AHS History Department Tackles American Politics
Eva Liss
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
As the 2024 presidential election hovered in everyone’s minds, the Andover History Department continuously tackled difficult topics, hoping to improve students’ abilities to think critically about their world.
During election years, courses such as World History, US History, and Democracy & Media Literacy face a unique challenge to teach students thoughtfully and neutrally. To face this challenge, teachers like Mary Robb and Brendan Gibson use homegrown frameworks and supervised discussion to encourage students, especially voting-age seniors, to become involved and informed decision-makers. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) also sets guidelines for what can and cannot be taught at the high school level.
A major aspect of political awareness within history classes is active engagement with the current political environment. Democracy & Media Literacy, a course unique to AHS, aims to instruct students in being critical thinkers and decision-makers. Students in the class have regular news reviews, in which they research a current event from multiple news sources across the political spectrum and analyze how the differences found affect outlook on the event.
Robb, who teaches multiple sections of Democracy & Media Literacy, said she believes the course is crucial to students’ development as active consumers of media, especially when it deals with political freedom. “One of the key skills our students sharpen [in this class] is their ability to recognize bias,” she said. “[They] then say ‘okay, now, what are the facts in this story?’ and [draw] their own conclusions.”
This is similar to strategies found in Gibson’s ninth- and tenth-grade World History classes, where students choose their own current events stories every 8-day cycle and prepare for class discussions on the topic.
Gibson’s World History sections deal with both chosen current events and more complicated or controversial topics, such as gun violence, abortion, or the vice presidential debates. Gibson said he has not observed much controversy between students, and he believes students are naturally respectful of each other’s opinions.
“I think students are still trying to learn about these issues by and large… If ever there is a contentious topic, I try to keep things as rooted in fact as possible,” Gibson said of the discussions he’s observed.
Anna Bacchi, a senior in Democracy & Media Literacy, expressed a similar opinion. “I think we’ve all been very good so far at not getting straight-up angry at each other and what we’re seeing,” she said. “We usually try to express our ideas as our own and are able to disagree without yelling.”
“We focus more on policy than personality,” Gibson said when interviewed prior to the election. “We [looked] at polling data from the seven main swing states [each cycle]… Polling is not a perfect science, but… it’s interesting to keep a [finger] on the pulse of these states which… largely [determined] the [election’s] outcome.”
Students in Democracy & Media Literacy also use the widespread media coverage of the presidential election. They explore political patterns found in the modern world through both research and class discussions.
Assignments consisted of watching the presidential and vice-presidential debates, as well as taking notes on documentaries about the candidates. The framework students were provided for note-taking, created by history teacher Kathryn Reusch, goes deeper than simply observations. In it, students are asked to record policies the candidates discussed and their behavior: evasion of questions, criticism or insults, and whether their words were fact-checked and proven false.
“I think [they have] really highlighted how separated our country is politically in comparison to previous generations,” Bacchi said on class discussions and analysis assignments. “I don’t think [they’ve] changed many of my political beliefs, but [they’ve] made me very conscious of how I talk about my opinions and ideas.”
Ultimately, history classes at AHS do not seek to convince students one way or the other. Instead, they are there to prepare students to engage thoughtfully with the world around them, especially as they grow up into a fraught political climate.
“[Students should] be healthy skeptics [and] consciously thinking about what they know,” said Robb. “The goal is for them to know as much as they can about candidates [and] ballot questions so… they can take all that information and [decide] what they need and want from their government.”
