2020 Medley #19 – Civics: A Subject Left Behind
Civics Education
AMERICAN CIVICS EDUCATION
Ask someone disappointed by the extreme political and social polarization in America today, and it’s possible that you’ll get a rant about how Civics isn’t being taught in our schools anymore.
Fewer hours are now required in traditional Civics subjects — government, history, law, economics, and geography — than in the past. Nearly 80% of states require only one semester of Civics classes (beyond History) for a student to graduate from high school.
Pundits on both the left and the right have their own ideas on how to teach Civics. What they do agree on, however, is that Civics education as it currently exists in the US is inadequate…so bad in fact that a lawsuit was filed in Rhode Island claiming that the Civics education was so poor it violated students’ constitutional rights.
As usual, however, the claims about the poor quality of Civics education is only part of the story. Schools are once again being called on to solve the problems created by outside forces such as the elimination of the “fairness doctrine” the CONTINUE READING: 2020 Medley #19 – Civics: A Subject Left Behind | Live Long and Prosper