Education / Youth – Page 59

A Serious Question

Our ship has crossed the pond, and we are moored in St. Malo, in northern France.

While we browse the walled city (despite the cold and rain), I’d like you to consider a question that I find increasingly pressing—and confounding: what must a citizen know?

In other words, what are the absolute essentials, the basic information and skills, needed in order to be a citizen (as opposed to a resident) of a democratic nation-state? There are obviously lots of things it would be nice if people knew, but I’m looking for the irreducible minimum here. If you could wave a magic wand and require an essential curriculum of your own devising, what would that curriculum contain, and why?

This is not an idle question; I really, really want to know what you think.

I’m leaving now. Talk amongst yourselves.

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Much Better

Yesterday was day two of the We the People competition, and we judged another 14 teams. Although there were a couple of substandard performances, most of the students we saw on Day Two ranged from impressive to phenomenal.

The opening question these teams had to answer was hardly a model of clarity. “In Federalist 51, Madison famously asserted that ‘it is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.’ In what ways do the Bill of Rights and the amendments protect individuals from oppression by its rulers?”

In the process of considering that question, we posed such ancillary inquiries as: what did the Founders see as the source of our rights? What is selective incorporation? What was the purpose of the 9th and 10th Amendments? What is the difference between negative and positive rights? What is the difference between procedural and substantive due process? Why are property rights important? and many more.

The best teams answered these and other questions in depth, displaying a highly sophisticated understanding of the philosophical origins and historical context of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. At times, they made genuinely profound observations; one student, in a discussion of Madison’s description of majority and minority factions noted that size alone should not determine whether a faction is a majority or minority–that we should consider as well the power wielded by that faction. Another, during a discussion of incorporation (the application of provisions of the Bill of Rights to state and local governments) opined that such application was particularly important because smaller governmental units can more easily be dominated by special or powerful interests.

Unlike Day One, students on yesterday’s teams didn’t hesitate to criticize court rulings, or even to disagree with what James Madison said in Federalist 51.

Most of the students were high school juniors and seniors. However, after a very good presentation by one team, we discovered that the students in that team were high school freshmen, a fact making their accomplishment particularly impressive. It was obvious that–for all of the students–the process of studying the material, preparing themselves for a public examination of their knowledge, and co-ordinating responses within their teams had sharpened their skills and given them a degree of self-confidence and poise unusual for those so young.

Today, the top ten teams will compete in sessions held at the U.S. House of Representatives. If yesterday’s performance was any indication, it will be very hard to choose an overall winner. On the other hand, all these students are winners, because they understand their country’s history and government far better than most citizens.

These kids already know more than most of our lawmakers.

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Battle for the Soul of Higher Education

In this morning’s New York Times, Frank Bruni has a must-read column on the purposes of higher education. He focuses upon a debate currently consuming Texas, but anyone who has listened to the rhetoric coming from the Indiana General Assembly will recognize it as an issue equally salient in Indiana.

As Bruni poses the central question:”Do we want our marquee state universities to behave more like job-training centers, judged by the number of students they speed toward degrees, the percentage of those students who quickly land good-paying jobs and the thrift with which all of this is accomplished? In the service of that, are we willing to jeopardize some of the trailblazing research these schools have routinely done and the standards they’ve maintained?”

I would suggest an even more basic question: are we willing to value education? Do our lawmakers even recognize that education is not the same thing as job training? Do they see any value in the liberal arts, or in research that adds to the sum of human understanding and knowledge? Evidently not.

Bruni quotes the new Governor of Virginia on the subject: “Pat McCrory, the new governor of North Carolina, recently advocated legislation to distribute funds to the state’s colleges based not on their enrollments — or, as he said on a radio show, on “butts in seats” — but instead on “how many of those butts can get jobs. If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine, go to a private school,” he added. “But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.”

The current emphasis on what we used to call “vocational education” not only minimizes the value of education itself, it ignores the reality of today’s job market. Most college graduates will have several careers–not just jobs, but careers–and a significant number of those have yet to be invented. Students who emerge with “training” rather than an education that prepares them to think, to apply critical analytic skills to a rapidly changing economy and world, will soon need re-training.

