Courageous Conversations About Our Schools

Curiosity has been a common theme in this podcast. Conflict experts like my guests Amanda Ripley, Monica Guzman, and Peter Coleman say being curious and less judgmental is often a better way out of toxic conflict than making stronger arguments or presenting more facts. And, as we heard from our recent guest, Tim Shriver, it’s a much better alternative than treating one’s adversaries with contempt, which often makes matters worse. “Contempt only makes an enemy for your cause,” he says.

But how does curiosity work? How can we be curious about people whose perspectives we reject? What makes us incurious? I have not encountered anyone more qualified to answer these questions than Scott Shigeoka. Scott has devoted decades thinking about, studying, and talking with people about curiosity, and he recently wrote a book on the subject called Seek - How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. His study of the concept leads him to distinguish between shallow and deep curiosity and to warn readers about “predatory curiosity” and “performative curiosity.”

In this episode, Scott explains why curiosity is so powerful, not just as a way out of toxic conflict but as a path to understanding the world and others on a deeper level. For these reasons, it’s something that must be cultivated in schools.

One of the questions I was curious about is, What makes students, or all of us for that matter, incurious? What gets in the way? Are some of us simply born to be more curious, or can it be taught? Can the desire to understand be extinguished? Tune in to hear Scott’s answers to these questions and his reflections on the various ways curiosity can spark deeper learning and strengthen our schools.

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In our previous episode (Ep. 36), Tim Shriver America’s widening political and social divides are, surprisingly, not due to our differences. “We’ve always had differences,” he says, “Contempt is the problem.” Shriver explains why treating others with dignity is more likely to produce the results we want and why contempt usually does the opposite. He and his colleagues created the Dignity Index to help us recognize the various ways we can regard our adversaries—either with contempt or with dignity.

In the current episode, Futernick interviews four college students who are ambassadors for Students for Dignity, an organization with over 25 chapters on college campuses across the county. Preston Brightwell, the founder of this organization, also participates. Each student explains how he or she uses the Dignity Index to assess their interactions and help others see the virtues of dignity over contempt.

Key questions addressed in this conversation:

• Why did you choose to get involved with Student for Dignity?
• How have you experienced contempt or been contemptuous yourself?
• What fuels contempt (adult models, social media)?
• What pushback do you get from other students who may be reluctant to treat their adversaries with dignity?
• What can students do if they want to get involved?

Notable Quotes

I feel like there are moments where we push for a world of dignity, but we don't hold friends accountable when they're being contemptuous. And it's the level at which when you're throwing contempt at me or my loved ones, I will react, but when my loved ones throw contempt at you, I'm going to turn a blind eye. - Iradukunda Manikandan

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I would say what frequently fuels contempt is that it's much easier. It gives you that spike of adrenaline. You tend to build your in-group because the minute that you say something fiery on social media, everyone who agrees with you is like, YEAH! And then you feel seen. It's much less interesting to say, “I don't agree with that.” And no one watches that on TikTok. - Alexa Merril

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I really think contempt breeds contempt. When our dignity is violated, it's easy and almost justified to respond with contempt. And so it's just contempt, contempt, contempt. And somebody has to be the one to take a step back and say, “I am going to respond with dignity.” - David Witt

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Tim Shriver is a member of the Kennedy family, Chairman of Special Olympics International, co-founder of UNITE, and a former teacher. In this wide-ranging conversation with host Ken Futernick, Shriver describes a tool he co-created called the Dignity Index, and he describes how educators are using it to address our widening political and social divides. “We built it because there's an issue in our culture, in our families, in our homes, and in our schools that we haven't paid that much attention to. And the issue is how we treat each other when we disagree.” The Index is a framework that allows students (and politicians and educators) to examine their interactions, with the goal of reducing contempt and promoting a sense of dignity toward others. “Most people think the problem is that we have such [great] differences in our country. Our view is that's not a problem,” Shriver says. “We've always had differences...Difference is not the problem...Contempt is the problem.”
How Educators Are Using the Index

Shriver says students in history classes are using the Index to score speeches from historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Harriet Tubman, and Martin Luther King Jr. “Students learn how to dissect the rhetoric in our political history, looking for whether this particular figure used dignity or contempt. And, we have other elementary school teachers who are creating codes of conduct using the Index. A school district in the Salt Lake City School District,” Shriver says, “has created what they call the five and up rule.” When students disagree, teachers help students use language in the upper half of the index (i.e., levels 5-8) - language that views others with dignity rather than contempt.

