In a time when we are often bombarded with images of college campuses in uproar and militant students shouting down ideas they oppose, it is good to remember that most young people have a genuine curiosity and openness to learning. Such recognition is especially important in the area of U.S. civics (and history) education. 

This week David Bobb, president of the Bill of Rights Institute – a nonprofit that creates educational resources on U.S. history and government for teachers and students – sat down with the Heritage Foundation for an interview to discuss civics and history education in our country.

The entire conversation is fascinating, so I’d encourage anyone to give the full interview a listen.

Here are two important takeaways.

First, teachers and students are genuinely hungry to tackle tough issues like the growing debate about the relevance of the Constitution in our day.

Bobb: [H]ow do you do social change within a constitutional context? I think that’s one of the big questions that Americans have to face today. …

Do we care enough about the constitutional framework that we want to uphold that or do we want to march in a very different direction? There are forces arrayed that would say the Constitution was a relic of the past; it doesn’t have any purchase on us today.

What we find is that teachers and students across the country are hungry for a conversation in which they grapple with that question. And the good news that I’ll share with you today is that there are so many teachers, tens of thousands, that every day are dedicated to putting these questions in a framework that would say the Constitution is worth our efforts as citizens, to uphold, to champion, and to cherish.

And second, students want a classroom where they can be free to disagree with their peers without social castigation.

Bobb: Students feel polarization in a different way than adults do. One of our students who attends a weeklong constitutional boot camp we run called the Constitutional Academy—it’s here in the Washington D.C. area—said, “I wonder, can I disagree with my friends and will they still be my friends?” …

People are wondering, how do we get beyond that? Not to just some kind of kumbaya moment because I think the key thing here is, how do we learn to disagree amicably?

Both the desire to wrestle with tough issues (rather than settle further into a particular bias) and to freely disagree with their peers is a good sign for U.S. history and civics education in our country. Students want to learn and think and engage.

As Utah continues to take steps to improve civics education in our state, we should remember that our state’s reputation for civility in disagreement and ability for compromise lights a path for extending that culture into our classrooms.

It also happens to be what students yearn for.