Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

4 S’s showcase how dialogue fits and where other approaches work best

civic education notebook

We need to increase emphasis on schools as a more effective location for teaching interpersonal civil discourse.

Zhanna Hapanovich/Getty Images

In my previous article, I explained the “4 R’s” that should cause people to reconsider the extremely strong emphasis on civil discourse in efforts to reduce political divides in the United States. I also promised suggestions for how to use dialogue most effectively, in specific circumstances, and when non-dialogue approaches may be best.

A brief overview of the 4 R’s to reconsider such a heavy focus on dialogue reminds us that it is difficult to get many people to attend events (recruitment), civil discourse is not inherently effective (reliability), even a successful 1:1 interaction may not generalize to the entire out-party (representativeness) and getting people to repeatedly use skills learned is challenging (repetition).


I made it clear in that article not to despair. While there are 4 R’s to reconsider dialogue and civil discourse, there are also 4 S’s showing the way forward: schools, slogans, stories and structures. They involve emphasizing civil discourse where people can have repeated interactions that build trust and competence (schools), simple ways to remember how to best have a conversation and listen (slogans), approaches that draw from successful conversations and other approaches into digestible content (stories) and issues well beyond dialogue including structural reform (structures).

Schools: We need to increase emphasis on schools as a more effective location for teaching interpersonal civil discourse. My organization, More Like US, has found intense desire for civil discourse among attendees at national- and state-level conferences focused on K-12 civics education, such as those held by the National Council for the Social Studies and the CivxNow Coalition. While providing enough support for teachers is not easy — a well-known professional development program with this emphasis lasts four to five days — it avoids issues with at least half of 4 R’s: recruitment and repetition (since students have to attend class daily with each other for months) and potentially reliability as students have more opportunities for successful conversations over a semester or year.

Slogans: While slogans often get a bad reputation for being overly simplistic, it helps for Americans to have simple ways to remember how to best have conversations, and they can reach many more people than those inclined to attend small-group events. Think of an analogy to fire safety: Most of us know the phrase “stop, drop and roll,” but I doubt many of us have attended an actual fire safety workshop. Efforts to reduce political divides can have their own “stop, drop and roll” messaging. Urban-Rural Action teaches its ABCs to having a conversation: Ask to understand their perspective, Break down our view so they understand our reasoning, and Check our understanding of their perspective. I am partial to my own mnemonic, SVL (pronounced something like “civil”) to share Stories, relate to their Values, and Listen, an approach that goes beyond understanding of cognitive arguments, based on recommendations from Stanford’s Robb Willer.

Other details for three-step approaches (so they can be remembered and repeated) are possible, such as University of Michigan professor Amie Gordon’s suggestions to give the benefit of the doubt, seek understanding and find common ground. This approach largely overcomes the 4 R problems of recruitment, because nobody needs to be encouraged to attend a workshop, and repetition, because it is much easier to hear simple phrases in the midst of everyday life than to decide to attend a workshop or have a cross-partisan conversation.

Stories: As New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote in “The Righteous Mind,” “The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” Many Americans will not have the time, interest, energy, confidence, etc. to engage in (m)any cross-partisan conversations, but they may end up watching enticing content that includes such interactions. Existing efforts — such as StoryCorps’s One Small Step and Resetting the Table’s PURPLE — and future civil discourse efforts can also be seen as opportunities for content creation. Additionally, stories do not need to solely be about conversations; they can transform how Americans see one another directly.

We at More Like US have a mnemonic to CAST those across the political spectrum in a better light as more Complex, Admirable, Similar, and worthy of Togetherness than expected. Organizations such as Bridge Entertainment Labs are engaging with Hollywood to share better cross-partisan stories about each other. Compared with the 4 R’s, recruitment is not necessary, reliability and representativeness can be ensured in terms of the content seen or heard, and repetition is much easier with short content.

Structures: While conversations and adding new messages to the information environment are vital, efforts are essentially Sisyphean if the underlying information environment is rife with content that further negatively distorts our perceptions of each other across politics. I previously wrote of the necessity to add cross-partisan trust and subtract factors that worsen it. One of the most important factors involves reversing the current perverse incentives in news media, social media, electoral systems and even special interest groups. Divisive rhetoric and actions often perversely lead to more followers, clicks, revenue, donations, fame, etc.

Changing these incentives is not easy or obvious, but some progress is possible. The Trade Desk and Ad Fontes are providing data about news reliability to advertisers. The Council for Responsible Social Media works in part to address perverse incentives in social media, and many electoral reform organizations such as those in the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers are working hard. These approaches avoid all of the 4 R’s because no 1:1 contact is needed.

Perhaps in an ideal world, millions of American adults would attend workshops focused on reducing political divides. Yet we must recognize that Americans live busy lives, and reducing political divides may never rise to the top of their agendas. We can meet Americans where they are with a whole variety of approaches beyond the standard civil discourse workshop. Let’s pursue the 4 S’s successful solution set: schools, slogans, stories and structures.

