On Tuesday, October 22, 2024, Branson marked its first-ever Civil Discourse Day. "The purpose of the day was to teach students the difference between discourse and debate," noted Assistant Head of School for Academics & Dean of Faculty Jeff Symonds, one of the organizers of the event. "We want to help students internalize why discourse is at the heart of our classroom work and not just debate – as a school, we want students to emphasize discussion and perpetual exploration of a topic and not just winning an argument, because we think that more valuable deep learning comes with that approach."
After shortened classes in the morning, all students, faculty, and staff gathered in the Gym for an hour-long presentation from keynote speaker Josh Libresco, Executive Vice President of the OSR Group, who also happens to be the parent of two Branson alumni. Libresco is an experienced marketing research executive and polling expert who has conducted several thousand quantitative and qualitative research projects for a variety of industries – though he confided to Branson students that polling and elections research is his favorite. His presentation included an overview of how political polling is done, best practices in survey design, how politicians interact with polls and use them to their advantage (or not), and current projections for the 2024 Presidential elections (too close to call at present!) and other key races. [Note: He also recently shared this same talk at the Commonwealth Club, and it can be heard/viewed on LinkedIn here.]
Following the keynote, students met in smaller breakout groups. Advisories were paired together, mixing students from different grades and faculty/staff from different disciplines, to take a more hands-on look at the difference between discourse and debate. Using real examples from current Branson life (cell phones on campus; keeping the Commons clean) as well as topics of broader political and social interest such as gun control and women's reproductive rights, students practiced framing arguments from the lenses of both debate and civil discourse and compared and contrasted the merits of both approaches.
Finally, Symonds led students in an interactive workshop entitled "Resisting Catastrophizing: How to Understand Election Fears Through Dystopian Art. " In his presentation, he called out the fears that have been highlighted in popular media around the election and are deeply felt by both sides, including "threat to democracy" or "end of America." And, surprisingly, he demonstrated that these are not actually new. Dystopian literature, movies and art – Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, Blade Runner, The Matrix, even Pixar's Wall-e – show that these fears have been a part of our cultural narrative for over a hundred years, though each work of art takes a unique outlook and position on them.
Students were challenged to "reverse the catastrophizing impulse through civil discourse," first stepping into the shoes of supporters of each of the presidential candidates to go down the catastrophizing rabbit hole: What if XXX wins? How will society change? Then what? If this goes on... If only we... After flexing the muscles of understanding a different side from their own, students were then asked to considering the role that civil discourse could play in preventing these states in the future. In the end, all members of the Branson community were challenged to stay empathetic to opposing points of view, lean into complexity and nuance, focus on now, and continue to search for solutions through constructive and civil inquiry and discourse.