Can Civility Be Measured in a Non-Academic Sense?
I recently read a piece by Sarah D. Sparks, Colleges Will Give a Leg Up to Students Who Demonstrate Civility, posted on Education Week, that some colleges are going to give a “leg up” to certain applicants, based on civility determinations, which will provide a preferential advantage in the admissions process. This leg up will mean a higher probability of admission compared to other equally qualified applicants. I took notice of the discussion because I have written and blogged extensively on the importance of civility in society and the fact that it has become a “lost art.”
According to the article, eight selective colleges, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, and Vanderbilt University announced they will accept these “civility transcripts” among the factors they weigh in college-admissions decisions. “I don’t want brittle students,” said Jim Nondorf, the vice president for enrollment and student advancement and the dean of college admissions and financial aid for the University of Chicago, one of the colleges that plans to use civility as a consideration during admission decisions. “I want students who can come here and add to the conversation on campus but do it in the right way.”
What is “Civility?”
What is the right way? To really tackle the meaning of civility, a variety of issues should be addressed. One is the “cancel culture,” which is responsible for a lack of civility in society today. It has redefined how people act towards each other. In the cancel culture, those offended by the comments of another party speak out against that person whether in person, in the media or on the Internet. They seek to cancel that person, which means to cause harm in some way. From the perspective of civility, we might ask: Is it right to target a person with whom you disagree and use the Internet to express your outrage, get people fired, or pushed out of certain circles?
Cancelling someone is a form of social and cultural boycott driven by ‘groupthink’ meaning the intolerance of others with a point of view that diverges from group norms. Taken to an extreme, it’s like excommunicating someone from the community. They become denounced online by those who object to their behavior.
Studies have found that young people do need guidance and opportunities to practice difficult conversations and respond to criticism without falling into “outrage cycles.” In particular, students may have more difficulty picking up social cues and understanding nuance in virtual arguments compared to in-person disagreements.
Salman Khan, the founder of the virtual education platform Khan Academy and co-founder of Schoolhouse.world, is quoted in the article as saying: “It’s very easy in anonymous or asynchronous forums to just completely ‘other’ the other party—to think they’re idiots, think they’re evil, whatever,” “That’s very hard to do in this [face-to-face] setting.”
Many educational programs focus on argument and discourse, but it can be difficult to measure nonacademic aspects of these skills. There are no standard assessments of students’ civility, but a few other projects are trying to look at some of the necessary components—such as listening and considering feedback from partners.
Restoring Civility to Society
The vast majority of Americans (72%) desire to be a part of the solution in restoring civility to society, according to a study released by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute’s (RRPFI) Center on Civility and Democracy. The findings from this survey on the state of democracy and civility acknowledge the divide in the U.S. but reveal ways for Americans to find a way forward and foster civility.
A new pilot program shows that it might be possible to instill an ability to disagree productively in adolescents—and some of the nation’s top universities want to consider proof of that skill in admissions. However, we must ask: What does it mean to “disagree productively?” Simply stated, it is to develop the skill of being able to disagree with another party without being disagreeable. This should be the skill developed in colleges and universities. Indeed, education in this area should start much earlier. One way is to incorporate more communication into education at all levels. We need to have students debate issues face-to-face with the guidance of teachers to make sure civility is maintained. Nondorf said students need more practice with managing conflicts both in class and out of school.
An overwhelming majority of K-12 educators told the EdWeek Research Center in 2024 that schools should teach students how to have respectful disagreements, about a third of teachers said they have changed or avoided lessons on challenging topics out of concern about backlash from students, parents, or the public. This is unfortunate but highlights one of the challenges of bringing civility into the classroom.
What Is and What Can Be Done?
This year five states–Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin—partnered with the nonprofit Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which created the time-based Carnegie units for secondary credits, and the assessment group ETS for the Skills for the Future project, which is testing 15 different tools to measure underlying skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
“These types of skills are predictive of the success that we want to see for young adults, both with high school and college attainment, but also other dimensions of thriving that broaden the definition of commencement-level success,” said Brooke Stafford-Brizard, Carnegie’s vice president for innovation and impact.
For example, the partnership is testing one “test-less assessment” task in which a student coordinates with two artificial intelligence-run avatars to tell a story, according to Laura Slover, who leads the Skills for the Future project.