Coan is the co-founder and executive director of More Like US. Coan can be contacted at James@morelikeus.org

Read More

This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

Children with American flags

This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

My colleague, Meghan Monroe, a former teacher and trainer in the Dignity Index, went out to lunch with a friend on the 4th of July. Her friend was late and Meghan found herself waiting outside the restaurant where, to her surprise, a protest march approached. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t immediately clear what the protest was about. There were families and children marching—some flags, and some signs about America being free.

One group of children caught Meghan’s eye as they tugged at their mother while marching down the street. The mom paused and crouched down to speak to the children. Somehow, Meghan could read the situation and realized that the mom was explaining to the children about America—about what it is, about all the different people who make up America, about freedom, about dignity.

“I could just tell that the Mom wanted her children to understand something important, something big. I couldn’t tell anything about her politics. I could just tell that she wanted her children to understand what America can be. I could tell she wanted dignity for her children and for people in this country. It was beautiful.”

As Meghan told me this story, I realized something: that Mom at the protest is a role model for me. The 4th may be over now, but the need to explain to each other what we want for ourselves and our country isn’t.

My wife, Linda, and I celebrated America at the wedding of my godson, Alexander, and his new wife, Hannah. They want America to be a place of love. Dozens of my cousins, siblings, and children celebrated America on Cape Cod.

For them and our extended family, America is a place where families create an enduring link from one generation to the next despite loss and pain.

Thousands of Americans in central Texas confronted the most unimaginable horrors on July 4th. For them, I hope and pray America is a place where we hold on to each other in the face of unbearable pain and inexplicable loss.

Yes. It’s complicated. There were celebrations of all kinds on July 4th—celebrations of gratitude to our military, celebrations of gratitude for nature and her blessings, and sadly, celebrations of hatred too. There are a million more examples of our hopes and fears and visions, and they’re not all happy.

I bet that’s one of the lessons that mom was explaining to her children. I imagine her saying, “America is a place where everyone matters equally. No one’s dignity matters more than anyone else’s. Sometimes we get it wrong. But in our country, we always keep trying and we never give up.”

For the next 12 months as we lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re going to be hearing a lot about what we want America to be. But maybe the more important question is what we the people are willing to do to fulfill our vision of what we can be. The answer to that question is hiding in plain sight and is as old as the country itself: join with others and do your part, and no part is too small to matter.

At our best, our country is a country of people who serve one another. Some may say that’s out of fashion, but not me. Someone is waiting for each of us—to talk, to share, to join, to care, to lead, to love. And in our time, the superpower we need is the capacity to treat each other with dignity, even when we disagree. Differences of opinion aren’t the problem; in fact, they’re the solution. As we love to say, “There’s no America without democracy and there’s no democracy without healthy debate and there’s no healthy debate without dignity.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Beyond Party Lines
An illustration to symbolize two divided groups.
Getty Images / Andrii Yalanskyi

Beyond Party Lines

The American Experiment tested whether groups with diverse interests could unite under a declaration of common principles. In this moment, we face a critical juncture that tests whether distrust and political fervor could drive Americans to abandon or deny everything that unites us.

Henry Bolingbroke contends that party spirit inspires “Animosity and breeds Rancor.” Talking of his countrymen, he wrote, “We likewise derive, not our Privileges (for they were always ours) but a more full and explicit Declaration”; Whigs and Tories can unite on this alone. That Declaration of Ours was penned by Thomas Jefferson when his colonists repelled the redcoats at the Siege of Charleston and when Washington’s troops were awaiting battle in Manhattan. The American Declaration set out those principles, which united the diverse colonies. And the party system, as Bolingbroke said, brought animosity and weakened the Union. Critics disputed these claims. William Warburton attacked Bolingbroke as an evil-speaker with “dog-eloquence”—claimed his calls for party reform were an aristocratic conspiracy to cement the power of elites. An anonymous critic argued that the government is a union of unrelated people where laws supplant the natural bonds between families. Then, the government of the United States would not exist, or would not exist long.

Keep ReadingShow less
From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship
assorted notepads

From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneur John Marks developed a set of eleven working principles that have become his modus operandi and provide the basic framework for his new book, “From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship," from which a series of three articles is adapted. While Marks applied these principles in nonprofit work, he says they are also applicable to social enterprisesand to life, in general.

PART TWO

PRINCIPLE #4: KEEP SHOWING UP. It has been said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. For social entrepreneurs, this means continuing to stay engaged without dabbling or parachuting. Like a child’s toy windup truck that moves forward until it hits an obstacle and then backs off and finds another way forward, social entrepreneurs should be persistent—and adept at finding work-arounds. They must be willing to commit for the long term. I found that this was particularly important when working with Iranians, who tend to view the world in terms of centuries and millennia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Similarity Hub Shows >700 Instances of Cross-Partisan Common Ground

Two coloured pencils one red and one blue drawing a reef knot on a white paper background.

Getty Images, David Malan

Similarity Hub Shows >700 Instances of Cross-Partisan Common Ground

It is a common refrain to say that Americans need to find common ground across the political spectrum.

Over the past year, AllSides and More Like US found >700 instances of common ground on political topics, revealed in Similarity Hub. It highlights public opinion data from Gallup, Pew Research, YouGov, and many other reputable polling firms.

Keep ReadingShow less