Mandatory high school civics class that isn’t just like “how a bill becomes law” or whatever but also “how NOAA powers your phone’s weather app” and “NIH helped make your asthma inhaler”
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In my county they have an outdoor education instruction program in fourth grade. They have parents volunteer to teach. I taught two years about erosion and farms and forests. The amount of students who thought we could get rid of farms and just go to the grocery store was alarming.
I helped adults plant a seed in a cup for Earth Day one year and it was horrifying to realize how many adults have no clue about the life cycle of plants!
I can understand if 4th graders thought that, kids naturally think a lot of goofy shit, but I am imagining all the adults who think that and now I'm just filled with a kind of nameless horror.
We’re reading 1984, and I asked the kiddos if they value weather forecasting and modeling, and safe air travel. I teach in Moore, Ok. We had a serious conversation about it, and they said it was shocking how bad it got as quickly as it did.
And science isn’t just dissection and bunsen burners - it is a world of knowledge built upon collaboration over many years, peer review, patience and integrity.
Curriculums need to do a better job of weaving these aspects into the learning experience.
I have long thought that science and mathematics class should aim to leave students just as much with a collection of abilities as with a broader sense of doing justice to what we know. That we have generations of kids asking only when _they_ will use trigonometry speaks to a profound failure
We had an excellent civics class in 7th grade that taught the structure of all levels of government & their responsibilities. It definitely should be taught, but only if it's done truthfully. These clowns will prolly teach it as though every level of government does whatever the president commands..
High school isn’t enough, there should be TV shows, magazines, podcasts that help adults understand how their government functions and give updates/refreshers on topics learned about in high school
And should include real world “before & after” examples. Like, here is what life was like before the EPA and CWA, and here is what has changed as a result.
I know it’s cliche to say, but I blame the boomers for the complacency.
The Greatest Generation did the heavy lifting, and the boomers just rode the wave of government programs that worked in the background to make sure the train stayed on the tracks.
It’s not complacency. It’s active malice by people who see an educated populace as a threat. It’s especially apparent in how we teach history and leave out the reckoning with things the US has done to maintain their position in the world.
It’s also not paying teachers what they’re worth - a lot
High school gov't teacher here -- both are important, both are not well understood, especially the budget process (such as it is). Nevertheless, the tsunami of distractions make learning these topics difficult because they require sustained focus, patience, & some degree of background knowledge.
I taught a budget class as an adjunct. And it was amazing to see the lack of general knowledge. The federal process is poorly understood even in the text we used I think.
And the fact that the process rarely works as established adds a complicating factor. Continuing resolutions, threats of gov't shutdown, actual gov't shutdown, and all the stuff about the debt limit -- plus the political posturing behind it all -- makes it a tricky and time-consuming topic to cover.
Oh yes. Then add in mandatory spending vs discretionary. The same logic doesn’t apply at the state/local level because the feds can issue currency. So if you come from that level it’s hard to grasp the federal side.
It seems to be for the students I teach. But it's baffling, too, because they're just beginning to develop a political consciousness, they've learned in Gov't class how things are supposed to work ceteris paribus, & they're not sure how to process all the sturm und drang they're seeing in the media.
It's baffling to adults too! I learned in high school why the electoral college existed, but then it didn't do its job in 2016 which was to elect literally any normal Republican.
Thank you for that reference. I don't have any trouble teaching the process with the resources I've got. My point was addressed to the larger question implied by the original post which is why people seem to have such a hard time understanding how our political and governmental systems work.
If media literacy isn’t taught throughout K12, almost nothing else will matter because people will believe anything their media outlet of choice tells them. Canada has had mandated ML curriculum for decades, btw.
Absolutely. Hate to say this, but I’m learning about these incredible agencies and what they do…as they’re being destroyed. I wish I was better informed. The whole knowledge is power concept is so abundantly real and devastatingly absent in this country.
This is true. Although it would REALLY help if people understood how a bill become a a law, too. And all that “branches of government” shit…turns out IT IS IMPORTANT.
People learn what they want to learn. Look at TikTok and YouTube as instructional sites. The concept of citizenship instead of the consumer needs to be at the center of our instruction so that people can see and understand their roles in society.
I wish my 90s era class had been more comprehensive, but I also feel weirdly lucky that mine was taught by a guy who was like, "Look, you gotta know your rights."
Some basic info is fine, too. I’ve had to stop lectures in US History intro courses to explain the three branches of the Fed govt and to help my students understand how those are mirrored at the state level. You’d be surprised at how many AHA! moments I’ve seen when they get that Cong:Lege.
I try in my government classes to talk about wildfire response, nursing homes and federal funds, how healthcare works, superfund sites, national parks, pensions and social security
Will never forget being so delighted by the Merlin app and being like, why is this free app so good, and learning its partly funded by the National Science Foundation
Also things like "this is an iron lung, and why we don't need them anymore" and "how to pre-load an internet search so it tells you what you want to read, rather than the truth" and "the President doesn't decide how much gasoline costs".
I teach a science literacy elective for my rural HS students. There are only about 20 kids each year, but I figure it's a start. I also embed radical ideas like "vaccines work, here's how", and "there's no such thing as basic biology, life is extremely complex" into my core curriculum courses.
I opened a plant nursery in my 30s and subsequently got super into biology and the deeper I go the less I think I understand because it keeps getting more complex omg
If you get them engaged, that's a substantial contribution to a better future. The ripples that come off of an informed, intentional life can go a very long way.
“How overturning Chevron means you’ll drink more sewage.”
About 15% of seniors love the model you are suggesting. It was easier to do “here are the stakes” during Trump 1, because chaos wasn’t the norm. Some HS kids were *5* when the Trump era began
Some plausibly-neutral organization should build out 15min lessons like this with a background reading, a contemporary short video, five comprehension check questions and a reflection/application task.
Have you checked out @retroreport.org ? They have non-partisan documentaries (~10 min) on a wide range of topics, most with lesson plans for 1-2 class blocks. https://retroreport.org
It’s all free! You can view the videos any time, but need a free account to access the lesson plans & interactives. Quick, easy sign-up. They also have free webinars & you can even request to have a producer talk to your class.
I love @retroreport.org 💛🖤
use their resources (a bunch of sophomores are probably floundering around with Race to Ratify right now), but they aren’t exactly ripped-from-the-headlines topics.
Agreed! This would remedy the glut of voters who didn’t have a relevant civics class like our 60 ‘s generation did. Fortunately we learned about the Constitution and our local state and federal government.
What has happened to parenting and our education system over the years in the US? I’m 70 and I had both civics and geography classes in grammar school and high school. I now teach my 6 year old grandson about both using books and world maps. He loves it. We must champion for our children education.
I was about to say that my high school had that class, but then I remembered it was an AP class, so not many people took it. Which I guess is the problem.
The cure for cancer is going to come from government funded research. We know this because that's where all the current treatments for cancer came from.
This wouldn’t nearly be the issue it is if we taught critical thinking in K-12.
Unfortunately what should be one of the more important subjects to learn most student do not encounter unless they take it as a college level philosophy elective.
I disagree. You can't teach it as it's own class because it is not a content area. It is a set of skills that develops with practice over the course of an education.
College philosophy departments disagree with your opinion. It’s an undergrad that is either required or a prereq option at many universities. It is its own content area.
Employers have been stating for years that this is a missing component in most applicants they are seeing, whether it is at HS or univ level, the skills are lacking-because they are not taught.
and I know you have classmates who attended that very course complaining on Facebook “Why don’t they teach this in school?” because they flushed everything from memory as soon as they walked out of the classroom.
My kid is taking AP Gov. She has learned so much and I wish this class was mandatory for everyone! It should be! I just helped her study for a test tomorrow and we had a long discussion about how much has changed in the past month. Basic government operations. Scary!
A unit on local civics would be useful, too. Folks in my town were outraged that their taxes might go up, then outraged that we might rezone the town to allow businesses in & increase the tax base. Now they're outraged at all the potholes and at the fact that the water mains keep breaking.
Yea we have that. I teach it, it's called national state and local government.
I just had student do a poster project on executive branch agencies and (among other things) they had to describe how that agency helped people and how the new administration was changing what they did.
All citizens could use this. Dems should be on the ground offering info sessions on how the government works for people in their districts. It would open a lot of eyes.
So that's something you wish for after 2060, when somehow, magically, democracy was restored? Because from the outside, it looks like you are headed for a fascist regime that could last quite a while. 🤔
1) High school civics teacher tells the students that women have the right to vote
2) Enraged conservative parents call the class Woke Propaganda
3) High school civics class is canceled
There are many! Adam Conover did a whole series for Netflix on how government functions and touches our daily lives. Crash Course on YouTube has several full free courses on US history and government. The trick is getting people who don't care to watch them
I believe it is important that the sacrifices that previous generations went through to build & save our democracy be taught. The younger generation may think they have it hard. However, the greatest generation fought through depression & WWII. My parents told us & I tell mine. Must not forget.
