This solutions journalism project was created as part of reporter Emma Davis’ service project as a Report for America corps member. Davis worked with nine high school students in Hillsdale’s 2021-22 yearbook class to produce journalism relevant to their district. The students include Delaney Painter, Devon Simmons, Jackson Radcliffe, Jacob Spillman, Klaire Meyer, Marissa Heldenbrand, Celeste Harris, Aaron Horton and Alexis Hamilton. Yearbook teacher Kyle Wissel also contributed.
JEROMESVILLE — Hillsdale senior Elizabeth Norris has increasingly seen more variety of thought in her conversations with peers throughout her high school career.
However, in her view, most conversations between students with opposing views are often dominated by defensiveness and yelling, she said.
“They just end because the other person is either outnumbered, just gets tired of it and they’re like ‘OK whatever I’m not going to change their mind,’” Norris explained. “They basically just kind of give up and there’s not really a compromise or a different view being gained from it.
“It’s just ‘We’re tired of arguing and we’re just going to leave it there.’”
Divisive conversation when it comes to topics of controversy or strong opinion is not a new development, nor unique to Hillsdale High School or high school in general. (Adolescent cliques in American schools have long been documented.)
Across the country, and the world, people are wrestling with deepening political and other divides.
Also, as mentioned in “Offering more by scheduling less: A personalized approach to education,” other Ohio high schools, such as Mayfield, have seen a need to teach students soft skills, such as communication and collaboration.
Hillsdale sophomore Lily Nethero has struggled having conversations with people who have opposing views. While Nethero said she had actively tried to converse with peers who had different views than her last school year, she has since been dissuaded.
“It was just two polar opposites all the time and it didn’t work out,” Nethero said. “I was always wrong and they were always right. There was no compromise to anything. Everything had to be one-sided.”
Despite this, the students said they were interested in engaging with people who have different views than them. In fact, they said they think exposure to different views is important.
But, practically, they do not see a way for these conversations to end in an outcome other than people feeling more polarized or getting offended.
Curiosity could help bridge the divide.
A tendency to silo into like-minded groups is not exclusive to Hillsdale. In-group and out-group organization is not unique to the school setting, either.
People are naturally inclined to look favorably upon people who are similar to them, a finding documented by Mónica Guzmán in her book “I Never Thought of It That Way.”
Guzmán acknowledged this reality and created actionable tools to bridge the gap, specifically by shifting from a focus on providing answers to asking questions. Guzmán hosts “Curiosity Workshops,” where she tasks people to get curious, specifically by understanding the experiences and concerns of people behind divisive issues.
Hear from Mónica Guzmán:
The ideas in Guzmán’s book and the related workshops also stem from personal experience. Guzmán, a liberal, is the daughter of conservative Mexican immigrants who strongly support Donald Trump.
Despite often heated debates and unchanging differences of opinion, Guzmán and her parents remain close and enjoy spending time together — a testament to the power of curiosity-driven conversation.
So far, Guzmán has done about eight workshops to help people practice curiosity in a way that is easily exportable into the rest of their daily lives and conversations.
She has not yet done them in a school setting, but when asked if she thinks they could be done in a school setting, she said, “Yes! Haven’t thought through how to spread the workshops yet, but they’re having such a strong response, I’d definitely like to consider it.”
Norris and Nethero were among a focus group of students interviewed about Hillsdale High School’s culture after pre-reporting interviews and a survey distributed to the student body at large indicated discontentment with expectations and attitudes at the high school.
In a survey of 104 Hillsdale High School students, the most commonly cited reason for students not feeling as if they fit in was because of political views, with the next most common response being athletic ability, followed by academics. Other reasons listed included extracurricular interests, religion and sexual orientation.
The survey mainly comprised students who have remained in the high school building, so the perspectives of students who left are underrepresented in these raw results.
Surveyed students described their school’s culture as being centered around agriculture and athletics, with a small town yet “cliquey” feel.
