where some of these policies might be in place?

Eric Soto-Shed: Yes, absolutely you can. I think there's at least two ways to think about it. One is that you might have state policy or district policy, but then you have schools or districts that can be buffers to that policy. I know of several districts within states that have restrictive policies where the district has done some thinking and school leadership has done some thinking around how can we responsibly respect the law but still engage in these topics. And teachers are really supported in that because their institutions are acting as buffers of those policies.

With that being said, there's real decision that teachers have to make. I've been on calls with a bunch of educators and folks expressing real fears and other teachers being like, "We need to just stand on our principles and teach regardless." And one of the things I was thinking about is that one of the educators that was expressing fear was also talking about a mortgage and their children, and, "I can't lose my job," which could be different than say maybe a younger teacher that's a little bit more fluid in what they're doing in their lives.

And as you're thinking about, "Can I teach this", there's a couple of advice that I give. One is to really lean into skills as opposed to the issues. While there are bans on certain content, almost no state is critical thinking. No state is banning data analysis. Many states are supporting media analysis, argumentation. You can really lean into, I think, skills as what you're doing. And when you're writing letters home to parents or you're talking to your administrators or you're thinking about how you're going to justify what you're doing, you're saying, "I'm teaching students really important skills," I think that that can be one important sort of shield for that. I think the second thing to think about is closely related to skills is also try to connect it to larger course themes. And this gets at not only the folks that are in states with restricted policies, but teachers that believe they just can't do it because it's not connected to what they're teaching.

If you're an English language arts teacher and you're really looking at literature and you're looking at conflict, don't the elections give us a great way to look into that theme of conflict? If you're a science teacher and you're looking at ecosystems and the way different factors are dependent on each other, doesn't looking at political policy, give us the opportunity to look at that? I think trying to connect it to sort of larger, broader, respected goals in your course can give you a little bit of coverage.

The other thing is how you do it. I think that there are ways that you can talk about the election and ways that are factual. Here are the issues. I think you can talk about the election in terms of being really specific around what your goals are and what your takeaways are, understanding the processes, understanding how campaigns work, where it allows you to get to some of the real core, I think, juicy stuff that's going to engage kids. Let me understand this political ad, but the objective is, I think is more broadly stated around the idea of just understanding how the process works. There's a couple of ways you can give yourself, I think, some shield, particularly when you're working with policies that might be a little bit more restrictive around what you can do with the election and divisive issues.

Jill Anderson: It sounds like you see this as work that goes beyond just the social studies curriculum and classroom, right?

Eric Soto-Shed: Absolutely. I think there's a lot of room to deeply integrate it into the social studies significantly more than we're doing it right now. Our ancient civs teachers are doing it. You're doing it in US history, not just in your constitution unit, that it could be a lot more central to the work that we do in the social studies, but I think many folks argue one of the foundational purposes of education is to create an educated citizenry. It takes a village of educators to sort of build up that citizenry. And I think there's a lot of different angles that you can come in from it from different subjects. But I do think, for example, if you're looking at climate change, one of I think the top issues that certainly was mentioned in our recent presidential debate, let's get our science colleagues to really weigh in that, bring some of that content to really understand the policies.

When you talk about trying to understand election night and all those graphs and chart, let's leverage our math teachers to do that. When you're talking about the rhetoric that is really, I think, important to unpack and explore and critique and analyze, let's bring our ELA colleagues. It really speaks to all the subjects in ways that I think both respect the disciplinary boundaries that we have. While at the same time to say that if we want a citizenry that's really going to be able to have a full informed capacity, all teachers can chip in to support that work.

Jill Anderson: Is there areas you shouldn't go?

Eric Soto-Shed: For teaching the election?

Jill Anderson: Yeah.

Eric Soto-Shed: Yes. I would say here are the three common errors or pitfalls that I would recommend folks avoid. The first would be to lead off with an overemphasis on the mechanics, the process. It is important to do high level stuff around the Electoral College and whatnot, but when we go too hard on the content, kids are just disengaged and it's a great way to disengage students. There's a tendency to do that, and I strongly discourage that.

The second I think would be, and this could be really dangerous, it's just a superficial glossing over of the candidates or the issues. If you're going to get into the issues and the candidates, I think you need to allow some space to do that deeply, to see multiple perspectives, to really allow kids to take some stance on that. And to really go deeper and avoid a superficial treatment of both the candidates and the issues would be number two.

