Submitted by Ben Anderson (not verified) on November 16, 2006 - 22:00.
My students are desperate to understand the ideals on which this country was founded. They are desperate because they don't like being cynical about the intentions and actions of our leaders. These are kids whose first political realities involved Clinton and Lewinsky - for many of these kids, this set the foundation for their entire understanding of our political process. They crave conversations on "civic virtue" and "common good" because they understand something is wrong and they don't want to feel hopeless. I don't place full blame on schools for our kids not understanding basic civic ideas, but we need to compensate for a political system that under the critical eyes of teenagers is fundamentally broken. If we as teachers don't deal with this reality and adjust our teaching into a meaningful dialogue about these failures and what we need to do in order to fix them - our kids will see both our educational and political systems as meaningless.
My students are desperate to
Submitted by Ben Anderson (not verified) on November 16, 2006 - 22:00.
My students are desperate to understand the ideals on which this country was founded. They are desperate because they don't like being cynical about the intentions and actions of our leaders. These are kids whose first political realities involved Clinton and Lewinsky - for many of these kids, this set the foundation for their entire understanding of our political process. They crave conversations on "civic virtue" and "common good" because they understand something is wrong and they don't want to feel hopeless. I don't place full blame on schools for our kids not understanding basic civic ideas, but we need to compensate for a political system that under the critical eyes of teenagers is fundamentally broken. If we as teachers don't deal with this reality and adjust our teaching into a meaningful dialogue about these failures and what we need to do in order to fix them - our kids will see both our educational and political systems as meaningless.