Nuance at CHS

Intro

Eyes fall to laps, as hesitancy and agitation fall over the faces of 20 tired teenagers. Fearful looks of realization glare from corner to corner of the room, anticipating the battleground that is about to spring up from the stained carpet, wounding students’ self-esteem and slowly scarring our relationships with each other. As the teacher prepares themselves for this messy and dangerous task, one can only wonder what the source of this conflict is.

There’s only one answer: Group discussion time. 

Student Perspective 

When CHS freshman Hannah Yurkovich enters her eighth hour class, her immediate response to controversy is to censor herself. With few friends in her class, speaking her mind can be a challenge. 

“I feel like I really can’t say anything, and it really bothers me because I want to say something, but I don’t have power in that situation because I don’t know if I have a base of anyone who could support me,” said Yurkovich. 

But why is it that students are so fearful of speaking their minds? For sharing their thoughts and opinions? In the years after the rise of dependency on technology and after online school and masking, students struggle with productive conversation. This is due to the fear of ostracization, or in the popular lexicon, cancel culture, and the increased desire to hide behind one’s mask or phone screen for safety.

“As a teacher, if you’ve taught for a few years like I have, it’s like you have sensors,” English teacher Adam Hayward said, “and my sensors tell me that there are students that are definitely stifling what they want to say at times.”

Hayward explained that with recent isolation, the formation of social skills and consideration for others as developing teenagers hasn’t been practiced due to recent isolation from the pandemic. However, with respectful disagreement and productive conversation, those skills can be rebuilt. We just need to promote more nuance and ability to have compassion going both ways within a conversation. 

On the idea of free speech in school atmospheres, Jynx Falk, CHS freshman said, “While we should be able to educate people — because this is a school — and be able to talk about differences, and solve discrepancies, we don’t want to create a breeding ground for bigotry and hatred and misinformation.”

In Paul Hoelscher’s history classroom, he recognizes this tension at play.

“I’ll joke with my own students that great Clayton liberal students love freedom of speech, as long as everyone agrees with them,” Holescher said. 

Hoelscher teaches AP World History and Sociology at CHS and serves as the K-12 Social Studies curriculum coordinator for the school district. 

As students, we need to understand when voicing differences of opinion becomes an ad hominem attack on someone because that person doesn’t agree with us. 

The idea of ruining someone’s reputation because they said something controversial or offered a difference of perspective, and then saying they can’t change or become informed is where we create this breeding ground for resentment of nuance.

High school students are in a state of building their identities and their understanding of the world.  In this process, students often lack solidified beliefs which means that other people’s perspectives can have a lot of impact on our own. 

“[Having these debates in high school] makes the conversation easier, because a lot of people are open to new ideas and hearing new things,” said CHS senior Sophia Martin, “But also at the same time, it’s a time where you don’t want to be embarrassed or to be proven wrong, so it’s also challenging because you don’t want to say the wrong thing.” 

Teacher perspective 

Teachers are also grappling with how to host nuanced discussions, essential to intellectual diversity, in a more polarized time. This is especially true in humanities classes. 

As language and ideas change, so do people’s beliefs. When the architecture of modern communication has transformed the terms of seemingly acceptable discourse so rapidly, it is easy to see why students, and teachers, might feel at risk to facilitate discussions of challenging material. 

Teachers should be allowed to have the sharing of ideas without it going out of hand, disrespecting anyone’s opinions, or taking up too much class time.

“It takes a profound amount of work, I think, for the teacher, because students have such different interests, such diverse opinions, and their collections of different experiences,” Hoelscher said.

Measurable changes have had to be made to the social studies curriculum because so much has changed in the past ten years. 

“It’s both a dangerous time to be in Social Studies curriculum, but also an exciting time, because there’s so much dialogue out there,” Hoelscher said.

Changes haven’t just had to be made to the curriculum, but also to the physical material being taught in class. Books have been taken out of the English curriculum, however Hayward notes that the change of content the department has been teaching has lent a new way of thinking. 

Solution 

Facing all of these problems, we must think about how we can fight the death of nuance in classrooms, as well as the polarization of conversations among students and teachers.

Being able to have these debates and discussions about controversial topics is healthy and essential for intellectual development.

Hayward, quoting poet Willam Blake, said “Without contraries is no progression.” 

We need to be able to see other peoples’ opinions and perspectives without feeling threatened or shut down. Without opposition, there is no growth. Without discussion there is no gain of perspective. Without respect in group conversation, there is no progression. 

For English and History teachers, Hayward noted that, “Conversations are the richest area for education to happen. You have to have the back and forth” Being able to share complicated, rich literature and have conversations about them in respectful ways is top priority in the age of verbal attacks 

“With respectful speech, we need to have space to lift the conversation, but we also have to make sure that we’re not forcing anybody to be in a situation where they feel unsafe, because some of those more controversial opinions are about human rights,” Falk said.

“Don’t be afraid to speak up whenever you disagree with something because I think by doing that the person speaking who’s often controlling the conversation hears no other side of it,” said Martin, “You’re probably never going to change someone’s mind right in front of you but you can always put new perspectives in their head.”

Conclusion 

The death of nuance in society has greatly influenced conversations in school. With students hiding behind their screens and masks, and teachers fearing for their jobs when teaching material within their curriculum, agitation and anxiety has risen among teenagers in Clayton. 

So, to avoid polarized discussion next time you’re in a debate or conversation at school, will you take a step back and consider the other perspective? Or will you use your voice as a weapon to turn the conversation into a battleground of ignorance?