Teaching civic engagement strengthens our communities and promotes resilience in the face of tragedies such as the mass shooting in Cali. Where is our country going if our kids do not know how government works?
"The need for civic education in 21st-century schools"
Rebecca Winthrop
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/the-need-fo…
Teaching civic engagement strengthens our communities and promotes resilience in the face of tragedies such as the mass shooting in Cali. Where is our country going if our kids do not know how government works?
"The need for civic education in 21st-century schools"
The fact that children today across the country wake up in the morning and go to school five days a week for most of the year has everything to do with civic education. The idea of a shared school experience where all young people in America receive a standard quality education is inextricably linked to the development of the United States as a national entity and the development of citizens who had the skills and knowledge to engage in a democracy.
In the early 1800s, as the country struggled to navigate what it meant to be a democratic republic, school as we know it did not exist as a distinguishing feature of childhood. Even almost midway into the century—in 1840—only 40 percent of the population ages 5 to 19 attended school.[2] For those who did attend, what they learned while at school was widely variable depending on the institution they attended and the instructor they had. Several education leaders began advocating for a more cohesive school system, one in which all young people could attend and receive similar instruction regardless of economic status, institution, or location. Chief among these leaders was Horace Mann, often referred to as the “father of American education,” who argued that free, standardized, and universal schooling was essential to the grand American experiment of self-governance. In an 1848 report he wrote: “It may be an easy thing to make a Republic; but it is a very laborious thing to make Republicans; and woe to the republic that rests upon no better foundations than ignorance, selfishness, and passion.”
....To date however, civic education experts argue that civic learning is on the margins of young people’s school experience. The 2018 Brown Center Report on American Education examined the status of civic education and found that while reading and math scores have improved in recent years, there has not been the commensurate increase in eighth grade civics knowledge. (very interesting full article at link)
I strongly agree with you that having a shared school experience is an important part of our development as citizens. It is even more impactful if you are lucky enough to go to a school with a student body that is diverse not only racially but also economically. It terrifies me that Republicans are privatizing schools and pushing for curricula that teaches their toxic, anti-democracy propaganda as well as rightwing pseudo-Christian ideas.
I keep hearing people in the media claim that civics is no longer taught in schools. I do know that at least some states, if not most, have integrated civics into their social studies curriculum and no longer teach it as a separate subject during one year (8th grade used to be common). For example I asked my 2nd grade granddaughter what she was learning in social studies and she said that week it was the three branches of government. She was able to give me a decent explanation of what those branches were. That whole month of social studies was devoted to learning about our government. We baby boomers were taught civics but most of us don’t do well on surveys of civics knowledge either. I suspect the fact that students aren’t tested on their civics knowledge the way they are tested on reading and math is the reason few people retain that information. Tests are a sign of the importance our society places on subjects.
Finland has a very successful media literacy curriculum that is integrated into their subjects at all ages from kindergarten up. Children are taught critical thinking skills. For example in math students are taught to recognize the way statistics can be manipulated of misinterpreted (e.g. debunking the common misconception that correlation does not prove causation.) The Finns regularly score highest of all Europeans on Open Society’s media literacy survey.
The shared school experience article was from the Brookings Institution and I also quoted other sources in the comments section.
"most of us don't do well on surveys of civics" Hard to generalize. Most people that I know are political activists so they do follow politics. The Brookings description is about how schools are a level playing field for these kinds of topics.
but your comments are great, looking forward to more! The comments section is awesome!
the comments section is always so interesting, and I enjoy your comment a lot!
In our school we also did job shadowing so we had student council, we also went to local Town Meetings and followed what was happening in our town committees. I was student class president so I got to be Police Chief for a day, and the head of the student council was Mayor for a day.
Also, did this make a big difference? Our parents were very involved in town committees, and in our New England mill town, activist volunteer teachers made sure that we had all the benefits of schools that had money. We had debate club, student UN, class trips, and it was due to the teachers volunteering their own time and money.
Pay teachers, caregivers, nurses, and all the working people in our society what they are worth: that would be a great goal. Possible with a universal income ceiling limit to distribute wealth more evenly... :)
I am jealous of your experience in school. My small Appalachian town did nothing like that although we did participate in student government and organizations. It really would have helped to have had more exposure to our town’s government.
Luckily for me my family regularly watched the evening news together and usually discussed it. They were also so adamant about voting that one year they cut short their winter break in Florida short to come back and vote for an increase in the school levy they hadn’t realized was being held. They drove all day to make it before the polls closed. My best friend’s father marched with Dr. King. Even in Appalachia we had liberal white people.😊 The example of parents has a big impact on the civic engagement of their kids.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a report on MSNBC today that New Jersey has created a mandatory media literacy curriculum for all grades that will be implemented by public school librarians. I hope that more states follow New Jersey’s lead.
when u say your family watched the news together, one of the strange things about raising kids today is that family meals are out the window because of scheduling pressure
one of my great memories growing up in Maine - the slow pace, quiet times enough to read and think, we never knew what hurry was
family nightly dinners were relaxed and fun, but my parents always talked about news and current events, I think that was something parents were encouraged to do by education experts
your memories are wonderful, have you preserved them for your family?
there are some great websites about how to preserve family memories and stories for the following generations....
