Dive Brief:
- The classroom can be an optimal setting for students to hash through polarizing issues in a moderated environment, away from their algorithmically driven social media feeds, according to a report from the recently launched Or Initiative, a research-based program at the Chapman University School of Communication in California.
- The report found that few middle- and high-school students say they’ve experienced classroom discussions on how to evaluate and debate conflicting viewpoints on the contentious issues and current events that frequently show up in their social media feeds. For their part, educators would like to provide that evidence-based environment but fear being labeled as politically motivated.
- The report also incorporated a curriculum landscape review of domains including civic dialogue skills, digital and media literacy, and the Middle East conflict involving Israel and Gaza, which was used as an initial case study by the Or Initiative.
Dive Insight:
The Or Initiative is focused on helping young people engage on complex and divisive issues.
Coming out of the pandemic, school leaders, educators and curriculum designers voiced a systemic problem with finding spaces where students can disagree and test ideas on one another, said Vikki Katz, the initiative’s executive director and the Fletcher Jones Foundation Endowed Chair in Free Speech at Chapman University.
“Classrooms are one of — or perhaps the only — place where they can develop a shared evidence base together, because a teacher can make you do the reading,” she said. “They can slow down, consider different perspectives, and be willing to change each other’s minds.”
Students are very aware that people behave differently online than they do in person, and they guard themselves against changing their minds on issues when they don’t trust people’s motivations, Katz said.
“But they are still willing to change their minds in these controlled and trusted environments,” she said. “We’re balancing that against what teachers told us, which is that it takes courage to do this in the classroom, in this moment. If they’re seen as biased, they’re afraid of being the next viral controversy.”
But addressing hot button issues like the Middle East can’t be left to courageous individual teachers — school leaders should be decisive and communicate effectively to parents, Katz said.
A message she suggests: “This is part of how we help young people develop into informed citizens, who are capable of not just holding and articulating their own view, but hearing the perspectives of people with whom they disagree, without shutting down or shutting them out.”
To ensure teachers are adequately prepared, the report included not just the interviews but the comprehensive curriculum review involving the three aforementioned domains — of which researchers found many teachers address one or two without integrating them adequately, Katz said.
“Teachers might find excellent digital literacy lessons, but they’re not focused on current issues in students’ feeds,” she said. “They might be having active listening or courageous conversations, but it’s not tied to a base of evidence.”
The researchers want to combine best practices in a way that can be “sandwiched around a strong evidence base in relation to digital knowledge development, and then scaffolded into age-appropriate discourse skills,” Katz said.
The program’s initial report was compiled in 2025 through student and educator interviews focused on 8th and 11th grade at public, independent and Jewish day schools in New York City and Orange County, California.
Though the Or Initiative focused first on the Middle East, it intends to move on to other issues like immigration and climate change, Katz said. “We wanted to use a high-stakes case, and a challenging one, to make it possible to assess what exists.”
In the coming years, the Or Initiative intends to work on helping develop learning tools to better navigate misinformation and half-truths, Katz said, adding that such issues spill into classrooms no matter what. “We’re trying to develop innovations in learning tools to make it easier for teachers to develop routines, so civic shocks don’t catch them off-guard.”
That way, when responding to a polarizing event like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, educators can have an existing practice in place, “giving kids space to figure out what they know is true, what they may never know, and figure out how to find common ground and civic hope when things seem dark,” Katz said.
“We find new forms of connection and common purpose if we do that more often.”
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