Students Should be Taught to Embrace Viewpoint Diversity in College AND High School

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed two education bills into law that contradict each other. One bill supports viewpoint diversity, and the other does not.

House Bill 233 requires "state colleges and universities to conduct annual assessments of the viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom at their institutions to ensure that Florida's postsecondary students will be shown diverse ideas and opinions, including those that they may disagree with or find uncomfortable."

House Bill 5 requires the "Florida Department of Education to create an integrated K-12 civic education curriculum that includes an understanding of citizens' shared rights and responsiblities [sic] under the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It further expands required instruction in high school to include a comparative discussion of political ideologies that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding priciples [sic] of the United States, such as communism and totalitarianism." Specifically, the "evils" of these regimes.

According to these two pieces of legislation, students on college campuses in Florida will be free to express their views regarding democratic governance compared to communism, but a high schooler sympathetic to communism wouldn't be permitted to voice similar views.

So the question becomes, how will college students be prepared to grapple with "diverse ideas and opinions, including those that they may disagree with or find uncomfortable" if they weren't able to engage with a range of perspectives in high school?

Governor DeSantis wants students to understand the principles the U.S. was founded on, our civic tradition, and our Constitution. But a central principle of the U.S. is freedom of thought. And as Jonathan Zimmerman and Emily Robertson point out in their book, The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools, "Schools and teachers are not promoting this American ideal if some perspectives are off-the-table."

This approach to civics education is not new for Florida. According to Zimmerman and Robertson, in the 1960s, Florida, along with five other states, passed legislation dictating how communism should be taught. "Florida required that every student receive 30 hours of teaching about 'the dangers of communism, the ways to fight communism, the evils of communism, the fallacies of communism, and the false doctrines of communism.'" The requirement also included teaching that the U.S. economic system produces "higher standards of living" and "greater personal freedom and liberty."

While these claims may be true, following the principle of freedom of thought, students should not be taught simply what to think about "Americanism" versus "Communism;" they should be taught how to evaluate for themselves which system produces what outcomes, and which is better for citizens and society.

The same logic should apply for how to approach critical race theory-inspired ideas about the U.S. and its founding. While laying out his plans for Florida's civics curriculum, Governor DeSantis noted that "civics curriculum will include foundational concepts [...] and expressly exclude unsanctioned narratives like critical race theory and other unsubstantiated theories." In other words, he wishes to exclude from curriculum concepts and ideas that some "may disagree with or find uncomfortable," which is in contradiction to what was proposed for college campuses in House Bill 233. Teaching critical race theory as established dogma also limits freedom of thought, but instead of excluding it and other perspectives from the classroom, students need to be taught how to weigh the pros and cons of a diverse range of perspectives and how to distinguish between facts and beliefs.

Some might argue that high school is where knowledge is passed on to students, while university is where they can debate ideas. But, as Robert Zimmer, former president of the University of Chicago, pointed out, it would be wise for high-school teachers to think about promoting freedom of expression "in a systematic way" to prepare students for the university environment: "A lot of students are not prepared for this environment. […] Free expression doesn't come naturally for most people. It's not an instinctive response." He thinks that young people need "to be taught it" so that universities don't have to start from scratch.

The renewed focus on civics education at all levels of education is welcomed. Civics education has been marginalized, and many students leave high school lacking the basic knowledge to participate in our democratic system. However, the debate should not only focus on foundational knowledge but also on how to incorporate into the curriculum the essential skills required for civic engagement, including the ability to understand and engage with diverse perspectives. Students will be exposed to a range of viewpoints in college, the workforce, and their community, and high schools ought to prepare them for that.