Amid increasingly divisive public discourse, civility has become a sought-after skill for colleges and universities struggling to maintain a rich set of viewpoints on campus, and for employers trying to build diverse workplaces.
Now, a new pilot program shows that it might be possible to instill an ability to disagree productively in adolescents鈥攁nd some of the nation鈥檚 top universities want to consider proof of that skill in admissions.
As part of Dialogues, a pilot by the nonprofit peer-tutoring platform Schoolhouse.world, students ages 14 to 18 built portfolios showcasing their ability to disagree respectfully with other peers on hot-button topics.
Today, eight selective colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and Vanderbilt University announced they will accept these 鈥渃ivility transcripts鈥� among the factors they weigh in college-admissions decisions.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 want brittle students,鈥� said Jim Nondorf, the vice president for enrollment and student advancement and the dean of college admissions and financial aid for the University of Chicago, one of the colleges that plans to use civility as a consideration during admission decisions. 鈥淚 want students who can come here and add to the conversation on campus, but do it in the right way.鈥�
Studies have found that adolescents need guidance and opportunities to practice difficult conversations and respond to criticism without falling into 鈥�outrage cycles.鈥� In particular, students may have more difficulty picking up social cues and understanding nuance in virtual arguments compared to in-person disagreements.
鈥淚t鈥檚 very easy in anonymous or asynchronous forums to just completely 鈥榦ther鈥� the other party鈥攖o think they鈥檙e idiots, think they鈥檙e evil, whatever,鈥� said Salman Khan, the founder of the virtual education platform Khan Academy and co-founder of Schoolhouse.world. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 very hard to do in this [face-to-face] setting.鈥�
Many school- and community-based programs focus on argument and discourse, but it can be difficult to measure nonacademic aspects of these skills. There are no standard assessments of students鈥� civility, but a few other projects are trying to look at some of the necessary components鈥攕uch as listening and considering feedback from partners.
This year, 鈥擨ndiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin鈥攑artnered with the nonprofit Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which created the time-based Carnegie units for secondary credits, and the assessment group ETS for the project, which is testing 15 different tools to measure underlying skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
鈥淭hese types of skills are predictive of the success that we want to see for young adults, both with high school and college attainment, but also other dimensions of thriving ... that broaden the definition of commencement-level success,鈥� said Brooke Stafford-Brizard, Carnegie鈥檚 vice president for innovation and impact.
For example, the partnership is testing one 鈥渢est-less assessment鈥� task in which a student coordinates with two artificial intelligence-run avatars to tell a story, according to Laura Slover, who leads the project.
鈥淭hey each build on each other鈥檚 ideas,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hey have to listen so that they鈥檙e picking up the ideas and creating linkages to build the next part of the story ... [and] giving each other feedback in real time.鈥�
Students would be evaluated based on things like how well they accepted and used the AI characters鈥� ideas and feedback. It鈥檚 not clear, though, how well simulation tasks of this sort can measure students鈥� ability to work with other people, particularly in problem-solving and healthy disagreements.
Students volunteer to talk about gun control, inequality, and immigration
The takes a different approach. It built off Schoolhouse.world, the peer-tutoring platform, in which secondary students develop a portfolio of tutoring subject 鈥渃ertifications鈥� by passing online assessments and providing and reviewing video explanations of concepts. Then, as students begin to tutor, their tutees also review their support and effectiveness.
Dialogues participants, ages 14 to 18, volunteer to have conversations on any of about two dozen controversial topics, including AI, income inequality, immigration, mental health, and gun control. Each student reviewed guidelines for civil disagreements and for particular topics, and was matched to peers with a different viewpoint on the assigned topics. The students had and recorded virtual conversations with their partners, then reflected on their own experience and provided written feedback for their partner.
The students participated independently of their schools and were not graded on their performance in these dialogues, but they received a detailing the number of hours and topics of discussion in which they participated and feedback from their partners on skills like active listening and how well they challenged their own views. Students could submit these portfolios to colleges as part of admissions decisions.
During the year-and-a-half pilot, more than 600 students logged about 2,000 hours of discussion. Schoolhouse is expanding the pilot to school districts this week.
These structured peer reviews and self-reflections work in lieu of formal assessments, Khan said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think you can truly fake respect,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou have to have real respect; otherwise the other party can tell.鈥�
Khan said nearly all student conversations have ended with them finding at least some common ground, and 鈥渙ut of the several hundreds of these conversations ... we haven鈥檛 had one real incident of people yelling at each other,鈥� Khan said. 鈥淧eople are much more polarized, but this has surpassed our expectations in terms of people being able to engage in tough conversations as long as the context is right, and they鈥檙e primed in the right way.鈥�
While an overwhelming majority of K-12 糖心动漫vlog told the EdWeek Research Center in 2024 that schools have a responsibility to teach students how to have respectful disagreements, about a third of teachers said they have changed or avoided lessons on challenging topics out of concern about backlash from students, parents, or the public.
Nondorf, the University of Chicago administrator, said students need more practice with managing conflicts both in class and out of school.
鈥淎s things have evolved, the red states are redder and the blue states are bluer, and quite honestly, it鈥檚 tough in high school to find somebody who has different opinions given how separated the country has become around things,鈥� Nondorf said. 鈥淚f you look at what鈥檚 gone on on our campuses over the last couple of years, I think students being better able to articulate their views in a non-confrontational, nonviolent way is the best thing we could possibly do for them.鈥�
