I’ve

been spending a lot of time trying to improve the Prince George’s Information

Commons history Webpage,

which is modestly interactive. It’s still a work-in-progress. It reflects

the contributions of our high school students, although I ended up doing

most of the technical work because we just don’t have enough time with

the kids to teach them oral history techniques, the issue of desegregation,

and how to animate webpages. Tomorrow in class they will have a

chance to critique what I’ve done intensively and then I will try to implement

their ideas.

During our high school class today, we had a good and useful time talking

about statistics on race and school enrollments. The bottom line

is that the proportion of African American students in Prince George’s

County school soared upward by 72 percentage points from 1960 to the present.

Around 1980, the Black and White student populations were about equal.

Since there was mandatory busing in those days, we assume that a lot of

students attended truly integrated schools. Then the White students left,

at a faster rate than the White population of the county. Now the "exposure"

of Black students to White students (as measured by civil

right lawyers) is very low compared to other counties.

I think our students learned a fair amount about statistics and were

intrigued by the facts. But when we started asking them what they thought

about the trends, they clammed up. The history of school desegregation

in this County could be viewed as a temporary success (until the 1980s)

and a long-term failure because schools are almost as segregated today

as they were in 1960. Or one could say that the departure of White students

is not bad news at all, since the Black population is extremely diverse

(65 languages are spoken at Northwestern High School alone), and the median

income of the County is much higher than the national median—so there

are plenty of resources for an excellent school system. Our students wouldn’t

say what they thought, and I don’t blame them. Not only is this a difficult

issue, but three White college employees were suddenly asking them for

their candid opinions of a sensitive racial issue—a really unfair

demand. Yet I was disappointed, because I would like to know what they

think.

The Civic Mission of

Schools, our report on civic education, has been getting

quite a lot of press—most of it positive. But Chester Finn wrote

a critical review

that has been provoking some discussion in the civic engagement world.

Over lunch today, my colleagues and I planned a deliberative Website

on the history of desegregation in Prince George’s County. We’re thinking

that the "intro" will show class photos from Northwestern

High School, each year gradually morphing into the next as the school

moves from segregated white, to white with one black student in 1955-8,

to today’s mosaic of ethnic groups. Next, visitors will be invited to

explore a page that our high school students have already constructed,

with a timeline of County history and interviews of participants in the

integration stuggle. Visitors will then be able to move to a page that

presents three contrasting answers to the question: "What should

the County have done in 1955 to address school segregation?" Finally,

they will be transferred to an online discussion forum to post their opinions.

A major goal is to help our students see history not only as the record

of state actions, powerful people, and downtrodded victims, but also as

a story of communities making difficult decisions.

In between dealing with various financial issues involving CIRCLE,

I wrote most of a proposal to the NSF

to support high school classes for the next two years—including money

for curriculum development, assessment, and research. The specific activity

that we’ll ask NSF to fund is map-making. If funded, our kids would make

a whole variety of interactive maps of their community that they would

post on their website: asset

maps, network maps, environmental maps, problem-solving maps, and historical

maps of the County. My current dream is that we will get funding from

several specialized sources to suppport work in particular fields over

the next 2-3 years. One source might fund a journalism after-school program

on Tuesdays; another would fund map-making on Wednesdays; and still another

would support community history work on Thursdays. (Clearly, since I have

another full-time job, I would only be able to come to these classes occasionally.)

All the classes would produce material for the Website. Once the site

was full of valuable material, we would convene community leaders and

citizens and say (in effect): This is something that belongs to all of

us, because it reflects the richness of our community. Would you like

to join us in adding material? Would you like to run the site as a nonprofit

association? We’re at your service, and we’re willing to back away if

it’s time for someone else to manage things.

The idea, in short, is to strengthen the community by building a new

independent association connected to a Website. But to get people interested,

the site has to have content. And since no one wants to fund us to build

an association, we need to go after specialized funders in various content

areas—such as NSF for geography. We’ll see if it works.

Mike Weiksner and Archon Fung have contributed nice replies to my posting

on the

blog.

I had a chance to meet today with a state social studies supervisor,

which was an interesting opportunity to find out more about the complex

interplay among state standards, high-stakes tests, curriculum design

at various levels, and the textbook market. If I write a civics textbook,

I’ll have to navigate these treacherous waters.

Later, with our high school class, we spent quite a bit of time talking

about why they should (or should not) vote. I tried to move the conversation

to a related topic: How do we find out enough about candidates that we

can make a choice? It seems to me that the need for that kind of knowledge

is the biggest obstacle to voting.