The results of a survey and study on civil discourse in middle and high schools led to the creation of the Or Initiative, which aims to develop evidence-based tools to help students engage civilly in contentious issues. The initiative focuses on two main principles: build digital skills to obtain a thorough knowledge base about complex and contentious issues, and to enhance civil discourse skills to communicate across different viewpoints with empathy, curiosity and respect.
The report, Coming of Age in Polarized Times: Teaching Civil Discourse in a Digital Era, used a case study of the conflict between Israel and Gaza. “We chose this issue because of its urgency and complexity, and because it has become a deep fault line in American public life. We use the conflict as a window into a broader generational condition.”
Researchers set out to find how teens are learning to make sense of contentious issues in algorithmically-driven digital spaces, what role are schools playing — or not playing — in helping them process those issues and how curriculum and educator supports can be designed to aid civil discourse.
The survey
In 2025, the research team conducted interviews with eighth and 11th graders in Orange County, California, and New York City across independent, public and Jewish Day schools; interviews with teachers, school leaders, curriculum directors and technology coordinators; and evaluated the curriculum landscape “of what is being used in middle and high schools across the United States to cover one or more of three domains: digital, information, or media literacy, civil discourse and dialogue skills, and teaching about the Middle East conflict or Israeli–Palestinian story.”
Researchers noted this is just a first step in a larger study as “students in coastal communities cannot stand for young people across the U.S. and in the next phase of work, we will expand into regions with different demographics and cultural histories — including a priority on including more Muslim and Arab student voices — to ensure that our approach can resonate nationally.”
Results
The results of the survey “trace how teens make sense of information, disagreement, and belonging online—and what the implications are for classroom-based civic learning,” according to the report.
Students
The survey found that teens understand how to manipulate algorithmic social media feeds. Their feeds are where they primarily encounter contentious issues in simplified, decontextualized ways. “Their algorithmic awareness does not translate into confidence about what is true,” states the report. “Many understand how content reaches them, but knowing that their feeds are curated, both by the social media algorithm itself and by their own behavior, often heightened, rather than reduced, teens’ information skepticism.”
While teens seem to understand how to “hack” their algorithms, teens’ media literacy skills are not up to par for digital environments, and they see classrooms as one of the last places where they can ask questions. “Across interviews, students consistently contrasted the extreme, untrustworthy characteristics they associate with the online world with the stability that structured, in-person class environments provide,” researchers wrote. “They excitedly shared examples of times in class when teachers gave them opportunities to debate, hear from their classmates about issues that are important to them, and build connections between current events and their core subjects.”
Educators/administrators
Researchers found that educators are united by a deep sense of purpose: to cultivate resilience and kindness, and support students in becoming responsible members of their communities. They view social media as disruptive to achieving those goals. And while they see the effects of students’ social media use in schools, they express limited understanding of students’ experiences in digital spaces.
While most surveyed educators surveyed wanted to help students talk about tough topics like the Israel-Gaza conflict, they also described fears of being perceived as biased or politically motivated, lack of guidance from school leaders, potential pressure from parents, and limited professional development and bandwidth to design and facilitate high-quality discussions as challenges.
Another finding that rose to the top was the gaps educators see between the way students use digital spaces and available curricular tools to bridge what students learn in digital environments and in classrooms.
Curriculum
The Or Initiative team evaluated the current curriculum and teacher development landscape to learn what tools and supports already exist to help teachers facilitate learning and discussion about contentious topics with students.
Three key themes emerged:
- Few curricula bridge the gap between classroom learning and how students are learning about, processing and discussing contentious issues online. “Students are learning about and experiencing events like the Israel-Hamas war and the murder of Charlie Kirk in highly charged online spaces without support from adults, in or out of school. While there is an array of teaching resources that promote civil discourse and classroom discussion more broadly, they rarely make a direct link between the most contentious current events and the teaching strategies for supporting classroom discussions across differences,” states the report.
- Digital literacy curricula often emphasize the risks of young people’s online engagement, while failing to recognize the opportunities.
- There is a burgeoning field of digital tools — many that are artificial intelligence-based —designed to foster civil discourse skills. The report notes that these tools are in their “infancy” but “we see possibilities for creating and integrating AI tools that scaffold civil discourse skills for middle and high school students — if they have been created with and for young people’s specific developmental stages,” researchers wrote.
Recommendations
The report offers segmented recommendations for different groups:
- For educators and school leaders: Treat classrooms as civic spaces and invest in integrated approaches to content, digital literacy and discourse.
- For curriculum developers: Strengthen and connect existing efforts across domains.
- For philanthropies and research partners: Invest in field-level infrastructure rather than isolated pilots.
