������Ƶ

Last month a group of independent secondary school leaders released “Thriving in a World of Pluralistic Contention: A Framework for Schools,” which is intended to help educational institutions address issues of speech, inquiry and academic freedom. Researched and written by John Austin, the head of Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, its release comes at a time of polarization and conflict on school campuses nationwide.

Helping Austin to discuss and draft the work were eight educators across the country, including , president of Punahou School in Honolulu. A 1986 graduate of the school, he earned a B.A. in history from Pomona College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of California Los Angeles.

is funded by a leadership grant from the Edward E. Ford Foundation in New York City. Latham spoke with Civil Beat about the framework and its significance. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I think we’re really in an environment of really deep polarization, politically and culturally. I think that that’s certainly playing out in national politics. It’s playing out in college and university campuses. I think that we increasingly see an environment in which our capacity to have thoughtful and rational dialogue with each other, especially over controversial ideas, is really diminishing. We see more and more an environment — social media is probably part of this — where people are more likely to read only the sources that they already agree with. And I think that this is a situation that doesn’t really bode well for democracy itself.

I think it’s really important that we think about the way in which schools best prepare students to engage with that environment, and I hope to engage in a way that allows us to improve and move past some of the challenges that we currently face.

What does that entail?

That means we’ve got to think really carefully about the role of K-12 institutions. We have to think carefully about what civic engagement involves, which values we want to put forward, how that should shape the teaching and learning that we do. The framework reflects a lot of this.

There’s been a lot of serious thought at the college and university level over how those things are done but, interestingly, very little at the K-12 level. I would actually argue that it’s really, especially at the high school, even the middle school level, that students are learning a lot of the key habits of mind, a lot of the practices, a lot of the things that (influence) their capacity to engage with important and sometimes controversial issues. It’s important that we as schools really begin to look at that in a much more thoughtful and intentional way.

You mentioned in particular at the university level — I’m thinking of your alma mater, UCLA, the Gaza protests and so forth. Are you seeing any indication locally in K-12 schools that some of this is trickling down, even on your own campus?

No, fortunately, we really have not. Part of that is a reflection of the fact that I think, in many respects, we’re in a much healthier position. I think that we’ve actually succeeded in maintaining a culture that preserves the degree of mutual respect. I think our values and mission have enabled us to do that. But we’re going to be sending our kids off to many of these institutions. Kids are going to graduate from Punahou or any number of other schools, public and private, here. They’re going to go off to college and university campuses, mainland U.S., and they’re going to certainly encounter some really challenging situations. And so I think we have to do a really thoughtful job in preparing them for that.

How did you connect with Austin? Did he reach out to you?

He reached out to me. We have a number of common friends and acquaintances. As he was starting to work on the project, he and I had an initial discussion. This is a subject that I certainly dealt with in my previous college and university work. So I was familiar with it and I really respected what John was trying to develop. We had a number of conversations, and then he asked me if I would serve on the task force, and I was really happy to.

There are a number of other people listed as well that were involved. There must have been disagreements that came up during the course of your work. If so, how did you go about resolving those?

We didn’t always agree with each other. One of the key points in the framework — the second point — is this idea of disciplined nonpartisanship. We spent a lot of time trying to clarify exactly what that means. Nonpartisanship doesn’t mean neutrality. That was something that we spent some time talking about. I think we agree that it was probably a good idea for schools to avoid aligning themselves with a particular partisan position — that that could have a chilling effect on the kind of open dialogue and discussion you think is really important.

At the same time, though, we recognize that there are some instances and some situations where there are issues that directly affect a school’s mission and values that a school may decide that they really need to defend. And so there’s a lot of back and forth about trying to navigate that question. I think all of us hope that our students are going to graduate and go off and make valuable social contributions in the world. We didn’t want to present schools as a somehow politics-free zone.

I think inevitably you’re going to have discussions of important issues. We spent some time kind of going back and forth on that section. What does nonpartisanship mean? Knowledge itself isn’t neutral, right? You can’t unlearn something that you know. It may lead to action based on your convictions.

And then what are the situations where a school might feel compelled to speak out directly because there’s something that challenges a deeply set value in terms of their approach to education. That was an example of an area where we spent a lot of time going back and forth and didn’t always agree.

Is the framework, the guideline, something that’s open to revision going forward? Or is it pretty much set in stone?

