Democracy Through Disagreement: Introducing Conflict into Democratic Education

It is commonly said that a threat to democracy is increasing polarization. This increasing polarization is often seen as making political consensus more difficult and increasing political violence. This issue is only going to become exacerbated by the increasing global challenges, such as climate change, demographic shifts, or changes to the labor market brought about by the introduction of artificial intelligences. How to respond to these challenges often creates greater polarization, rather than uniting the citizenry behind a common cause. While this paper agrees with the framing that increasing disagreement and polarization pose a challenge to democracy, it argues that polarization and disagreement are not inherently negative for a democracy. Instead, I follow agonistic democrats in seeing disagreement as a vital part of a democratic citizenry. It is not disagreement and polarization that are the heart of the issues facing democracy, but how their citizens respond to this increasing polarization. If citizens were able to engage with those they disagreed with in productive ways, then their polarization would not be inherently negative, and may in fact aid them to generate novel solutions to the problems they face. Engaging in this kind of productive disagreement is not something that individuals can inherently do. It is a skill and like any skill it requires learning and practice. Thus, one way to support the formation of a democratic citizenry is through education. In this paper, I argue that spaces specifically designed to acclimatize students to disagreement and polarization should be introduced into schools. In these spaces, students would be asked to present their opinions on controversial topics and challenges facing the society. The students would then debate each other with minimal supervision by an educator. Conflict is encouraged. Once this initial stage is completed, the students then reflect on the process. They would be asked why they responded in the way they did, whether they thought their response was productive and why, how did they think their responses might have affected those they disagreed with, and why they thought those they disagreed with responded in the way they did. The intention is to draw on those points of genuine disagreement between the students, thereby allowing the students to identify existing points of conflict and tension within their community and allowing them to become comfortable with opposing views. By giving students a space to experience disagreement and argue with each other, they will become better acclimatized to it and better able to productively respond when faced with such disagreement in later life. Thus, although there may be increased polarization in the future, these future citizens would be able to respond to this disagreement in ways that do not lead to increased political violence and may even aid the ability future democracies to respond to existential challenges.