American universities are showing renewed interest in civic education. Some states have established civics institutes (e.g., Ohio and South Carolina) while others have strengthened requirements in American history, constitutional government, or political thought. These reforms address a genuine problem: Many students are not being prepared to understand the institutions with which they will interact post-college. But institutional knowledge is only one component of civic preparedness. Citizens must also be able to think critically and communicate effectively even in circumstances that prove challenging to navigate, which is often the case in a civil and pluralistic society.
“VUCA” stands for “volatility,” “uncertainty,” “complexity,” and “ambiguity.” Although the term is frequently associated with military planning and organizational leadership in general, it also describes life in a free and pluralistic society. Political conditions change, citizens disagree about values, and public problems involve competing interests and unpredictable consequences. Even well-informed people interpret the same evidence differently.
As uncomfortable as it sounds, I don’t believe this to be a defect of our society. VUCA is bound to be the condition of a society where people can think, speak, and associate freely as they pursue their versions of life, liberty, and happiness. Attempts to eliminate ambiguity and complexity can easily become attempts to eliminate dissent, a move that is a hallmark of illiberalism. That is not something we should want. Thus, the problem is not VUCA; it’s our inability to work with and within VUCA. Unfortunately, many college students are not acquiring this ability, meaning that they enter a VUCA world with little to no VUCA training.
VUCA is bound to be the condition of a society where people can think, speak, and associate freely as they pursue their versions of life, liberty, and happiness.
Leaders in higher education (university faculty, administrators, trustees, lawmakers) should promote the incorporation of VUCA navigation skills into the curriculum and learning programs. Lest you think I am trying to reinvent the wheel, creating new courses will not be necessary. Students can acquire particular civic competencies through current courses in rhetoric, communication, political science, philosophy, and many, many more. Those competencies should correspond to the four dimensions of VUCA.
To navigate volatility, students should become adept at adaptation, e.g., revising an argument or observation when circumstances change or new and influential information is gathered. This goes further than pre-established talking points; civic judgment cannot consist of such things unless one is able to revise them when the situation calls for it. Thus, students should develop the ability to respond extemporaneously, and must also be able to tell the difference between enduring principles and contingent strategies.
To navigate uncertainty, students should learn to reason without pretending to know more than they do. They should be able to distinguish facts from interpretations, arguments from opinion, probability over certainty, critical inquiry from verbal attack, and other civically detrimental dichotomies. They should also be able to acknowledge empirical limitations and explain why available evidence leads to a particular conclusion.
To navigate complexity, students should learn that societal phenomena result from multiple causes and multiple agents quite often. They should be able to examine the relevant stakeholders, their incentives, and the institutions in which they function. And, of course, students must examine and analyze the unintended consequences of actions to better direct their inquiries and conclusions. The idea that every political struggle consists of the good guy vs. the bad guys is unrealistic and not indicative of humanity’s complexity. Students should be comfortable with nuance and trained to look for it in their societal endeavors. “Either/Or” thinking is a significant deterrent to critical thinking.
To navigate ambiguity, students must develop an appreciation of nuance and learn to identify others’ positions fairly. Students must also understand the concept of an ideograph—a rhetorical term denoting a word or concept so ambiguously as to cause confusion. For example, reasonable people can hold differing definitions of a single word if it is vague enough. Terms like justice, equality, freedom, safety, democracy, and harm often carry multiple meanings. Thus, students should be able to define terms, consider other definitions of these terms, and restate an opponent’s argument in a way the opponent would recognize and approve.
To navigate ambiguity, students must develop an appreciation of nuance and learn to identify others’ positions fairly.
Fundamentally, these are rhetorical skills. Traditionally, rhetoric has emphasized the concept of Kairos. This encompassing term in rhetorical theory and practice reflects a more intricate understanding of rhetorical context in that it denotes the confluence of audience, purpose, time, and location when considering ways to convey an argument. Because Kairos can change if just one of its components changes, those who aspire toward rhetorical effectiveness need what Peter Ramus called Copia: the abundance of arguments, expressions, examples, and strategies from which to choose in a given Kairos. When it comes to rhetoric, one size does not fit all.
Educational institutions can assess these skills both easily and practically by having students participate in one or more activities like the following:
- Participate in deliberative forums and formal debates;
- Analyze a controversy, public or private, from several viewpoints;
- Defend a position orally;
- Revise an argument upon finding contrary information;
- Negotiate a proposal with classmates with conflicting interests. (These conflicting interests may be pre-assigned for didactic reasons.)
Educators should focus on assessing intellectual performance. They must ask if the student can identify uncertainty, represent opposing viewpoints fairly, adapt to new evidence, and distinguish principle from preference. Of course, students should be assessed irrespective of which political faction their conclusions seem to favor.
To do this well, some safeguards are necessary. Though I am not promoting government overreach in public education, if governing boards and legislatures feel the need to intervene, they should establish broad civic competences. That said, these governing bodies must not dictate curricula; that should be the purview of the faculty. Professors, primarily, should retain discretion over how skills are taught, and institutions should publish their learning outcomes and evaluation methods. This would allow scholars to retain academic freedom while allowing trustees and the public to have a say in whether or not civil programs are cultivating genuine rhetorical ability rather than ideological conformity.
By extension, educational institutions should resist turning VUCA education into another administrative initiative.
By extension, educational institutions should resist turning VUCA education into another administrative initiative.This means no new offices or ideological certifications are necessary. To initiate a VUCA education, governing boards should investigate where current students learn to reason their way through volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. If an institution cannot provide this information, it should be required to develop a plan for instilling the learning of relevant competencies into general education. Civic education should teach students how institutions work, especially constitutional ones, but citizens must also acquire the rhetoric and critical thinking skills necessary to engage productively with those who see the world differently.
Because a free and pluralistic society will always be VUCA, education institutions should prepare students to navigate it in a way conducive to the pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness.
Erec Smith is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and an Associate Professor of Rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania.