{"id":4291,"date":"2003-09-22T11:42:11","date_gmt":"2003-09-22T11:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4291"},"modified":"2003-09-22T11:42:11","modified_gmt":"2003-09-22T11:42:11","slug":"congressional-conference-on-civic-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4291","title":{"rendered":"Congressional Conference on Civic Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spoke today at the first annual Congressional Conference on Civic<\/p>\n

Education, which was attended by delegations from all fifty states,<\/p>\n

including state legislators, educators, and executive branch officials.<\/p>\n

I had served on the advisory committee for the conference, so I was<\/p>\n

glad to see it come to pass. It was also my third opportunity in 10<\/p>\n

days to make a speech about the Civic<\/p>\n

Mission of Schools<\/a> report. (The other two were the 50th anniversary<\/p>\n

of the National Conference on Citizenship<\/a><\/p>\n

and the Youth for<\/p>\n

Justice <\/a>state directors’ meeting.)<\/p>\n

At all three events, there was discussion of the importance and difficulty<\/p>\n

of teaching controversial issues in schools. Today,<\/p>\n

I mentioned Gun Owners of America’s attack on the<\/p>\n

civic education bill<\/a> as evidence that there are people who do<\/p>\n

not want such discussion in classrooms. After the session, a state<\/p>\n

legislator from the West approached me and said that I had been un-civil<\/p>\n

in treating the Gun Owners as "nuts"; I should have made<\/p>\n

sure I understood and conveyed their position fairly. He said that<\/p>\n

my incivility was an example of what is wrong with civic education.<\/p>\n

I was taken aback, since I feel that much of my work is aimed at<\/p>\n

promoting civil and respectful dialogue, and I strive to understand<\/p>\n

opponents’ point of view. For example, I strongly disagree with the<\/p>\n

National Rifle Association’s positions, yet I think its views are<\/p>\n

sincerely held, based on principles, sometimes unfairly caricatured,<\/p>\n

and conceivably correct. I suppose I would defend my criticism of<\/p>\n

the Gun Owners by noting that I didn’t attribute a hidden <\/em>agenda<\/p>\n

to them; I simply paraphrased their public statement, which is a pretty<\/p>\n

explicit attack on critical thinking in schools. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spoke today at the first annual Congressional Conference on Civic Education, which was attended by delegations from all fifty states, including state legislators, educators, and executive branch officials. I had served on the advisory committee for the conference, so I was glad to see it come to pass. It was also my third opportunity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocating-civic-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}