As politics becomes more divisive, it can sometimes seem impossible for neighbors or even friends with different opinions to get along. School board meetings, city council meetings, even libraries, have become cultural and political battlegrounds.
But a new study suggests rural Texas might have a thing or two to teach the rest of us about how to better get along.
Co-authors William McKenzie and Chris Walsh spoke with Texas Standard about their findings.
William McKenzie is a senior editorial advisor at the George W. Bush Institute and a former columnist for the Dallas Morning News. Chris Walsh is the director of global policy at the Bush Institute. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: How did you go about trying to get this information? I gather you both spent several weeks interviewing students, teachers, administrators at rural schools across Texas.
Why rural schools? And what were you looking for specifically?
William McKenzie: Well, we went to rural schools because rural schools oftentimes are going to be overlooked. So we thought it would be important to kind of see and hear and learn how students and teachers are dealing with their differences.
How do they have conversations where people come at a topic with different points of view and how do they have those conversations and walk away without, in effect, killing each other? How do you do it in a respectful way?
What did you find?
McKenzie: Well, in terms of the rural schools that we spoke with, I would say there are three things that jumped out.
First, it’s important to share a project. The district we spoke with in Indiana has something called Workforce Wednesdays, where everybody goes out and participates in one of three projects in the community. And we found this to be the case also in Texas schools and districts, that they were involved in various community-based programs.
Two: small size helps. Take advantage of your small size. The schools that we were speaking with, oftentimes they would have a combined junior and senior high school. Oftentimes there were less than 500 students in that combined school. But you get to know each other.
And as one teacher told us, you can’t ignore your ex-boyfriend or your ex-girlfriend in a small school. And I remember she pointed out and showed us. She goes, “We’ve got one hallway, and everybody has to walk down that hallway.” So you have to learn how to deal with people who are different from you and with whom you may have disagreements.
And then the third thing is it’s important, finally, to make schools be community hubs. One school district told us about how they had a memorial service for a student who had graduated there and who sadly had lost their life. There are other ways that schools can be community hubs to invite the community in and make the school a second home in that community.
Some people might say, “well, of course you’re going to find people who are going to be more willing to get along” because rural Texas is perceived as having much more homogeneity. There’s not going to be the sort of plurality and diversity of opinion that you might find in a big city setting, no?
Chris Walsh: Yeah, I think that’s a fair question to ask, but what we have found is that pluralism is working. We have this social tolerance in our country, despite the venomous headlines that you may read, that seems to be working in different communities and different areas across the nation.
And so, as part of this project, we’ve looked at local schools, rural schools, we’ve looked at faith institutions, we’ve looked at local government, we’ve looked at campuses, and we find the things that Bill just mentioned happening all across the country.
I mean, this is not exclusive to rural communities. I think there’s something to learn from them, but this idea of pluralism is not only happening, but the lessons, the best practices, people are just doing it naturally. And what we want to highlight is that we shouldn’t take this for granted, or it’s happening so often we don’t even recognize it.
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How could you import some of these ideas? If you had schools that served a smaller population of people, for instance, so you have a greater sense of community, that’s maybe one idea? Is that what you’re trying to tease out here, things that can be put into place in different settings that might encourage greater collaboration, cooperation, decency?
Walsh: Absolutely, absolutely. Like I said, we do it all the time as Americans.
As you know, one of the things that we looked at in the rural schools – I think it was in the community of Thrall – where they hosted certain rituals. I think they called them “Tiger Nights,” if I’m not mistaken, to bring people into the community.
We talked about homogeneity, in terms of the small town values, but they were bringing in immigrants, and they would become part of the community as well.
And they had things like “Thrall Dogs.” So you take an ordinary hot dog and you make it part of a ritual that creates a sense of belonging within the community. You go through it and now you’re part of Thrall, which I thought was great. And others can replicate these kinds of things.
Some people would say part of this comes down to a difference in values. In more cosmopolitan areas, people are more willing to talk about things that perhaps people don’t discuss in more rural settings. You know the saying: “We don’t ever talk about politics or religion or money,” that’s just-off limits.
Is that an element that can’t be overlooked if you’re talking about a values difference?
McKenzie: Well, I would argue differently on that. I have in mind a discussion we had in the Milano School District where we probably had 20 students around a table.
There were some sharp differences, and they did not hold back. And one spoke up and said, “look, I came from the outside and I had felt welcome here the entire time I’ve been here.” And I think she was from Plano or Dallas and then moved to Central Texas. So there were differences, and they expressed them.
You certainly have to be on guard against homogeneity suppressing conversation, I agree, but homogeneity also, in some ways, can help facilitate those difficult conversations because you’re going to school with a small group of people. You know each other. You’re part of the same group, or the same “tribe,” if you will – an overused word.
But because of that, you can then sit and talk about some difficult conversations because you know each other, and you trust each other, which could be different if you’re in a much larger universe, or you don’t really know the person you may be disagreeing with.
Was there anything that you saw in how they handled conflict specifically that could be imported or deserves greater attention in more urban areas?
McKenzie: Well, I would go back to the idea of shared projects. This isn’t something that policymakers can prescribe or push necessarily. But I think it comes within communities. And that is finding a shared project, going and working with people you don’t know.
That could be in a soup kitchen. That could in any number of ways. Find a project. Work with others. You get to know people as people. And then you find the comfort zone, if you will, where you can talk about issues and talk about differences.
And I should also emphasize pluralism doesn’t mean we all have to agree. In fact, it’s fine if we do, but pluralism is how we are able to hold on to our convictions, express our convictions, and do it with respect for the other person, and the other person shows respect for us.
