Since 2020, Washington state requires high school students to complete a half-credit of civics, generally through a stand-alone course. State law specifies much of what the course must cover: how federal, state, tribal and local governments work; the rights and responsibilities of citizens; elections and ballot measures; and “current issues addressed at each level of government.”
A robust civics education is a conversation, and Washington recognizes that. But a new survey suggests many students are opting out of this conversation entirely.
This summer the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute surveyed recent high school graduates from 25 states and Washington, D.C., about their civics classes: what they learned, how disagreement was handled and when they held back. Fifty-eight percent said they had held back from saying what they really thought about a political or civic topic in class because they were concerned about how others might react.
They were not describing hostile classrooms. Seventy-three percent said they were generally comfortable sharing their honest views when politics came up. Among those comfortable students, though, 51% had still held back at least once. Silence, as our report puts it, is often situational. A classroom can be open in principle while a particular issue, if not properly handled, changes the calculation.
The striking finding is whom they were worried about. Among those who held back, 91% cited their classmates. Just 41% cited the teacher.
The argument over classroom speech almost always begins with adults: teachers pushing their views, administrators discouraging hard subjects, parents and legislators making everyone nervous. But the students pointed most often at one another. One recalled a discussion in which classmates “did not accept other opinions and made comments about students disagreeing.” Asked what would have improved civics at her school, another answered in five words: “Students not being so judgmental.”
Prior research points in the same direction. Diana Hess and Julie Posselt studied 10th-grade classes built around controversial issues and found that students’ perceptions of their peers shaped participation more than the teacher’s behavior did.
Teachers matter immensely, of course. Fifty-three percent of our respondents had at least sometimes seen a teacher avoid, cut short or shut down a political discussion. Last year the Institute surveyed civics teachers and found that nearly 80% had self-censored in class out of fear of pushback. Together, the two surveys describe a loop: the teacher hesitates to open a hard discussion, and the student hesitates to enter one. The room gets quieter without getting any better at disagreement.
Importantly, students are not asking schools to avoid difficult civic issues. They are asking for more opportunities to discuss them better. “More discussion, debate and hands-on opportunities,” wrote one. Others wanted more conversation about current events, more mock debates and even field trips to public meetings.
Schools can find ways to meet this demand. Start by teaching constructive disagreement as a skill: students should learn to make evidence-based arguments, represent opposing views accurately and separate criticism of ideas from criticism of people. Lower the social stakes without lowering the standards. Assign positions, collect anonymous opening responses and have students argue for a view they do not hold, so they get practice before every comment becomes a declaration of political identity. Twenty-six percent of the students who held back worried about being discussed or posted about on social media, so set a plain rule: no one records or posts what a classmate says in class. And train teachers for the room they actually face, including how to protect space for a minority argument without endorsing it.
The students who answered our survey did not ask for a quieter classroom. They asked for one where a person can possibly lose an argument without losing social standing.