Shriver says his organization has received requests from school boards asking for help with people who are “fired up and angry” over one issue or another. They want to know how to get them to use dignity language rather than dehumanizing and humiliating people with different perspectives.
Isn’t Contemp Warranted at Times?

Reflecting on an objection some might have to this approach, Ken asks, “Aren’t there some acts and some people who just aren’t dignified themselves, whose acts are awful. How can you hold this belief about a person who commits heinous acts or has really awful political views that hurt people... How can you (or should you) still feel a sense of dignity towards that person or those actions?”

The problem, Shriver says, is that the alternative, contempt, “makes an enemy for your cause.” Whether the target of one’s contempt is a politician or another student, the outcome is always the same. That person’s views and actions are more, not less, likely to persist. What makes matters worse, Shriver says, is that contempt in today’s culture has become “glorified and rewarded, and it’s making all of us less happy and less healthy.”

Schools Play a Vital Role

Shriver concludes with this inspiring reflection on educators' critical role in holding our nation together. “I started my career as a teacher. When I look to the institutions of this nation, and I look to who and where are people who know that everybody deserves a chance, where are the people who know that hope and development are the actual work of community building and nation building? Where are the people who trust that new ideas can emerge? It's schools.”

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According to a recent Washington Post article, homeschooling is the fastest growing form of education in America. As many as 2.7 million students are currently being homeschooled. One of my guests, Heidi Sampson, is a veteran homeschooling parent from Maine and a four-term Republican legislator. She concedes that homeschooling is not for everyone but says, “The overwhelming evidence nationally for homeschooling is the fact that there's an opportunity for students to excel.”

Another guest, Nicole Doyle, a leader of the Georgia Black Home Educators Network in Georgia, says homeschooling is a form of “resistance” to people who blame Black parents for their children's poor educational performance. Homeschooling is also a way for Black families to ensure their children receive a culturally relevant education, she says.
What makes homeschooling controversial is that fact that the U.S. regulates it less than any other industrialized nation. In many states, homeschooling parents can simply educate as they wish with their children. They are not required to follow a curriculum or to administer academic assessments. As such, they are not accountable for what their children learn.
This is how it should be, parent rights advocates argue, but some, like Weston Brown who was homeschooled in Texas, has a different perspective. “I absolutely believe that there should be regulation, that there should be oversight...I grew up hearing the phrase ‘the rights of the parents’ over and over and over again, and it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that, for the first time, I heard, ‘What about the rights of the child to a basic education?’” Weston believes his parent’s intentions were good, but he expressed deep concern about the education they provided. “I learned things like the enslavement of millions of people was necessary for America's growth. I didn't know about of any of the key leaders of the civil rights movement.”
Samantha Field also expressed regret about her homeschooling experience. “My parents didn't know how to teach me any form of basic math beyond basic arithmetic. And once I reached algebra in high school, I was forced to try to teach myself. I was unsuccessful but attributed my inability to do that to being a woman, as I had been taught that women were innately incapable of understanding higher math.”
Heidi, the lawmaker from Maine, empathizes with Weston and Samantha, calling their stories “heart wrenching." She says there should be a way to “mitigate” homeschooling experiences like theirs, but cautions against government overreach. “The more you regulate, the more you're going to have issues and problems,” she says.
What inspired me most about this conversation is that my guests - each with vastly different experiences and perspectives - listened, empathized, and were eager to learn more from one another.
At the end of this conversation, Heidi said, “I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of takeaways...I could sit down with each one of you and just listen and just explore ideas...I think I have a pretty good feel of what's going on here in Maine, but to hear the different cultures is exciting...How do we best serve all these different cultures in the United States to homeschool their children to the best of their ability and give those children every opportunity to shoot for the stars?” Weston said, “I love having this conversation...and it could go on for hours.”
To set the stage for this civil exchange I started the conversation by asking each guest to describe a teacher who had a positive impact on their life. I didn’t include their responses in the episode, but starting with personal stories, as I do

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