Tennessee has built both knowledge and practice into civic education.
To meet the state’s social studies credit requirement for graduation, high school students must pass a U.S. civics test, and districts must also implement a project-based civics assessment at least once in grades nine through 12. Tennessee’s high school social studies practices also expect students to “construct and communicate arguments by citing supporting evidence” and to “engage in appropriate civic discourse.”
Students need to know how government works. They also need practice at what citizenship requires: making an argument, listening to an opposing one and working through disagreement.
The second part depends on whether students are willing to speak.
Students are staying silent in the discussions that matter most
This summer the Sandra
Day O’Connor Institute surveyed recent high school graduates about their civics classes. Fifty-eight percent said they had self-censored rather than say what they really thought about a political or civic topic because they were concerned about how others might react.
Seventy-three percent said they were generally comfortable sharing their honest views. Yet 51% of those students had still self-censored at least once.
The most striking finding was whom students worried about. Among those who self-censored, 91% cited classmates as a concern. Forty-one percent cited the teacher.
That matters because civic discussion is citizenship practice. A view that never enters the conversation cannot be examined, challenged, defended or revised. The student misses the chance to make an argument, hear a competing one and decide whether the evidence changes anything.
Peer pressure, not teachers, is the bigger obstacle
Students may respond not only to what classmates actually believe but to what they think classmates will tolerate. A quiet classroom can be easy to misread, and a few visible reactions may not represent the broader room.
Teachers are central because they shape the conditions in which this peer pressure operates. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they had sometimes or often seen a teacher avoid, cut short or shut down a political or current events discussion. Last year, nearly 80% of civics teachers we surveyed said they had themselves self-censored because they feared pushback or controversy.
The goal is not to make disagreement easy. Serious civic discussion will sometimes be uncomfortable. The goal is a classroom where a student can make an argument, hear criticism and even lose the argument without losing social standing.
Because classmates were the most commonly cited concern, schools should first find out whether students are misreading their peers or whether the peer culture itself makes disagreement costly.
Schools can make civic disagreement less intimidating
One approach is for teachers to ask students anonymously whether a hypothetical classmate who voices an unpopular opinion should still be treated with respect, then ask whether they think most classmates agree. If students support that norm more strongly than they think their peers do, showing them the results may help correct the misperception. If many students do not support it, the norm itself needs attention. Schools can enlist students their classmates respect to model how to challenge ideas without attacking people.
Schools can also lower the initial social stakes without lowering the standards. Assigned positions, anonymous opening responses and exercises requiring students to argue a view they do not hold give them practice before every contribution feels like a declaration of political identity. Because 26% of those who self-censored worried about being talked about or posted about online, structured discussions should carry a clear rule: Classmates’ remarks are not recorded, posted or circulated out of context.
Teachers also need preparation for the peer dynamics in the room: recognizing when a view has become socially difficult to express, protecting space for a minority argument without endorsing it and intervening when disagreement turns personal.
Tennessee already expects students to engage in civic discourse and construct arguments supported by evidence. Those skills cannot be learned only by knowing the right answers. Students have to practice them with one another.
Liam Julian is chief of programs and public policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute. The institute's new report, "Why Are Students Self-Censoring in Civics Class?” is available at oconnorinstitute.org/research2026.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why Tennessee students are self-censoring in civics class | Opinion
