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Teaching Youth about Healthy Conflict - #DisagreeBetter Colorado Roundtable

51:28 recording · AUTO · 6 speakers

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Brief overview

Debate education started early is the panel's most practical tool for reducing partisan animosity.

  1. Start debate skills long before collegeThe panel argues attitudes to conflict are formed in elementary and middle school, not on campus.
  2. Separate constitutional questions from political onesRosen asks not whether gun control is a good idea but whether the Constitution allows or forbids it.
  3. Ask what people have changed their mind aboutJulia Dar's closing request is to make that question routine in classrooms, media interviews and campus talks.
Executive Summary AI
  • Governor Cox opens the panel with the view that the most effective way to reduce partisan animosity is to target young people before they reach college, grounding them in civic education, humility, empathy and a willingness to see complexity.
  • Kimberly Willingham, executive director of the Boston Debate League, describes three programs — after-school policy debate, Debate Inspired Classrooms and Resolved for Black and Latino young men — working with over 40 schools and about 700 students a year in Boston.
  • Jeffrey Rosen says the National Constitution Center's method is to ask people to separate their political from their constitutional views, and its Interactive Constitution, with all 80 clauses written up by paired liberal and conservative scholars, has drawn 70 million hits since 2015.
  • Norm Ornstein recounts founding a summer debate camp in memory of his son Matthew, who died in January of 2015, which grew from 30 kids to 200 this past summer, drawn from Title I schools that are 85% minority.
  • Closing, each panelist names one request: engage and invest in young people, run state-level civics contests that bring winners to meet governors, and convene liberals and conservatives around America's 250.
Key Quote
“The central idea in all of our debates and conversations and teaching is to ask people to separate their political from their constitutional views.”
— Jeffrey Rosen
Key Quote
“But there's nothing equal when some people start 25 yards behind the starting blocks and others are 25 yards ahead.”
— Norm Ornstein
Key Quote
“I think if we say this is important, we have to invest in young people, and that starts in the classroom.”
— Kimberly Willingham