Thanks! My daughter got my husband and me Storyworth so we are recording memories like that. I am happy to say that my kids do still have family dinners with their children most nights and we all have dinner together, too. Politics is so disturbing these days I don’t think they discuss it a that table, though. Their kids are still pretty young.
Growing up we kids had a lot more free time and freedom to roam, play with friends, etc. with no adult supervision. Today most kids are in a lot more organized activities and have little free time.
Storyworth sounds really good, thanks for recommending that and thanks for the nice comment!
There seems to be a very good reason to let kids be kids and run wild, unstructured. Boredom is good for us :) I remember afternoons daydreaming in a big summer field, watching the clouds is very relaxing for hours. Downtime is good for everyone. In our rural area, the kids went off to play on their own up at the ball field in the neighborhood, and the folks just sent the family dog with us as a chaperone. It worked fine. Enjoy your day, T!
"....It turns out, however, that a certain level of boredom might actually enhance the creative quality of our work. That’s the implications of two recently published papers focused on the link between feeling bored and getting creative.
In the first paper, researchers Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, both at the University of Central Lancashire, explained the creativity-boosting power of boredom in two rounds of studies. In both rounds, participants were either assigned the boring task of copying numbers from a phone book or assigned to a control group, which skipped the phone book assignment. All participants were then asked to generate as many uses as they could for a pair of plastic cups. This is a common test of divergent thinking—a vital element for creative output that concerns ones ability to generate lots of ideas. Mann and Cadman found that the participants who had intentionally led to boredom through the phone book task had generated significantly more uses for the pair of plastic cups.
Next, Mann and Cadman wanted to see what would happen when they really bored people out of their minds. So in a second round of their study, they created three groups—one control group, one phone-number-copying group, and a third group given the even duller task of simply reading the phone book. All three groups completed another task requiring creativity. In this case, the most bored group – the completely passive group of phone-book-readers – scored as the most creative, even out-scoring those assigned to the same phone book copying task from the first study. The findings suggest that boredom felt during passive activities, liking reading reports or attending tedious meetings, heightens the “daydreaming effect” on creativity—the more passive the boredom, the more likely the daydreaming and the more creative you could be afterward."
Teaching civic engagement strengthens our communities and promotes resilience in the face of tragedies such as the mass shooting in Cali. Where is our country going if our kids do not know how government works?
"The need for civic education in 21st-century schools"
Rebecca Winthrop
https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/the-need-for-civic-education-in-21st-century-schools/
Director - Center for Universal Education
Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development
2020
The origins of civic education
The fact that children today across the country wake up in the morning and go to school five days a week for most of the year has everything to do with civic education. The idea of a shared school experience where all young people in America receive a standard quality education is inextricably linked to the development of the United States as a national entity and the development of citizens who had the skills and knowledge to engage in a democracy.
In the early 1800s, as the country struggled to navigate what it meant to be a democratic republic, school as we know it did not exist as a distinguishing feature of childhood. Even almost midway into the century—in 1840—only 40 percent of the population ages 5 to 19 attended school.[2] For those who did attend, what they learned while at school was widely variable depending on the institution they attended and the instructor they had. Several education leaders began advocating for a more cohesive school system, one in which all young people could attend and receive similar instruction regardless of economic status, institution, or location. Chief among these leaders was Horace Mann, often referred to as the “father of American education,” who argued that free, standardized, and universal schooling was essential to the grand American experiment of self-governance. In an 1848 report he wrote: “It may be an easy thing to make a Republic; but it is a very laborious thing to make Republicans; and woe to the republic that rests upon no better foundations than ignorance, selfishness, and passion.”
....To date however, civic education experts argue that civic learning is on the margins of young people’s school experience. The 2018 Brown Center Report on American Education examined the status of civic education and found that while reading and math scores have improved in recent years, there has not been the commensurate increase in eighth grade civics knowledge. (very interesting full article at link)
I strongly agree with you that having a shared school experience is an important part of our development as citizens. It is even more impactful if you are lucky enough to go to a school with a student body that is diverse not only racially but also economically. It terrifies me that Republicans are privatizing schools and pushing for curricula that teaches their toxic, anti-democracy propaganda as well as rightwing pseudo-Christian ideas.
I keep hearing people in the media claim that civics is no longer taught in schools. I do know that at least some states, if not most, have integrated civics into their social studies curriculum and no longer teach it as a separate subject during one year (8th grade used to be common). For example I asked my 2nd grade granddaughter what she was learning in social studies and she said that week it was the three branches of government. She was able to give me a decent explanation of what those branches were. That whole month of social studies was devoted to learning about our government. We baby boomers were taught civics but most of us don’t do well on surveys of civics knowledge either. I suspect the fact that students aren’t tested on their civics knowledge the way they are tested on reading and math is the reason few people retain that information. Tests are a sign of the importance our society places on subjects.
