In the fall of 2020, I taught a course at an independent high school in Boulder, Colorado , on persuasive essay writing. It won’t stun anyone familiar with the town, affectionately known by locals as the People’s Republic of Boulder, that I was the only openly non-progressive in the entire school, teacher or student. If there were any other non-progressives in the building, they wisely kept it to themselves.

This was in the aftermath of the summer of 2020, when anything short of total submission to progressive ideology was taken as a declaration of deplorability. If you weren’t actively “anti-racist” in a very particular way as defined by a very particular type of academic, you were considered one of the moral monsters populating “the wrong side of history.”

It was in this environment of extreme uniformity that I was tasked with teaching seniors the subtle art of persuasion through argument. We forget now how quickly civil discourse fell out of fashion among liberals at the time. A trio of psychologically traumatic events, the Trump presidency, George Floyd’s death, and the COVID-19 outbreak, had convinced them that the time for talk was over. Deep thinking on the part of anyone from the "oppressor class" was dubbed “intellectualization” — and you can be sure that all the students and teachers in the school at Boulder were white.

Perhaps subconsciously, I developed the course in such a way as to challenge the stultifying atmosphere directly. I was determined to make my students embrace the unthinkable: the possibility that they were wrong.

On the first day of class, I scrawled the following quote by John Stuart Mill across the whiteboard:

In any prior moment in American history, Mill’s advocacy for intellectual rigor would be celebrated by liberals. But in my class, the quote drew disbelieving glances and uncomfortable murmuring. My announcement that students would need to write a well-researched and tightly reasoned essay arguing against their most deeply held conviction drew outright protestation. One student semi-tearfully commented that such a project would be tantamount to “literal violence.” Another said she would have a psychological breakdown if she were forced to defend the Second Amendment. A parent emailed me that night asking what I “was trying to prove.” The experience was demoralizing.

By the end of the first week, a handful of students flat-out refused to do the coursework as outlined. Following some difficult conversations, I agreed to amend the syllabus for those students. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but since they were seniors and graduation was on the line, I caved.

But what I’ll always remember from the experience is the exemplary work done quietly by a number of students, including some of the most progressive “activist” types. One student, who was so politically minded that she had pro-choice slogans painted across the outside of her car, turned in a magnificently insightful essay that argued in favor of life. She later confided to me that the concept of “steelmanning,” which is the process of articulating the best possible argument of the other side, struck a chord with her. She understood that allowing herself the space to doubt her own presuppositions and uncover the best arguments of the opposition in full enabled her to become a more powerful advocate for the causes she held dear.

Another student who identified as “nonbinary” turned in an essay that argued for the utility of the gender binary. I remember feeling delightedly shocked by her willingness to engage with arguments when so many of her generation would refuse to consider what might “deny their existence.”

Despite the plummeting achievement and ideological uniformity that currently defines American education, I have remained hopeful thanks to the students from my persuasive essay class who took the intellectual risk of challenging their views — even if they kept their efforts to themselves. These students were brave enough to experience the state of doubt in order to be drawn deeper into the intellectual life.

For too long, students have been trained to follow the precepts of a single ideology when they should be educated to understand multiple viewpoints and respected enough to form their own views. In order to revivify the humanities, educators must once again heed Mill’s call to embrace open-mindedness and doubt.

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.