The profound civics lesson kids are getting from the U.S. government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic
(This was before President Trump did a virtual town hall at the Lincoln Memorial this week and declared he had been treated worse than Lincoln himself, reflecting his own unique view of U.S. history.)
Meanwhile, an annual survey conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania consistently shows 75 percent of the American public cannot name the three branches of government.
The authors of this post argue that civics and U.S. history are often taught as isolated facts that don’t really address what young people need to know to participate in the challenged American democratic experiment. They are Nicole Mirra, an assistant professor of urban teacher education at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; and Antero Garcia, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University.
By Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia
It’s that time again when flares are being set off across U.S. media outlets alerting the public to a crisis in civics and history education. These sirens blare at semiregular intervals whenever the country faces moments of reckoning about young people’s social and political knowledge. The most recent cause for alarm occurred with the recent release of scores from the 2018 administration of the National CONTINUE READING: Covid-19 response offers profound civics lesson - The Washington Post
