Photographers at the Deseret News captured powerful photographs related to the recent rioting in Salt Lake City. On successive days, May 30 and May 31, the paper’s coverage of the event featured two images above the headlines that contrast strongly with each other.

In the first, a masked demonstrator hurls a water bottle at police with an overturned car on fire in the background. In the second, a volunteer is washing graffiti from the previous night’s riot off a building at the Capitol.

What stands out immediately in a side-by-side comparison is how different the images are – but maybe there is a similarity too. It seems safe to assume that both of the men pictured were disturbed by something they had learned, one by inexcusable police brutality, the other by damage caused during the violent protest.

The reactions, of course, were drastically different and may teach us something about civic education and, perhaps, about a way forward to a more just and merciful future.

Civic education

Civic education is the process of learning from history how to constructively respond to social problems, including injustice. This is definitely a moment for civic education, but as Christine Cooke has pointed out, that need is not currently being met. One of the reasons the need is so acute is that knowledge from history about constructive engagement is precisely what we seem to be missing now.

When we think of learning lessons about constructive engagement from history, certain episodes from our history spring immediately to mind – the Civil Rights struggle, the Civil War, the framing of the Constitution, the founding of an independent nation.

What we learn from these episodes is not so much tactics for implementing change, but rather qualities and attributes that can be universally applied in responding to knotty problems.

The Civil Rights Movement demonstrates the incredible moral weight that could be brought to bear by nonviolent demonstrations. That power of those persistent protests and the incredibly patient response to the violent responses finally began to wake the conscience of a nation and contributed to massive changes in law and culture.

We marvel at Abraham Lincoln’s foresight that came from his commitment to do right despite pressure or popular opinion: “He thought and acted with such moral clarity regarding the evil of racism and the inhumanity of slavery,” writes Yuval Levin. “He understood that no just society was possible without respect for basic social order. He knew there was an ideal of justice above the law, and he knew that it could only be respected and put into effect through the law, not around it.”

Moving forward

One of the great insights, pithily expressed, of Stephen R. Covey is that “you cannot talk your way out of a problem you’ve behaved yourself into.” Great episodes in our nation’s past teach us lessons not about the importance of ideas, but about the importance of developing character. Nonviolent protests and swelling rhetoric surely have a place, but our history teaches that those who ultimately bring changes for the better are those who take responsibility and begin the process – sometimes the very long and arduous process – of behaving ourselves out of problems.

The qualities of character needed to behave ourselves out of our current divide are woven into our history: persistence, magnanimity, tolerance, respect, patience, unyielding commitment, self-awareness. A renewed commitment to robust civic education can bring these qualities to bear in solving problems that now seem intractable – racism, vicious partisanship, and disdain for human life and human dignity. Civic education helps us identify blind spots that would otherwise prevent us from making progress.

A touching recent Facebook post is a wonderful demonstration of this. A thoughtful mother knew her son wanted to have his voice heard on the critical issues we are now experiencing, so she took him to the Capitol in Salt Lake City. She started a conversation with Utah Highway Patrol officers, explaining that her son wanted to talk to them and that he was studying American history in school. The mother and son and the officers took the time, and the effort, to listen, in the hot sun. The mom concludes: “In that hour we all gained a little more peace and respect for each other. Thank you Utah Highway Patrol for listening with the intent to help be part of the solution.”

As the mother and son left the Capitol, the son asked to come again “to make sure ‘those guys’ were okay and bring them water.”

So, there’s hope.