Among the 104 respondents, 68.3% felt as if they fit into school culture, whereas 31.7% did not. When asked how happy students were at Hillsdale, the majority of respondents gave a three out of five rating.
Several students cited providing more opportunities to students, such as adding extracurriculars aside from sports, as a means to improve their school experience.
This survey, which students filled out through a link posted in each grade’s Google Classroom, is merely a sampling and should not be taken as a comprehensive conclusion of school-wide sentiment. Individual student interviews provided greater insight into findings.
For example, Norris elaborated on the point about extracurriculars, specifically describing extracurricular offerings at Hillsdale as homogeneous and traditional.
Grabowski explained the prominent cliques in the school, often based on cultural and political views.
“I don’t get along with anyone here,” she said. “I wish there was less discrimination between students.”
Sophomore Braden Burgett said he is cautious when having conversations with people who have a different view than him. Generally, he does not feel safe to disagree because Hillsdale is small, and word gets around.
The high school has a total enrollment of 273 students this school year, although not all are physically at the high school, as they take classes at the career center or through College Credit Plus. Jeromesville, the village in which Hillsdale Local Schools sits, has a total population of 531, as of the 2020 Census.
Norris shared similar concerns.
“You don’t want to offend somebody,” Norris said.
Another factor is the convenience of proximity. On any given school day, Grabowski, Burgett, Norris and Nethero most often interact with peers who belong to their same clubs and social circles.
A common thread in the Hillsdale survey, in addition to one-on-one student interviews: An inability to bridge the divide between students with different views and identities at Hillsdale High School — also a key goal of Guzmán ‘s “Curiosity Workshop.”
These workshops have three main exercises.
The first exercise centers around a driving question: “Who are you, and what are you all about?” Participants ask a partner questions based on their latest responses, and the question-asker cannot comment or share anything of their own. The goal of this set-up is to ask as many follow-up questions as possible staying on the same “thread.”
The goal of the second exercise is to better understand how people have come to hold the views they do. To do this, participants are tasked to ask questions about their partner’s experiences or their concerns.
The final exercise builds on the earlier two by tasking participants to collaborate in re-writing what Guzmán calls “incurious questions.” Guzmán defines a good question as follows, “it leads to better understanding between people,” whereas a bad, or “incurious,” question is one that does not work towards better understanding, whether that is because it compromises trust and goodwill or costs the question asker traction.
An example of this re-writing exercise would be changing this incurious question, “Have you ever considered getting your news from credible, legitimate sources?” to something curious, “What sources do you use to get your news?” or “How do you evaluate the credibility of your news sources?”
Hillsdale High School began incorporating an advisory period Wednesdays of each week at the start of the 2021-22 school year, specifically to organize assemblies about various topics.
For example, students learned driver safety through hands-on scenarios in an advisory period in March 2022.
The students in the focus group said they think action to curb the division among students needs to be organized by school leaders, such as during advisory, so that students will participate. Further, Hillsdale students said they and their peers have been more inclined to pay attention to assemblies when they are interactive, rather than a one-sided presentation.
Guzmán has not collected data from the “Curiosity Workshops” so far.
However, she has documented specific examples of increased understanding across political divides, such as when a woman from a majority liberal-voting part of Washington state spoke with a man from a largely conservative part of Oregon after the 2016 election.
The woman has assumed any vote for Trump must have been a vote against all the things that drew her to her vote. But it had not entered her consciousness that someone could have voted for reasons she had not considered, or reasons that did not matter to her way of life, until the man from Oregon explained exactly that.
Specifically, he said he voted for Trump because regulations such as one dictating who controls certain bodies of water had threatened his farming business.
Guzmán calls this an “I never thought of it that way” moment, or an INOIT moment. Some INOIT moments happen instantly, such as the one above, while others grow slower through exposure overtime.
Even without organized “Curiosity Workshops,” people can seek out INOIT moments each day, Guzmán explains, by keeping their mind on the gap between what they know and what they don’t, by exposing themselves to something new once in a while, rejecting easy answers, and embracing complexity.
