Understanding, Respect, and Political Controversy by Leah

Understanding, Respect, and Political Controversy by Leah - August 2016 Scholarship Essay

My AP Government class helped me to grow exponentially as a student. The class taught me all about the American political process, the importance of civic engagement, and much more. By the end of the course, I felt like an informed, responsible American citizen. Although I walked away from AP Government with a wealth of knowledge about American politics, that is not the reason this class taught me more than any other. AP Government taught me the value of diverse political discourse, respect for your opponents, and passionate debate.

I signed up for AP Government both because I was extremely interested in politics and because I felt like I barely knew anything about the subject. I always enjoyed listening to political debates on the news or between people I knew and I wanted to learn more. I grew up in a very politically liberal family. Both of my parents and most of my relatives are Democrats. Because of this, I also lean left on political issues. I’d never discussed politics with a Republican before, and I didn’t have any desire to. In my mind, I already understood Democrats to be objectively right and Republicans to be wrong. When I walked into my AP Government class, I assumed that the teacher and the other students would have more or less the same mindset as me.

The class was largely focused around debates and discussions. Often the topics included controversial issues such as affirmative action, gun control, public assistance, and minimum wage. Once we began to debate each other in class, I was surprised to see that the students and teacher did not share my point of view. In fact, almost everyone strongly opposed it. When we discussed the minimum wage, my classmates insistently argued for the negative economic implications of raising the minimum wage that would actually be worse for the workers. On gun control, they argued not simply that guns were a constitutional right, but that gun control was an ineffective method of decreasing violence.

I had never heard any of these arguments before, but they seemed so logical and well thought out. I was intensely frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t express my own opinion half as eloquently as they did. More than that, I realized I didn’t know any of the facts behind my own opinion or why I believed in it in the first place.

After class, I went home and spent hour upon hour researching our class’s current topic, looking at the evidence of both sides, and trying to puzzle out in my head what made sense and what I believed. I read research papers on the real world effects of economic policy, scoured the internet for analyses of proposed laws, and scrutinized debates over constitutional interpretations. I argued vehemently with my classmates, who argued right back with new positions that I hadn’t before considered, prompting me to go home, research some more, and begin the argument anew the next day.

To some, constantly arguing and researching may seem boring or demanding, but I loved every second of it. Every day, I couldn’t wait to go to my AP Government class to present my classmates with everything I had found and then hear their responses. I anxiously looked forward to my teacher’s announcement of our next unit so I could know what arguments to prepare next. The best feeling in the world was hearing a classmate or the teacher tell me that I’d made an interesting point or had a valuable insight. I had never devoted so many hours to a single class before, and almost all of it was self-motivated.

I had been ignorant of the other perspectives in the world, but AP Government shattered that ignorance. Blindly believing that one side is right and the other wrong only promotes deeper divisions and hatred. I learned that respect, discussion, and understanding are the most effective ways to cross divides.

In the end, my opinions at the end of the year were no different than they were at the start, and the same is true of my classmates. But converting one another to our side of the argument was never the purpose of our constant debates. AP Government taught me how to respectfully listen to the other side of the argument and, even more importantly, to understand it. It has taught me that admitting that the other side has a valid point doesn’t make me wrong. Making that acknowledgement only further motivates me to re-examine and improve my own arguments and better understand my own beliefs.