In election year, how to teach democracy
This was written by Mark Phillips, professor emeritus of secondary education at San Francisco State University. A version of this was published on his Edutopia blog , and he also publishes a monthly column on education for the Marin Independent Journal.
By Mark Phillips
School’s out. Politics is in. Five months of presidential political combat lie ahead. It’s time to consider the challenge of effectively educating kids to be active participants in our democratic process.
Here’s what we know:
(Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg)1) to effectively teach democracyyou have to model it, and
2) to teach students to be actively engaged citizens you have to enable them to practice this.