Tag Archive for 'Civics'

Civics and Sanskrit

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 18, 2009 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum and Literacy. 5 Comments

Only 3.5% of Arizona public school students got six or more questions correct on a version of the United States Citizenship Test.  Matthew Ladner of Jay Greene’s blog thought that was pretty pathetic–new immigrants to the U.S. have to answer six or more correct–until they gave the same test to kids in Oklahoma.  The results were not OK.

Perhaps I ought not to have been so hard on Arizona students. After all, they passed at a rate that was 25% higher than their peers in Oklahoma!  That’s right: the passing rate for Oklahoma high school students was 2.8%. They somehow underperformed Arizona’s already abysmally pathetic performance.

“These kids wouldn’t do much worse if the pollster asked them questions in Sanskrit instead of English,” Ladner concludes.  Over at Joanne Jacobs, guest blogger Diana Senechal says Ladner’s right.  ”According to a binomial distribution calculator, the chances of getting at least 6 out of 10 questions correct (where each question has 4 options) is about 2 percent. So, no, they wouldn’t do much worse in Sanskrit,” she writes.

“I have an empty metal coffee pot in my office marked “Sweden Civics Survey Fund,” Ladner writes.  “Please drop by a give what you can afford. Once it gets to a couple of thousand bucks, I’ll retain the pollster to give this exact same survey on AMERICAN civics to high school students in Sweden.”

Great idea.  I’ve got a ten-spot in my hand, Matthew.  What’s the address?

Health Care and Background Knowledge

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 17, 2009 in Curriculum. 8 Comments

Understanding the health care debate requires basic literacy and math skills.  But Checker Finn writing at National Review Online, is struck by “the enormous amount of background knowledge” required to make sense of it.  “It’s almost a litmus test of cultural literacy,” he writes.  To illustrate his point, he looks at a few paragraphs of President Obama’s recent address to Congress last week in which the President took for granted that his audience was familiar with words and phrases like “comprehensive health care reform,” “Democrats and Republicans” “self-insurance,” “coverage,” and ”bankruptcy” among other terms.

What’s an “advanced democracy”? How many are there? What are some others? What’s the point of Obama’s comparison of the U.S. with other countries?  What are Medicare and Medicaid? Where did they come from? How do they work? Who is covered by them? What’s the federal deficit, and why are some people concerned about its size? What is the congressional legislative process, and why is it unusually complex in this instance?

“Perhaps you don’t need to know these sorts of things to succeed in college or the workplace (which seems to be the litmus test for today’s standards-writers and education reformers). But you really do need to know them to be a constructive participant in modern American life,” Finn concludes.  “Who is going to ensure that our schools teach them?”

Mr. Holland’s Curriculum

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 4, 2009 in No category. 0 Comments

Could a little Hollywood star power help further the cause of teaching history and civics? 

Actor Richard Dreyfuss has come up with a program he’s calling “The Dreyfuss Initiative” — a plan to create a civics curriculum and series mr-hollands-opusof videos “to engage, enlighten and empower students of all ages in an entertaining way.”  In an interview with the AP, Dreyfuss describes his project as “a nonprofit initiative to get K-12 grades back to civics, to give our children real-world knowledge and hopefully wisdom about how to run this complex governance system.” 

But Dreyfuss is loathe to use the c-word in describing his plan.   “Don’t call it ‘civics’ because ‘civics’ is easily the most boring word in America,” Dreyfuss says. “Call it what it is: political power.”

Channeling E.D. Hirsch, Dreyfuss tells the AP, “I stopped defining myself as an actor and I went to Oxford because I believe that America is a miracle.  And I think that there is nothing easier in the world than for us to lose this miracle and to be reduced to words on paper.”

Patriotism in the Age of Obama

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 16, 2009 in No category. 5 Comments

Barack and Michele Obama seem to be exemplary parents, writes Checker Finn in the latest Gadfly.  But (and you knew there was a but coming) he wonders how the Obamas see the value of patriotism. ”How are their daughters being taught to view the United States?” he asks. ”More important, what examples are the Obamas setting for fifty million other American kids and their teachers and parents?”

Is America, in their eyes, ‘the last best hope’? A place that doesn’t always live up to its ideals but comes closer than anyplace else? A place worth defending from all enemies, foreign and domestic? And is that something they believe is important for grownups to impart to children? Or do they think it’s the proper role of parents and teachers to emphasize the country’s shortcomings?

Finn is not questioning Obama’s patriotism, but wondering aloud about where the post-Vietnam generation of leaders places patriotism in the pantheon of civic virtues.  It’s a provocative question with lingering resonance.

“When the country chose Barack Obama over John McCain, it opted for a member of that crowd and for the youth and change and energy that come with it,” Finn concludes.  “Well and good. The President certainly has his hands full on many fronts and one can only wish him well. Nobody expects him to be the national K-12 curriculum director, too. But he and his wife are inevitable role models. How he views America matters in a thousand ways, including–though surely not limited to–how our children and teachers will view it.”

We Need to Be A ‘Water Cooler Nation’ Again

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 14, 2009 in Interview. 10 Comments

America desperately needs to become a “water cooler nation” again, with a common set of cultural references, says historian Richard Norton Smith.  “It shouldn’t be Britney Spears or the latest celebrity divorce or even last week’s box office grosses,” he notes in an interview on the Public School Insights blog, but rather ”Gettysburg and Rosa Parks–and an endless source of possibilities. And I think the common culture, the popular culture, has both a lot to answer for and, correspondingly, a lot to give.”

Claus von Zastrow, Executive Director of the Learning First Alliance, asks Smith if American students are getting enough civic and history education. Smith, a reknowned presidential historian and biographer, offers a weary laugh then replies, “No. They are not.”

And the moment I say that, I qualify it with an expression of sympathy for any teacher, at any level, who is competing with a mass culture that encourages historical and civic illiteracy, if indeed not illiteracy generally. It’s important to get that right up front. No, they’re not. And the evidence of that is to be found in every survey that’s been taken for as long as I can remember….The evidence is overwhelming that we are not imparting to young people a sense of not only where we came from, but, as a result, who we are. And who we might become.

Smith makes a passionate case for teaching history as a means of enhancing civic engagement.  “I have always been bewildered by people who say, ‘Oh god, history, it’s so dull.’ Now, maybe it seemed dull because, to be honest, maybe it was taught badly. Maybe it was reduced to mind-numbing treaties and irrelevant battles and dates. But that’s not history. That’s a calendar. History is the most colorful, dramatic, emotional, inspiring, outraging subject I can think of. It is life. And if we walk away from it or if we minimize it or over-simplify it, it seems to me we’re doing a great disservice to ourselves.”

Great stuff.  The full interview is available here.  A edited transcript is on the LFA blog here.

Don’t Know Much About History

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 3 Comments

Pencils out, clear your desks.  Pop quiz!

What ”inalienable rights” are referred to in the Declaration of Independence?  What are the three branches of government?   Name a right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Which branch of government has the power to declare war?  And finally, what percentage of Americans failed a test of these and other basic civics, history and economic questions? 

Seventy-one percent.  Yep.  More than seven out of ten earned an F.The average score was 49%.  USA Today reports that of 164 respondents who say they have held elected office, 44% was average.  

Without knowledge of your country’s history, key texts and institutions, you don’t have a frame of reference to judge the politics and policies of today,” Richard Brake, head of the institute’s American Civic Literacy Program, tells the paper.

Take the quiz yourself, or give it to your students right here.  And after they’re done and you’re thoroughly depressed, here’s a link on how to become a Core Knowledge school.