In a matter of weeks we might need to suspend a few students for telling classmates to go back to where they came from. Our ordinary responsibility to admonish intolerance will be complicated by the fact that the man whose image hangs in classrooms at the end of a long line of presidential portraits was on television last night jutting his jaw approvingly while a crowd in North Carolina chanted “send her back.”

All educators, especially social studies teachers, have a duty to ensure that students learn how to deliberate about issues that are in dispute. President Trump’s maladroit and nasty leadership will only stunt opportunities to help students deliberate about Ilhan Omar’s positions on Middle Eastern governments or immigration policy. Teachers are already overwhelmed by the need to tamp down and unpack emotionally delivered logical fallacies. Some feel afraid that students representing many ethnicities and political persuasions might offend each other.

President Trump did not win the electoral vote in New York State. But he won Suffolk County, where I live, and he could win it again. Forty-five percent of Nassau County voters chose Trump. My Nassau County students are diverse and include the children of small business owners, attorneys, physicians, unionized secretaries, police officers and teachers, a number of whom support the president or at least countenance his attacks on our civil discourse. My students represent all races and many religions and nationalities. It is unsurprising that some educators, whose duty it is to teach students appropriate deliberative skill, will be loath to do their actual job out of fear of igniting a controversy.

Children must be taught how to reflect on what their classmates are saying, to demonstrate an ability to paraphrase the comments of their classmates or to ask for clarification when they cannot. Civically competent students ought to demonstrate a willingness to modify a point of view in light of new evidence. They should understand multiple perspectives on controversial issues and develop the tolerance, respect and skill for compromise necessary for participating in a democracy

It seems unavoidable that educators will need to say that they President of the United States is behaving uncivilly, that his conduct is wildly inappropriate and, if emulated in school, punishable. Some might then accuse these educators of trying to indoctrinate students, as if calling out behavior that is antithetical to our educational mission is a partisan act. School boards and administrators might face pressure from parents to minimize such controversy.  We are in a time when doing our job, as articulated in the legally adopted curricular standards to which we should be held accountable, might sometimes require courage.