“They each build on each other’s ideas,” she said. “They have to listen so that they’re picking up the ideas and creating linkages to build the next part of the story [and] giving each other feedback in real time.”
Students would be evaluated based on things like how well they accepted and used the AI characters’ ideas and feedback. Slover points out that it’s not clear how well simulation tasks of this sort can measure students’ ability to work with other people, particularly in problem-solving and healthy disagreements.
The Dialogues program takes a different approach. It built off Schoolhouse.world, the peer-tutoring platform, in which secondary students develop a portfolio of tutoring subject “certifications” by passing online assessments and providing and reviewing video explanations of concepts. Then, as students begin to tutor, their tutees also review their support and effectiveness.
Dialogues participants, ages 14 to 18, volunteer to have conversations on any of about two dozen controversial topics, including AI, income inequality, immigration, mental health, and gun control. Each student reviewed guidelines for civil disagreements and discussion guides for particular topics, and was matched to peers with a different viewpoint on the assigned topics. The students had and recorded virtual conversations with their partners, then reflected on their own experience and provided written feedback for their partner.
The students participated independently of their schools and were not graded on their performance in these dialogues, but they received a portfolio transcript detailing the number of hours and topics of discussion in which they participated and feedback from their partners on skills like active listening and how well they challenged their own views. Students could submit these portfolios to colleges as part of admissions decisions.
During the year-and-a-half pilot, more than 600 students logged about 2,000 hours of discussion. Schoolhouse is expanding the pilot to more school districts. These structured peer reviews and self-reflections work in lieu of formal assessments, Khan said. “I don’t think you can truly fake respect,” he said. “You have to have real respect; otherwise, the other party can tell.”
While an overwhelming majority of K-12 educators told the EdWeek Research Center in 2024 that schools have a responsibility to teach students how to have respectful disagreements, about a third of teachers said they have changed or avoided lessons on challenging topics out of concern about backlash from students, parents, or the public. Nondorf, the University of Chicago administrator, said students need more practice with managing conflicts both in class and out of school.
Modeling Civility in and Outside the Classroom
It has been said, “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Teachers have to model civil behavior both in and outside the classroom. This hasn’t always been the case. Teachers need training on how to build civility into classroom discussions, assignments, and projects.
There is a related education quote that goes something like, “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Teachers have to model civil behavior both inside and outside the classroom. That hasn’t always been the case.
Robert Hill writes in The Teaching Professor:
“Each college has its own policies for both student and faculty conduct, as college professors ‘the buck stops’ with us when it comes to controlling the climate and establishing the expectations for civil discourse in our classrooms. Professors need to model civility, and by this I mean much more than proper manners and etiquette, such as regularly saying “please” and “thank you.” I mean feeling actual empathy toward students. A syllabus, even if it’s posted online, says a lot about us before the course even begins. The same could be said about an introductory welcome letter for an online course. First impressions are important. That very first class should clearly set the expectations. Too often faculty miss this opportunity and just dive into their academic content without any attention paid to the culture that needs to be established in that course. We should all be good stewards, heed our grandparents’ advice, and foster a caring learning community imbued with mutual respect. If we don’t practice civility, empathy, and respect, how can we expect meaningful conversations to occur in our courses?”
Final Thoughts
I have read widely that because of increasingly divisive public discourse, civility has become a sought-after skill for colleges and universities struggling to maintain a rich set of viewpoints on campus, and for employers trying to build diverse workplaces. I think it’s great that more attention is being given to civil discourse and behavior. It’s about time. However, let’s not delude ourselves. It’s going to take a lot more than assignments which may, or may not, illustrate and promote civility. True civility is borne out of respect for others and tolerance for divergent viewpoints. It also requires treating each other equally. We shouldn’t discriminate against someone because we don’t agree with their opinion. We should respect these differences and learn from others points of view. That is true learning.
It’s critical that educators who want to jump on the leg up bandwagon examine their own behavior. Do they act civilly towards each other? How do they resolve differences with colleagues and others? Do they possess the skills necessary to ensure that civility becomes intertwined with education? Are they really committed to making a difference?
Posted by Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, on May 20, 2025. You can sign up for his newsletter and learn more about his activities at: https://www.stevenmintzethics.com/.