Category Archives: advocating civic education

support civics in Massachusetts #CivicsforMA #MAcivicsforall

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Right now is a “virtual advocacy day” for Massachusetts S.2375, “an act to promote and enhance civic engagement. I’m doing my bit by blogging in support of the law–which will also need an adequate appropriation. The bill would:

  • Require that all public schools teach American history and civics education in accordance with the History and Social Science Curriculum Framework.
  •  Establish a “Civics Project Fund,” which shall be used by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to implement the various requirements of the bill (including offering professional development and developing model curriculum). The fund will consist of appropriations and donated funds.
  • Mandate that every student in the Massachusetts public school system have the
    opportunity to participate in at least 2 student-led civics projects, at least one of which
    would be completed after 8th grade and would be a graduation requirement. Projects may be individual, small group, class-wide, or as part of required coursework.
  • Allow DESE, subject to resources, to establish regional civics councils to monitor and
    provide resources for civics education implementation throughout the commonwealth.
    DESE may also hold annual conventions for such regional councils to meet and assess
    the state of civics education, share best practices, and make recommendations to the
    Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).
  • Require DESE, subject to resources, to create tools aligned with the History and Social
    Sciences Curriculum Framework to support districts in implementation .
  • Require DESE, subject to resources, to establish the “Edward Moore Kennedy and Edward William Brooke III Civics Challenge,” which shall be available to all eighth-grade public school students. Student participants will present civics projects for evaluation and recognition.
  • Direct the Secretary of the Commonwealth to establish a “High School Voter Challenge” in which every public high school may nominate one or more students to serve as voter outreach coordinators. Designated “high school voter challenge weeks” will be used to hold voter registration drives for students who are eligible to register or pre-register to vote. The Secretary will also be responsible for disseminating information to cities and towns to promote youth membership on municipal boards, committees and commissions.
  • Require BESE to provide opportunities for educators to receive professional development.
  • Require DESE to convene a commission to develop a proposal for the establishment of a civic education and public service program for Massachusetts youth.
  • Require DESE to conduct a study on the implementation of the act.

See also: the first “civic ed” bill: 1642; my exchange with Beth Rubin about policy for civics; and new overview of civic education

take a survey on civic education in the US

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Would you be willing to take a survey that will help a new coalition expand and improve civic education in the USA? This coalition is led by iCivics, and many leaders in the field have already joined. I am part of this coalition.

The online survey will take less than 15 minutes to complete. It will ask you a few questions about who you are, how you personally relate to civic education, and what you think about the state of civic education today.

The survey will also lead you through an exercise called the “Five Whys.” You’ll be asked whether you think that we provide good enough civic education in the USA today. If you don’t think so, you’ll be asked “What is one reason that civic education is not good enough today?” You’ll suggest a reason, and then you’ll be asked why you think that reason exists. Next, you’ll be asked for a reason for that reason. This activity will continue until you have had a chance to offer a chain of five reasons.

This brainstorming exercise will allow a broad range of people to suggest underlying causes of unsatisfactory civic education. (Or you may argue that civic education is fine as it is.) Some people who take this survey will also be invited to take a second survey later on. The second survey will help us to organize and prioritize the causes.

If you wish to take the survey, this is the link:

https://tufts.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3Cbxqjvq3Cgm1KJ

It can be taken on a computer or a smartphone.

The survey begins with more information about the research and requests your consent to proceed. If you are under 18 years old, you must ask a parent or guardian also to give permission by typing his or her name in the form.

deliberation or simulated deliberation? choices for the classroom

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In an article published today (“Deliberation or Simulated Deliberation?” in Democracy and Education, 26, 1, Article 7), I respond to a valuable previous piece by Margaret S. Crocco and her colleagues, “Deliberating Public Policy Issues with Adolescents: Classroom Dynamics and Sociocultural Considerations.” These authors analyze classroom “deliberations” of current events and find disappointing results. Their analysis is rigorous and insightful. One finding particularly caught my eye.

