Category Archives: advocating civic education

why states need new and different policies for democratic education

States have various policies in place that we might hope would encourage civic learning and engagement. Examples are curricular requirements (for social studies and/or civics classes), mandatory tests, and even the statewide service mandate in Maryland. We don’t know much about how policies affect experiences at the classroom level, although we do know that certain experiences are valuable–notably, moderated discussions of controversial issues, well-conceived service projects, and challenging simulations of political or legal institutions.

My colleagues and I were able to combine information about all the extant state policies with evidence from the Knight Foundation’s survey of 100,000 high school students. This survey gave us information about the kids’ backgrounds, their experiences in classrooms and schools, and certain civic outcomes related to the First Amendment, such as valuing freedom of speech and using the news media. As expected, we found positive associations between classroom-level experiences and the outcomes we value. For instance, discussing controversial issues once again emerged as a beneficial opportunity. But we found no statistical links between state policies and classroom activities or students’ outcomes.

I conclude that the states are basically barking up the wrong trees. We need new types of policies that would actually encourage the activities we want to see in classrooms. Mandating courses and testing students’ academic knowledge of politics are worthy policies, but they don’t get us the values and habits we want to see.

(See Mark Hugo Lopez, Peter Levine, Kenneth Dautrich, and David Yalof, “Schools, Education Policy and the Future of the First Amendment, Political Communication, vol. 26, no. 1, January-March 2009.)

controversy in the classroom

University of Wisconsin Professor Diana Hess has published Controversy in the Classroom: The Democratic Power of Discussion (Routledge, 2009). The longitudinal study of high school students that is a major source of data for this book was partly funded by CIRCLE. Hess argues that planned, moderated discussions of controversial issues teach essential democratic skills. She provides research-based advice about how to define “controversial issues” and handle them in classrooms.

According to my blurb on the back cover:

    Controversy in the Classroom is a model of scholarship. Diana Hess combines her personal experience as a teacher with rigorous qualitative and quantitative data and philosophical argumentation to conclude that students must learn to be citizens by discussing controversial issues. This is an important and neglected finding that should influence parents, teachers, and policymakers.

Arne Duncan on schools as community centers

I happen to be flying to Chicago today for a meeting on young people and civic engagement. The Chicago Public Schools were led by Arne Duncan until President Obama made him Secretary of Education. Many people who want to elevate democratic (or civic) education from its lowly status in the Department have hopes for Secretary Duncan. He was, for example, supportive of the Mikva Challenge, a great program that enlists Chicago teenagers in constructive political action and teaches them academic and political skills. In the clip below, he eloquently defends the idea of the school as a community center–also a concept with roots in Chicago, the city of John Dewey and Jane Addams.

I got this clip from the excellent Coalition for Community Schools, which has landed the Secretary for its conference.

that narrow curriculum: it’s not all about NCLB

Some time ago, we received a Ford Foundation grant to document the problem that almost everyone decried: because of the testing requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act (the comprehensive federal law related to pre-college education), schools were focusing on math and reading to the exclusion of social studies, art, music, physical education, and extracurriculars. All the data that supposedly demonstrated this problem came from current surveys of educational administrators or citizens, who were asked to say whether they believed curricula had narrowed since the passage of NCLB. They said yes.

We set out to provide supportive evidence by examining historical data about what teachers actually teach and kids actually study (based on contemporaneous surveys of students and teachers). What we found was much more complex and nuanced than our original hypothesis. Instead of “documenting” a problem, we showed that it didn’t exist in the way we had expected.

  • Transcripts show that high school students are studying more diverse subjects. Narrowing is not a problem at the high school level.
  • There is no evidence of curricular change in middle school in the last decade.
  • There has been some narrowing in elementary school, but mostly at first grade. Moreover, the narrowing trend began before NCLB and affects private schools just as much as public schools. Thus the cause is probably not NCLB but rather a combination of parents’ and teachers’ priorities, textbooks, state laws, local policies, etc.
  • We had expected that new teachers would be most likely to focus on reading and math, because they have entered the profession under NCLB. In fact, more experienced teachers offer a narrower curriculum; new teachers are more likely to offer arts and social studies.

I personally believe that the narrowing of the curriculum in the early grades is a significant problem. But it cannot be solved by lifting testing provisions in NCLB. It’s a much broader and more complex issue.

the civic potential of video games

Many adults who care about civic and ethical education are hostile to video games. We assume that gaming is a solitary, passive, violent activity, unrelated to issues in the real world. Actually, games vary enormously; some of the most popular ones are challenging simulations of democracy and social issues. And gaming is not always solitary; sometimes it is a social and cooperative passtime.

According to the most ambitious and careful study to date, “Civic Implications of Video Games,” what matters is not whether or how much kids play video games. The question is which games they play and how they play them.

For example, there are strong positive correlations between playing the Sims and active civic engagement in the real world. This is perhaps not too surprising because the Sims requires active thinking about social issues in a fictional setting. In contrast, Halo is a “first-person shooter” game. The report doesn’t say that it correlates with traditional civic activity, but Halo does involve collaborating with other players online. Those who collaborate with others online are also more engaged in active citizenship. For instance, they are much more likely to talk about elections. Thus even Halo has some civic potential. We need to promote and celebrate the best games, develop more like them, and use them in conjunction with school, community, and family activities.

The whole report is worth careful study. It was written by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in collaboration with the Civic Education Research Group at Mills College.