Election talk normalized in classroom

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By BRIDGET ULLOA

Staff Reporter

Whilst keeping an open mind in the classroom and allowing students to make their own opinions and judgments, Amarillo College government professors have not passed up the opportunity to include the election in their lessons as the presidential election begins to draw closer.

Aaron Faver, a government professor at AC, said that even though it feels like walking on a tightrope when teaching about the election, whether it be a midterm or general election, it’s important to present the information to the student in a way that they can make their own opinions.

“Figuring out how to incorporate the election while not poisoning the learning environment is always a challenge and one of the ways I guess we do that is to focus on the curriculum and allow the information to kind of populate itself freely into the student’s heads,” said Faver. “A lot of times they will recognize something and bring something up and that allows us to have a good conversation about it.”

Faver says that he wants his students to be able to learn about different aspects of the election so that if they happen to hear about it outside of class, they will be able to understand and follow along with what is being said.

“I hope that this information will become more relevant and that it becomes more in the now and hopefully, it becomes something that when people are watching the news and they see things going on and they’re on lives they can kind of say that ‘oh that looks familiar to me and it doesn’t look so alien that I’m just not interested in it.’”

There are always going to be different opinions and ways of thinking especially come election time. By incorporating all these aspects and sticking to the curriculum, Faver said that being open-minded is the best way for professors to reach their students.

“The best that we can do is keep an open mind,” Faver said. “It seems to me and with regard to learning particularly and if you are in a classroom hopefully you got an open mind. Hopefully I’m doing a decent job of just talking about the issues as opposed to trying to take sides and positions because that’s just not how to compromise works in a free society and that’s one of the underlying tenants of democracy.”