Number three would be, I think, overly sharing your bias and opinions without a thoughtful based in educative value reason, and rationale for doing so. I think we've moved beyond this idea that a teacher can remain purely objective. I think that's impossible. There's always some sort of implicit reveal of our biases, but when you are sharing or to the extent that you're sharing any perspective you have related to the election, you're doing so with a specific intent. This is how I can use the sharing of my view to have an educative impact on my students.

Jill Anderson: Can you just give an example of what you mean by that? If you have a certain stance on an issue that you feel really strongly about as an educator, it's okay to state that as long as there's some reasoning and rationale behind it?

Eric Soto-Shed: That would be one example. I see why others disagree. I think another example is to be really specific. I would personally advise educators not to share the candidate you're voting for, but you can certainly share specific things about the candidate. I might look at the recent presidential debate and say that the rhetoric around migrants that was used by former President Donald Trump was rhetoric that I thought was not supported by facts. And I also thought it was potentially harming and dehumanizing for these specific reasons.

You're making sweeping generalizations, you are using undocumented sensationalized stories. And what I'm doing there is I'm not only just talking about my particular stance on the rhetoric, but I'm giving students more general tools and frameworks to analyze rhetoric. And I'm also saying that this is my position. It's not necessarily the only position. I think rather than just saying, "Candidate A is terrible or candidate B is awful," and I could say things about both candidates, it's specific and it's backed up on some transferable analytical skills that can help students not only understand this election, but really other elections and political discourse. And I think that part is really, really key when you do reveal perspective is to make sure that there's an educational value to it.

Jill Anderson: And something else that you mentioned that I think is important to note is this is not something that can be one and done. It sounds like you can't just go in there and talk about the election process and check the box and move on because students want more than that.

Eric Soto-Shed: Absolutely. It's not always that's what I think, but sometimes teachers are faced with a reality where they might need to do more than... That's what they might be faced with. And the less time you have, you need to be really intentional with that and just be careful of not opening up something that you can't really hold. I might go back to the example of the science teacher thinking about the election. If you don't have a lot of time because you're trying to get through so many standards on what it is, maybe you limit it to like, "Hey, let's take advantage and leverage this and focus on one issue that's central to the election that also connects our content, and let's go into that for a day or two." Another example, and it gets at process in the election, the day after the election, I'm not sure what to think.

I definitely have cleared my schedule and I'm like, "I need to be able to process what's happening, work with the educators that I'm teaching in the evening because it might be a real chaotic, potentially violent, contested situation." And you might not be teaching about the election, but kids might show up and the world is really going through it, if its Inauguration Day or something like that. And you're going to need to respond to those kind of emotions. How do you process a post-election particularly after 2020? But generally speaking, particularly for social studies teachers, but really all teachers, you got to give it some space. It's such a rich, important topic that really does deserve some space in the curriculum.

Jill Anderson: And that's not something I'd even given any thought to the fact that a lot of times the results of these elections come very late, and then you are on tap immediately the next day, 7:00 AM, you're in your classroom, and you have 20-something students sitting in front of you who may want to talk about it or might have feelings or views or things that they want to share. And that has to be so challenging as an educator to process yourself what's going on. You're there to work with kids who have a lot of thoughts on these things as well.

Eric Soto-Shed: Absolutely. That's why we should give a huge shout-out to all of our educators out there that are doing this work, working with our young people in this moment in time, because students are bringing a lot to the classroom based on what they're seeing and hearing that's going on in politics in the world.

Jill Anderson: Tell me a little bit about your Civics Thinking Project and the idea of developing habits of mind.

Eric Soto-Shed: The Civics Thinking Project is an endeavor that my colleague Jack Sneider and I launched a couple of years ago with the idea that oftentimes what we teach in school is concretely informed by the way experts do something. If you look at a lot of history curriculum, we teach students how do you read primary sources, where you look at the context, where you look at the author's bias, where you look at the close reading of words and implicit meaning? A lot of that was codified in some research where historians shared their thought processes while reading primary sources and educational researchers document it and said, "Oh, this is what you're doing. This is the move that you're making. This is the habit of mind that you're deploying when you're reading this document. Can we build some curriculum around that?" Under the work of Sam Weinberg and many others at Stanford, they were able to develop a robust history curriculum.

