“The better
educated our citizens are, the better equipped they will be to preserve the
system of government we have. And we have to start with the education of our
nation’s young people. Knowledge about our government is not handed down
through the gene pool. Every generation has to learn it, and we have some work
to do.”
—Justice Sandra
Day O’Connor
“America as a new nation was not created out
of devotion to a motherland, a royal family, or a national religion. Americans
are instead defined by our fidelity to certain ideals, expressed in the
Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights and subsequent
amendments. While citizenship is formally acquired through either birth or
naturalization, all of us must learn to become Americans. Peoples from diverse
cultural, religious, and racial backgrounds can fully join the American
community by sharing its defining commitments. If Americans are not bound
together by common values, we will become fragmented and turn on one another.”
—Guardian of Democracy:
The Civic Mission of Schools (2003)
In
the report, “Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools” (2003),
produced by a variety of educational organizations and institutions dedicated
to civic education, the importance of civics education is framed within the
structure of maintaining and enhancing Democracy for the future. Civics
education is explained as a right of every citizen. Citizens of the United
States are, by birth or naturalization, afforded a number of rights. However,
these rights are not worth very much unless citizens understand how to access
them. The United States is incredibly large, and diverse, and what binds
Americans together is their shared responsibility for, and in, government. However,
once again, to value and utilize their role as American citizens, students must
first know what this means. Who then is responsible for teaching Americans what
it means to be a critically engaged citizen?
This
report argues that, as this is a set of knowledge and skills that all citizens
deserve, and need, access to, it must be taught in schools. “Competent and
responsible citizens” are informed and thoughtful, participate in their
communities, act politically and have concern for moral and civic virtues (p.
6). These are skills that can, and must, be taught to students – if the goal is
to have an active, engaged, and informed citizenry.
Schools, and teachers, teach on two
levels: the surface concepts and skill sets that make up each discipline, and
the larger concepts and skill that are much more subjective, but also help the
student realize their role in the world. Ideally both these “thinking skills”
and the content are combined and taught together. The term “21st
century competencies” gets thrown around a lot right now – people are realizing
that in an ever “flattening” world the skills that students need to know go far
beyond the mimetic. What this means to me is that students need to know how to
interact with each other, and the wider world, be engaged and see themselves as
change-makers. These texts, the report “Guardian of Democracy: The Civic
Mission of Schools” (2003) as well as Wayne Journall’s piece, “Standardizing
Citizenship: The Potential Influence of State Curriculum Standards on the Civic
Development of Adolescents” (2010), reminded me that this is not a new concept,
but rather one that a lot of the history of public education in the United
States is based on. While STEM skills are important, especially for economic
viability, having a hierarchy of academic importance, where the humanities are
cut to make way for math, or vice versa, is not helping students. No skill set
will be complete if students do not know how to take their knowledge and use it
locally, nationally, and globally. The report, “Guardians of Democracy” offers
many recommendations, as to how schools can better prepare students for civic
involvement, one of which is to “view civic learning as an interdisciplinary
subject that can and should be employed across the curriculum (p. 41).” There
is a danger in having schools, teachers, parents, and students see civics as
something that is only taught in classes such as Civics or AP Government. There
are great opportunities to focus on civic learning in all content areas and should
not be regulated to one class, or one area of the curricula, especially within
the Social Studies.
