High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and Do
by Frederick M. Hess • Sep 30, 2010 at 9:28 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Remarkably little has been written about the state of citizenship education in our schools. One has to go back to the 1998 Public Agenda study A Lot To Be Thankful For to find a serious attempt to examine what parents think public schools should teach children about citizenship. The annual Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll on schooling has not asked questions about citizenship since 2000. When these questions were last addressed, respondents chose "prepar[ing] people to become responsible citizens" as the least important purpose of schooling from among those offered. And it's brutally hard to find much on what teachers think about the state of citizenship education.
Given those challenges, pollsters/analysts Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett have delivered an invaluable service in their new study "High Schools, Civics, and Citizenship: What Social Studies Teachers Think and Do," released today (Full disclosure: The study was commissioned and published by my shop at AEI). Steve and Ann explore what our schools are teaching today about citizenship by interviewing and surveying those teachers most