It is interesting that even students at the school with a large immigrant population tended to talk about immigrants as “they” when they deliberated about national policy. They were essentially role-playing the government or perhaps a body of influential citizens of the United States. As Crocco and her colleagues write, “Participating in the public debate about immigration in U.S. classrooms positions one as an insider with all the privileges of excluding outsiders that result from this status” (Crocco et al., 2018). This is evidence that the students experienced the discussion as a kind of role-play.

That finding leads me to propose that discussions can vary on two dimensions. Talking can result in an actual decision, or it can be about a simulated or hypothetical decision. And the participants can either speak for themselves or role-play characters. Those distinctions produce four types, all of which can be found in actual classrooms (and in settings for adults, such as community fora.)

I think Crocco et al. provide some grounds for skepticism about simulated decision-making discussions in which the speakers represent themselves (cell 3). When we ask students (or adults) to discuss what “we” should do, where the “we” is actually a vast or distant entity, such as the US government, we position them as insiders even though they know they are outsiders. This disjunction could be fun or interesting, but I think often it just alienates.

The other cells are more promising. It’s better to be able to: (1) govern a real entity, such as a student-led association, (2) give advice to a real decision-maker, or (4) pretend that you hold a decision-making role, such as a Senator in a fictional Congress.

There are benign reasons to turn national issues into topics for small-group discussions. The goal is to make students (or others) feel that the government is theirs. It does belong to them, as a matter of justice, and it’s great if they take away that feeling. But we must be serious about their limited power, or they will perceive the discussion as fake and perhaps draw the conclusion that democracy is fundamentally a false promise. As I write in the article:

The students in these three classes did not actually decide about immigration. At most, they might shift their individual opinions on that topic, and if they encouraged others outside the class to change their opinions in similar ways, that could possibly affect national policy by influencing those people’s votes. But that is a remote form of impact for any citizen to consider, and especially for students who are not old enough to vote themselves. The United States is an “Imagined Community” (Anderson, 1991), not a group of people who literally make decisions. The real group—a classroom full of students—was pretending to deliberate.

That is how I would explain why the results were disappointing.

Michael A. Rebell, Flunking Democracy: Schools, Courts, and Civic Participation

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This is a very important new book: Michael A. Rebell, Flunking Democracy: Schools, Courts, and Civic Participation (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

My blurb on the back cover says, “Michael Rebell makes a powerful and original case that litigation can and should improve civic education. He skillfully assembles evidence from the existing literature to show that civic education is important for the future of our democracy and requires improvement, then further applies his deep knowledge and experience with education-reform litigation to argue persuasively that courts can and would consider lawsuits requiring states to improve their policies for civic education.”

I’d add that this is one of the best available summaries of the research on civic education. Rebell really does demonstrate that litigation is a plausible strategy for improving civics. One reason is that state constitutions often explicitly cite preparing citizens to vote and serve on juries as the main rationale for establishing a right to education. Finally, Rebell offers sophisticated solutions. In a way, the hardest question is what a state should do if a court orders it to improve its civic education. There are complex debates about the value of policies like tests and required courses, and no single policy will work in every state and for every purpose.* But Rebell explains that courts can require processes that involve deliberation about strategies, experimentation, and assessment. That means that a court wouldn’t have to order a policy but could require a flexible process and then hold the state accountable for making serious efforts.

* See my exchange with Beth Rubin about policy for civics, new overview of civic education, and state policies for civics: it’s all about implementation.

the Massachusetts Civics Bill #MAcivicsforall

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The Massachusetts legislature is considering S. 2306, An Act to Promote and Enhance Civic Engagement. According to the Massachusetts Civic Learning Coalition‘s summary, the bill:

  • Requires that all public schools teach American history and civics education.
  • Promotes comprehensive, project-based civic education integrated into existing curricula and focused on local communities, reflecting best practices for high-quality civic learning.
  • Authorizes funding necessary to support implementation through the Civics Project Fund.
  • Encourages voting and other vital forms of participation alongside important political learning outcomes through the High School Voter Challenge and Edward Moore Kennedy and Edward William Brooke III Civics Challenge.
  • Maintains local control and classroom decision-making.

Here is an article in Commonwealth Magazine by Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and me, defending the bill. Information about a “lobby day” and how to write your representative is here.