Jack and I, who were also at Stanford a number of years ago working with Sam Weinberg said, "Why don't we do the same thing with civics? There are so much work that is being done in civics. Can we document how people do this work and then take those moves and habits of mind and translate into concrete explicit lessons, units and curriculum for young people to engage in?" We're really trying to do both research, curriculum development, and professional development to really bring civic expertise into concrete tasks and skills that students can do in the classroom.

Jill Anderson: Will this election be a part of that?

Eric Soto-Shed: As a matter of fact, we did some work with teachers just two weeks ago where we were approached by the district. They were like, "Could you help our teachers think through how to teach the election?" And then we said, "We think we can. We think that there is some real expertise in the minds of your teachers, and so let's bring that out." And what we did had about 50 teachers, all social studies teachers, we pulled some ballot initiatives from a couple of years ago and had them do think aloud articulate the mental moves that you're doing. And they did these in small groups and they listed, identified a bunch of moves, and then we said, "Choose a couple, one, maybe two, that you think are really important and think about a lesson that you might develop or a series of lessons to teach these skills."

This is work that's going to happen in the next few weeks. They were like, "Wow. I was really thinking a lot about context, what I was doing this," or, "I really was going to multiple sources to fact check and give me some additional information," or, "I was really thinking about impact and unintended consequences." These are all things that we be thinking about when we're looking at issues in this current election. It's going to be great. We're actually going to go back in a month or two, see what they develop and how they've engaged young people.

Jill Anderson: Any final tips that you have for educators listening as we round out these final weeks before the election?

Eric Soto-Shed: In terms of where you might want to start, if you're thinking about how can I begin to engage my students in the election? I think one place to really start is start with students' interest and questions because they're authentic, they're hooks, and they're often really, really good. Before I even thinking about, "What am I going to plan?" Really either pay attention to or ask students, "What are you interested in about the election?" 

That's one recommendation. The Democratic Knowledge Project has a free module about the election, and they start off with the idea of what makes a good leader. And I just thought that was a really good general question that students can really bring some insight. It creates a really critical lens to analyze the election. I think that's another great place to start choosing one or two issues for in-depth exploration, so it's not just about the candidates, but about the issue itself gives some students some expertise and they'll try to match it up to how candidates are thinking about that. And the last, and this is an enduring skill and students, particularly those in purple states, but throughout the nation media analysis because we're going to be inundated with messaging around this. And how do we go beyond just the surface level message we're hearing and really critically analyze that?

I think those are four great places to start student interest, what makes a good leader, choosing one or two issues to go deep into and media analysis. That would be one set of recommendations. A second set is things to have in place. And so this should be stuff that you do at the start of the year, you really cultivate throughout the year. The first is really working with students to unpack what are your values and what's your vision of a just world?

Before we have any conversation about this candidate or that candidate, this issue or that issue, what's our broader and deeper sense of a good world? And that can become a really powerful critical lens to not only analyze issues, but also to talk across difference, which leads me to the second thing that I think you want to be doing to really support students to talk about the election is really set up a culture and the skills for discourse in your classroom. It's not just about teacher talking, students listening or students having surface level conversations, but how do we have real deep conversations about both abstract principles, things in our backyard, and yes, national issues and the election?

And the last, but not least, and this is some work that I do and I could go at length, is really how do you think about helping young people process emotions and respond to charged comments? Because that's not going to come up in every conversation about the election. But oftentimes that's one of the key things that inhibits teachers from doing is that the fear of emotions are going to come up or a charged comments going to come up and they're not sure how to deal with that. It's going to make for a little uneasiness.

That's part of the work, that's part of the political discourse, so really doing that throughout the year can be powerful. And then finally, I just want to, again, send just a word of gratitude for teachers that are teaching in this particular moment. I just think it's unbelievably challenging, hard, and so important. For those folks that are doing this on a daily basis, I don't want my, "This is what you should do," to suggest in any way that folks aren't trying, folks aren't doing. I think we have examples of wisdom and thoughtfulness in the way educators are engaging young people with the election throughout the nation. I think it's really important to lift those up and acknowledge those as well.

Jill Anderson: Thank you so much, Eric.

Eric Soto-Shed: Thank you.

Jill Anderson: Eric Soto-Shed is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He co-leads the Civics Thinking Project, a research initiative focused on creating innovative research-based civic assessments and curriculum. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.