May 15, 2025
To: The Springville Chapter of the Rotary Club
From: Mrs. Smith’s 8th Grade US History class at Springville Junior High School
Political polarization is when a country's political parties are split and have little in common. In the USA right now, we have political polarization, and it is bad. Both main parties hate each other and have different views on everything. According to an article titled Political Polarization in the American Public, in 1994, just 17% of Republicans had very unfavorable opinions of the Democratic Party. Similarly, while most Democrats viewed the GOP unfavorably, just 16% had very unfavorable views. Since then, highly negative views have more than doubled: 43% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats now view the opposite party in strongly negative terms. According to studies done by Pew Research Center, 72% of Republicans regard Democrats as immoral, and Democrats think the same about Republicans. Now that we know that this is happening, we can look at the downsides of this political divide. It’s hurting us because it’s making us have less empathy, and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive. Political division is a big problem and separates us in many ways.
Our class came together to discuss an impact we wanted to make in our community. We decided that we wanted the concept of our project to help people from diverse backgrounds discuss their perspectives on certain topics with each other, so that people could better understand the opinions and backgrounds of others. We think this would help break down political polarization. This must start with the sharing of perspectives. We hope that perspective sharing will create lasting change, bringing us to a more ideal world. We would like to ask that you host a “Share your Perspective Night” for people in or community. This could include getting people to sign up to speak, or just helping people join in to listen. When people hear from others who have a different background and perspective than they do, they can broaden their understanding and perspective. This will lead to more kindness and help us break politically polarized thinking.
We think the Rotary Club is a perfect partner for us because of your beliefs surrounding helping youth and bringing peace. The Urban Institute article, “Youth Engagement in Policy, Research, and Practice”, mentioned that including youth in planning events can leverage the experiences, perspectives, and general sentiments for the people who attend (Urban Institute). Our class wants to help people gather together and work together as a whole. We hope to encourage others to engage in civic virtue, take action around them, and take accountability for their responsibilities as a citizen. In an article by Michigan State University, youth roles in event planning, mention how youth roles can help young people develop in a lot of different ways (Martin). Youth have fresh mind sets and new perspectives that need to be acknowledged. We understand that the Rotary Club encourages conversations to foster understanding within and across cultures, according to the Rotary “our causes” page. ("Our Causes") This event will give people access to communicate with others from diverse backgrounds. We realize that in order to achieve peace, we need a big change in our world. We know that the Rotary Club believes that “when people work to create peace in their communities, that change can have a global effect.” ("Promoting Peace") People from diverse backgrounds communicating with each other will help people to understand each other better, causing them to work together and, in time, can create a global effect. When reading the Rotary Club overview page ("About Rotary"), certain phrases stuck out, such as “we see a world where people unite and take action,” and “our mission includes advancing world understanding.” This event advances both of those goals, as it is about people uniting to advance world understanding.
Our class has many different perspectives that can come together and that are heading towards change. If you decide to take action on our idea, many in our class would be happy to volunteer our time in the summer to help this project launch. We know you may not have a lot of time to plan this, so we created this list of advertising ideas. We also realized that people might be concerned about there being conflict. Here is a way to prevent conflict and we also have created a plan on how to organize an event like this.
Not only will this activity positively affect the citizens of Utah and possibly America, but it will also teach the students how to interact with their community, and will help us learn how to solve problems. While looking through your site, we discovered that the Rotary Club has interests in helping the youth be heard. This is an opportunity to accomplish that. In the article, “How to give kids appropriate power”, it points out that “Providing children with choices allows them to learn the connection between their behavior and consequence (good or bad). It also allows children to feel they have a positive way to impact their life.”(North Shore Pediatric Therapy) Although this article is aimed at the parents that are striving to know the best way to raise a child, we can use it in our situation. If we do this activity, with your help, it will prepare us for our futures. It will have given us something to do that we felt was helpful. It will help us feel heard. We ask that you follow us through this and try to make the world a better place one story at a time and that you will be willing to partner with us in creating a Springville “Share Your Perspective Night” where we can help the community come together and learn from each other.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith’s 5th period US History class at Springville Junior High
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Margaret
Benjamin
Brandon
Brendon
Trevor
Jaxton
Harper
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Olive
Korver
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Eden
Peyton
Dez
WORKS CITED:
“About Rotary,” Rotary Club
https://www.rotary.org/en/about-rotary
“Facing history”, August 26 2024, Political polarization
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/political-polarization-united-states
Falkenburger, Elsa; Gray, Joshua, and Daly, Hannah. “Youth Engagement in Policy, Research and Practice.” Urban Institute, Urban Institute, October, 2021
Geiger, Abigail. “Political Polarization in the American Public.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 12 June 2014, www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/.
Martin, Jackie. “Youth Roles in Event Planning.” MSU Extension, 4-H Leadership, Citizenship and Service, January 01, 2020 https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/youth_roles_in_event_planning
North Shore Pediatric Therapy. “How to Give Appropriate Power to Children.” North Shore Pediatric Therapy, North Shore Pediatric Therapy, February 1, 2024
“Our Causes,” Rotary Club, https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes
“Political Polarization,” Pew research center, 12 June 2014
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/
“Promoting Peace - Our Causes,” Rotary Club
https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes/promoting-peace
Reynolds Pamela. “Preventing and managing team conflict”,”Harvard professional development”oct 31 2022 https://professional.dce.harvard.edu/blog/preventing-and-managing-team-conflict/
Statista, Unknown date, Politics and government
https://www.statista.com/topics/5701/political-division-in-the-united-states/#topicOverview