Using controversy as a teaching tool
n a time of hyperpolarization and hyper partisanship, preparing students to deliberate about their differences becomes even more important. In this interview, Diana Hess, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of The Political Classroom, describes the challenge of ensuring that students have access to multiple and competing viewpoints about issues of public importance. In her research with co-author Paula McAvoy, Hess said she learned that students value hearing their teachers’ viewpoints as long as teachers aren’t pressing those views on students but that hearing a teacher’s viewpoint didn’t often change a student’s own opinion.