I think the document’s probably in its final form. But, honestly, our hope is that all schools would look at this in a critical way. In other words, we recognize, we know that all schools have different cultures, that they have different ways of approaching questions. They have different missions. And I think that that means that different school communities will probably grapple with these issues differently. And our hope is that they’ll engage with these questions in a thoughtful and serious way. That doesn’t mean they’re all going to wind up in the same place.

So I don’t expect you would arrive at a document that would satisfy everybody. But I think what we’ve tried to do is create something that’s really good opportunity for thoughtful discussion among schools and school leaders about what’s most important to them and what this would mean for their own particular community structure.

Structure-wise, how does this work? How does one implement this at a secondary school? Is it a book? Is it online for teachers to read it and teach it?

That’s a great question. I think there’s going to be lots of different ways in which that happens. I’ve shared the document with our trustees and we’ve had some discussions and conversations about it. I expect that I’ll be sharing it with our faculty as a whole, and encourage them to have some thoughtful discussions about its implications for the work that they do.

I don’t see it as something that gets imposed in terms of a set of hard and fast regulations or policies. But I do see it as something that will, I hope, engage our faculty in really thoughtful discussions about practices that they feel are really effective, things they think are really important, or potentially some things that they might change in some of their teaching.

For example, the document talks a lot about the importance of helping students engage in a thoughtful way to have respectful, thoughtful discussions, even with controversial ideas. And I think we have a chance for our faculty to think about, “Well, gosh, how do we do that in our classrooms? How do we create the environment in which that happens?”

The document also talks a lot about the need to represent multiple sides of a complex issue — that as a teacher and even some of the stuff you probably disagree with, you need to at least bring forward so that students themselves can wrestle with and grapple with that. I think that might be an invitation for us to think about, “Wow, well, we’re addressing a controversial issue. We should probably have students reading opinions on multiple sides.” Maybe we should be building more opportunities for debate and discussion into our classrooms, into our teaching, so that students can wrestle with these problems so that they can get really good at having discussions of controversial ideas.

At Punahou we are very fortunate to have launched something called the . We put that together a couple of years ago, supported by (Honolulu attorney) Mark Davis and his family. And it’s led us to bring to campus people who’ve got very different perspectives on controversial ideas. We’ve had students engaging with them in thoughtful debate and discussion. We think that’s really important modeling.

Is it possible to name maybe two people who have been brought to Punahou to represent those views?

We had a really thoughtful, fascinating discussion recently, about Red Hill. We had Ernie Lau, chair of the Board of Water Supply, and we had Gen. Lance Okamura, who was the Army officer in overall charge of the Red Hill facility (task force). And they had a fascinating discussion together in front of about 300 kids.

And then the kids themselves asked them questions. And that was really, really fascinating. They didn’t always agree with each other. They talked about why these issues were complicated, what responsibilities they felt that they had. Students offered their own opinions. There was a lot of productive back and forth there. And I think we’ve got to create more space for that to happen.

If a school decides to, the guidelines could be implemented this coming fall in time for the general election, correct?

I think so. I think that’s a really important point. We’re going to have I think what will undoubtedly be a fairly controversial several months coming forward in terms of American politics.

That might be an understatement.

It’s just accelerated, hasn’t it? But I think this is a chance for us to have some sort of a framework that provides schools with some guidance and I hope some thoughtful parameters that could be really useful. It’s important to remember that we’re talking about teenagers or kids who are even younger, and we have a responsibility to help them grow in such a way that they learn how to be respectful and thoughtful of each other, but also grow intellectually so that they can engage with and think through their own perspectives. So that’s what we’re shooting for.

This is not limited to private schools, is that correct?

It was written a lot by a group of independent school heads or private school heads. John Austin, the lead author, and those of us on this task force, all of us represent different independent schools. That was the primary audience. That said, I do think it’s the kind of document that could be thoughtfully discussed among the country’s public school systems as well. I think that the principles and the values that are defined there certainly would be would be valuable for public or charter schools, too.

Any point that you haven’t made that you feel is important?

There’s a lot of value in helping students develop a sense of intellectual humility. You don’t know everything. And you need to engage thoughtfully with other people. You may not always change what you believe when you have conversations with people who think differently, but you may get a better sense of why you believe what you believe.

And if you can develop enough empathy to understand why others think the way that they do, then maybe you can reason your way towards some kind of common ground. And that would be a good outcome — helping students learn to develop that capacity and skills would serve us all well.