This, but we also need to talk about racism. It affects EVERYTHING, so every subject needs to address it from that subject's particular angle. No more leaving it unspoken.
I went to a run of the mill HS in red Staten Island in the mid-90s. So I was getting taught by anarchist Black Panthers in a free love commune by any stretch. And yet, I learned about Malcolm X, women’s suffrage, America’s attempts at colonialism. It wasn’t radical, it was history.
Saying things like “there are three co-equal branches of government that are, by design, adversarial and deeply territorial” was a compliment and a brag of our government. I’m not saying that everything was covered and there wasn’t some whitewashing, but an effort was made to be accurate to reality.
I'd go a little further and have teachers that taught "The history of people who don't want you to have the vote."
My AP Government Teacher in the early 90's somehow tricked our GOP State Rep come in to defend his belief that the Motor Voter Bill was a bad idea. We roasted his ass.
Should include how to find out what your government is doing without relying on conspiracy theorists and liars. Where to find local, state and federal records of meetings, budgets, policies, and how to file a public information request. And why gov’t transparency is so important.
I made Jurisdictions: Canada to try do this for 🍁 Canadians. It'd be fun to do for America and other countries, but there's only so much work I can do for free...
School House Rock v 2.0: -national parks rap by a Joshua tree
- A ballad by a lead pipe bemoaning the impact the CDC had to cause seizures in children
-FEMA tornado chaser singing a classic rock song about cleaning up messes
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- I feel this old SNL skit merits a follow-up these days. Or several. -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUDSeb2zHQ0
https://www.civiced.org/we-the-people
Curriculums need to do a better job of weaving these aspects into the learning experience.
Hmmm.
It doesn’t matter what’s on the curriculum, when 3/4 of every class reads at a grade level that’s 4 years below their actual age.
I’m too busy teaching elementary school level literacy skills to do this.
These are all the things taxes pay for... and yes, kids pay taxes, too, every time you buy something.
The Greatest Generation did the heavy lifting, and the boomers just rode the wave of government programs that worked in the background to make sure the train stayed on the tracks.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-generation-of-sociopaths-how-the-baby-boomers-betrayed-america-bruce-cannon-gibney/16342651
Pretty soon, the train’s gonna derail.
It’s also not paying teachers what they’re worth - a lot
People are a lot easier to lie to if they're clueless rubes with no access to information.
Wired: Americans learn what our own government does by shutting off various parts, fuse-box style
But in a public defender way, not a 2A way.
The government has needed a marketing department for a while.
About 15% of seniors love the model you are suggesting. It was easier to do “here are the stakes” during Trump 1, because chaos wasn’t the norm. Some HS kids were *5* when the Trump era began
I love @retroreport.org 💛🖤
This is the stuff most Americans don’t have a proper education in. All of our history classes are too busy fellating dead war criminals.
Unfortunately what should be one of the more important subjects to learn most student do not encounter unless they take it as a college level philosophy elective.
You can “embed” all you want, but it is not taught as a distinct subject.
What you are saying would be similar to “We don’t need to teach math class anymore as math is embedded in science classes”.
Critical thinking is important enough to be its own class. Just like math.
https://inside.tamuc.edu/academics/cvSyllabi/syllabi/201880/83465.pdf
https://static.scs.georgetown.edu/upload/files/syllabi/term_201620/course_PHIL-195/section_01/PHIL-195-01.pdf
I got my philosophy degree without having to take a critical thinking class.
Logic was a requirement for my major though.
I just had student do a poster project on executive branch agencies and (among other things) they had to describe how that agency helped people and how the new administration was changing what they did.
https://marylandpublicschools.org/about/Documents/DCAA/SocialStudies/Framework/AmericanGovernment.pdf
2) Enraged conservative parents call the class Woke Propaganda
3) High school civics class is canceled
https://youtu.be/qvYosaHxNbs?feature=shared
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/how-barack-obama-helped-produce-the-g-word-with-adam-conover
My AP Government Teacher in the early 90's somehow tricked our GOP State Rep come in to defend his belief that the Motor Voter Bill was a bad idea. We roasted his ass.
https://massivecorp.ca/jurisdictions-canada-educational-game/
It should also have an SAT-level exam that if you don’t pass you can’t get a drivers license and stuff like that
Oh, wait.. we need education?
🙄
- A ballad by a lead pipe bemoaning the impact the CDC had to cause seizures in children
-FEMA tornado chaser singing a classic rock song about cleaning up messes