Students who have been taught to think only instrumentally–who value only instruction that is immediately applicable economically, who are satisfied with the “how” and never ask “why”–are already at a considerable disadvantage. We have plenty of those students now, and I often want to invert the dismissive and ignorant statement made by Virginia’s Governor, and tell them: If you just want to learn how to manufacture widgets or push paper, fine.

Go to a trade school.

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The Best Definition I’ve Heard

I’m still at the Conference on Citizenship at Wayne State University. Today, in one of the panels, I heard something that really struck me: a definition of a good education.

A good education is learning that has the cumulative effect of increasing the capacity of each citizen to control his/her fate.

I like this definition, because self-determination is at the core of the American ideal. But self-determination requires knowledge and skills that equip individuals to control their own lives and pursue their own dreams. We hear a lot about improving education, about test results and teaching methods; we hear a lot less about the content of that education. Other than STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), we spend very little time considering the skills and knowledge we should be providing the nation’s schoolchildren.

Controlling one’s fate includes the ability to participate in democratic self-government. There is a lot of research that connects civic engagement with efficacy–confidence in ones ability to navigate the social and political environment. Powerless people don’t engage.

Of course, there are different kinds of powerlessness. There’s the kind we can address through education, by giving students the skills and information they need in order to participate in self-government. There’s also the powerlessness that we all face when the system becomes corrupted; when government and those in positions of power only respond to the privileged and affluent. But that’s a subject for a different blog.

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Send Money

I’m turning this morning’s post over to a government teacher at Cathedral High School, who is trying to raise money for her students to travel to Washington, D.C. to compete in the national We The People contest.

My name is Jill Baisinger; I am the coach of Cathedral High School’s We the People team. My class is trying to fund raise our trip to Washington D.C. for the We the People National Competition. Below is some information regarding the program and our school’s involvement.

We the People is a national civic education program that is taught in 5th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade classrooms. Its purpose is to help prepare students to become more active citizens. Students specialize in an area of constitutional studies from founding philosophies, historical application, civil rights, civil liberties, or current applications. The culminating activity is a competition set up as a Congressional hearing where students take and defend their constitutional view as they have a conversation with attorneys, judges, historians, and other members of the community.

This is only Cathedral’s second year to have a We the People program, yet the team this year won their Congressional district competition and the Indiana State competition, which is one of the three hardest competitions in the country. Cathedral is now “Team Indiana” – and will represent Indiana at the National hearings at the end of April in Washington D.C.

In the past, when We the People was fully funded through a Congressional earmark, the Indiana Bar Foundation was able to pick up the cost of the team to travel to D.C. and compete. During these economic hard times, this is no longer the case; now the team must raise $33,000 to get to the national competition. Students, parents, and Cathedral High School are working hard to make this come true – and this is what the money would go toward – getting the team to D.C. to compete against the best We the People teams across the country.

The students and I would be more than happy to do a 15 minute demonstration for you, to introduce you to the program. Or I would be more than willing to meet you to chat about the benefits of the program myself – Just let me know! Here is the website for our group – that gives a little more information about the program, history at Cathedral, and the team’s achievements in a short period of time. www.gocathedral.com/wethepeople ;

If you are interested in more information on ways to make a tax-deductible contribution to Cathedral’s “We the People…” team, please contact Cathedral’s Development Officer, Michelle Rhodes at (317) 968 – 7311 ormrhodes@gocathedral.com.

The decision to de-fund We The People has to rank as one of the stupidest, “penny-wise, pound foolish” decisions by a Congress that seems to wallow in stupidity. The program is one of the very few that has consistently been demonstrated to be effective in imparting basic civic understanding. As someone who has been a judge for the state contest, I can personally attest to the depth of historical and constitutional knowledge the students display. And unlike contests like “brain game,” all of the students in a given class participate–the extent of that participation is one of the criteria for which points are awarded. A couple of bright kids can’t “carry” the others.

I know young people for whom participation in We The People was a turning point, an experience that engaged them in active citizenship for years afterward. Competing at the national level can only intensify that experience.

I’m going to send a contribution to Cathedral; I hope many of you reading this will choose to do likewise.

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