The Democracy Project
Created by Erin Cook

Looking for resources to help explore contentious topics in the classroom during election season? We are just about a month away from the release of The Democracy Project, a collection of educational resources designed to support teachers as they engage students in discussions around some of the contentious issues that divide us–particularly in an election year. The project will include teaching materials that explore the topics of free speech, abortion, guns, immigration, and economic inequality in new and interesting ways–with a set of pedagogical frames to help instruct and inspire.

Many thanks to the wonderful teachers who made invaluable contributions to this project: Patrick Halbrook, Kimberly Wilson, Travis Gilmore, Linda Luu, and Tola Atewologun.

In the meantime, here are 10 great articles that represent a range of views on the state of our democracy. Any combination of these articles can help teachers and their students ground their thinking on American democracy before jumping into topic-specific discussions:

1. Danny Oppenheimer and Mike Edwards: “American Democracy is Less Broken Than You Think” If media bias, corruption, racism, and polarization spelled the doom of America, we would have been destroyed long ago.
2. George Packer: “How America Fractured Into Four Parts” People in the United States no longer agree on the nation’s purpose, values, history, or meaning. Is reconciliation possible?
3. Richard D. Kahlenberg: “Teaching Students What It Means to Be an American”: Combating the identity politics of the extreme left and right provides the key to preserving our democracy.
4. Shalom Auslander: “Troubling News From the Shit-Stirring Department” What if we’re not as divided as we’re being told we are?
5. Ronald Brownstein: “America is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good”: The great “convergence” of the mid-20th century may have been an anomaly.
6. David Brooks: “The Glory of Democracy”: Democracy is the only system built on respect for the infinite dignity of each individual man and woman, on each person’s moral striving for freedom, justice and truth. It would be a great error to think of and teach democracy as a procedural or political system, or as the principle of majority rule.
7. Jennifer Rubin, “Why Centrism Might Be Our Salvation” Our democratic system is ailing, but the cure is lying right there in the middle of the road.
8. Patrick J. Deneen, Francis Fukuyama, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Cornel West: “Is Liberalism Worth Saving? The Future of an Ideal” What steps should liberal societies take to safeguard human dignity in the twenty-first century? Do populist movements pose an existential threat to liberal values and institutions? Must a democratic society necessarily be a liberal one?
9. Michael Baharaeen: “The American Experiment Is Still Worth Fighting For” The future of liberal democracy in the United States has arguably never felt so tenuous. Recent surveys have made eminently clear just how pessimistic young Americans are about their country and its future.
10. Maria Popova: “Leonard Cohen on Democracy and its Redemptions” One of his most beloved lyric lines, from the song “Anthem” — a song that took Cohen a decade to write — remains what is perhaps the most meaningful message for our troubled and troubling times: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”