Attorney General John O’Connor and his relationship with Governor Kevin Stitt is quietly teaching lessons to Oklahoma’s kids.

As the state’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Law Enforcement Officer, their decisions don’t always align. And when they don’t, they hold respectful talks, showcasing life-sized examples of proper discourse when opposing views collide.

Past generations learned these skills in great part because discourse was face-to-face. We learned to read subtle queue from allies and opponents alike, skills that help all of us navigate life.

Today technologies make face-to-face discourse optional and ancient human skills can be lost along the way.

Unless schools, parents or mentors intervene, children may suffer from lazy ideology their entire life, always assuming their biases are correct. In an age of faceless discourse, will a child adopt the rigors required to systematically test one belief against another?

And here we have O’Connor/Stitt. Both offer life-sized examples that display the rigors they learned in law and business. Their examples whisper to Oklahoma’s children, “we are here to teach you how to think, not what to think.”

In an age when kids are frequently told what to think rather than how, Attorney General O’Connor and Governor Stitt show them not only how to think but also how to disagree respectfully.