learning-to-argue

In recent years we’ve seen troubling trends in young Americans’ intellectual growth. From college students’ inability or unwillingness to tolerate disagreement to the increased partisanship of political elites, American society appears to have forgotten that a bedrock practice of liberal democracy is the hurly-burly back and forth of the intellectual arena. It is not a natural inclination for the young, either; it must be taught and cultivated. Some K-12 schools are taking notice and responding by recommitting to teaching the intellectual and moral habits that allow students to enter contentious debate and to disagree agreeably with their peers in high school and afterward.