Finland has a very successful media literacy curriculum that is integrated into their subjects at all ages from kindergarten up. Children are taught critical thinking skills. For example in math students are taught to recognize the way statistics can be manipulated of misinterpreted (e.g. debunking the common misconception that correlation does not prove causation.) The Finns regularly score highest of all Europeans on Open Society’s media literacy survey.
https://www.nordicpolicycentre.org.au/media_literacy_education_in_finland
The US desperately needs that kind of education.
Thanks for that interesting comment!
The shared school experience article was from the Brookings Institution and I also quoted other sources in the comments section.
"most of us don't do well on surveys of civics" Hard to generalize. Most people that I know are political activists so they do follow politics. The Brookings description is about how schools are a level playing field for these kinds of topics.
but your comments are great, looking forward to more! The comments section is awesome!
so thoughtful, thank you !
the comments section is always so interesting, and I enjoy your comment a lot!
In our school we also did job shadowing so we had student council, we also went to local Town Meetings and followed what was happening in our town committees. I was student class president so I got to be Police Chief for a day, and the head of the student council was Mayor for a day.
Also, did this make a big difference? Our parents were very involved in town committees, and in our New England mill town, activist volunteer teachers made sure that we had all the benefits of schools that had money. We had debate club, student UN, class trips, and it was due to the teachers volunteering their own time and money.
Pay teachers, caregivers, nurses, and all the working people in our society what they are worth: that would be a great goal. Possible with a universal income ceiling limit to distribute wealth more evenly... :)
thank you!
I am jealous of your experience in school. My small Appalachian town did nothing like that although we did participate in student government and organizations. It really would have helped to have had more exposure to our town’s government.
Luckily for me my family regularly watched the evening news together and usually discussed it. They were also so adamant about voting that one year they cut short their winter break in Florida short to come back and vote for an increase in the school levy they hadn’t realized was being held. They drove all day to make it before the polls closed. My best friend’s father marched with Dr. King. Even in Appalachia we had liberal white people.😊 The example of parents has a big impact on the civic engagement of their kids.
I was pleasantly surprised to see a report on MSNBC today that New Jersey has created a mandatory media literacy curriculum for all grades that will be implemented by public school librarians. I hope that more states follow New Jersey’s lead.
wow, those memories are so great!
when u say your family watched the news together, one of the strange things about raising kids today is that family meals are out the window because of scheduling pressure
one of my great memories growing up in Maine - the slow pace, quiet times enough to read and think, we never knew what hurry was
family nightly dinners were relaxed and fun, but my parents always talked about news and current events, I think that was something parents were encouraged to do by education experts
your memories are wonderful, have you preserved them for your family?
there are some great websites about how to preserve family memories and stories for the following generations....
Thanks! My daughter got my husband and me Storyworth so we are recording memories like that. I am happy to say that my kids do still have family dinners with their children most nights and we all have dinner together, too. Politics is so disturbing these days I don’t think they discuss it a that table, though. Their kids are still pretty young.
Growing up we kids had a lot more free time and freedom to roam, play with friends, etc. with no adult supervision. Today most kids are in a lot more organized activities and have little free time.
Storyworth sounds really good, thanks for recommending that and thanks for the nice comment!
There seems to be a very good reason to let kids be kids and run wild, unstructured. Boredom is good for us :) I remember afternoons daydreaming in a big summer field, watching the clouds is very relaxing for hours. Downtime is good for everyone. In our rural area, the kids went off to play on their own up at the ball field in the neighborhood, and the folks just sent the family dog with us as a chaperone. It worked fine. Enjoy your day, T!
Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2014/09/the-creative-benefits-of-boredom :
The Creative Benefits of Boredom
David Burkus, September 09, 2014
"....It turns out, however, that a certain level of boredom might actually enhance the creative quality of our work. That’s the implications of two recently published papers focused on the link between feeling bored and getting creative.
In the first paper, researchers Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman, both at the University of Central Lancashire, explained the creativity-boosting power of boredom in two rounds of studies. In both rounds, participants were either assigned the boring task of copying numbers from a phone book or assigned to a control group, which skipped the phone book assignment. All participants were then asked to generate as many uses as they could for a pair of plastic cups. This is a common test of divergent thinking—a vital element for creative output that concerns ones ability to generate lots of ideas. Mann and Cadman found that the participants who had intentionally led to boredom through the phone book task had generated significantly more uses for the pair of plastic cups.
Next, Mann and Cadman wanted to see what would happen when they really bored people out of their minds. So in a second round of their study, they created three groups—one control group, one phone-number-copying group, and a third group given the even duller task of simply reading the phone book. All three groups completed another task requiring creativity. In this case, the most bored group – the completely passive group of phone-book-readers – scored as the most creative, even out-scoring those assigned to the same phone book copying task from the first study. The findings suggest that boredom felt during passive activities, liking reading reports or attending tedious meetings, heightens the “daydreaming effect” on creativity—the more passive the boredom, the more likely the daydreaming and the more creative you could be afterward."
Once again, my sincere thanks.