Frederick Hess: When kids become school-reform props - NY Daily News:
Civic education in our schools is a mess. Survey results routinely show how shockingly little American students know about our history and government. Educators and elected officials rightly worry about low levels of youth engagement.
Some of the nation’s most heralded attempts to cultivate a civic disposition can be found in New York City in schools like Democracy Prep and Success Academies. These charter schools are able to champion a coherent, muscular civic vision that would be much harder in district schools beset by the homogenizing demands of bureaucracy.
They have students diving into public hearings, letter-writing, research and advocacy — in other words, real-world training for citizenship. This is a good thing — but it also raises a complicated question: When are students learning to be empowered citizens and when are they being used to push an adult agenda?
Politically, nothing is more potent or poignant than the picture of a child’s face at a hearing or protest. Which is why adults in the system must wield their influence with great care.
Wednesday, dozens of charters shut their doors for the day in order to bus students, parents and teachers up to Albany so that they could participate in a pro-charter school rally. City Councilman Daniel Dromm condemned the charter schools for “using schoolchildren for political purposes.”
These tensions are hardly unique to charter schools. Opponents of reform-minded Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson have bused students to protests, including to venues as far away as Washington, D.C.
And as reported last month, in upstate New York, a first-grade teacher named Catharine Taylor had her students write letters to Cuomo asking him to give the district more money. Taylor told Syracuse.com: “I would hate for the public to think that I’m using my first-graders.”
This issue has a personal resonance for me. Years ago, I was teaching high school civics in Baton Rouge, La., when white supremacist David Duke ran a nearly successful campaign for governor. I wanted my students to get involved, but I didn’t want them to feel pressured to embrace any particular agenda — especially one as odious as Duke’s.
We want schools to get kids engaged and for kids to be heard. We don’t want minors manipulated by those asked to educate them.
This requires line-drawing. There are three tests that can help ensure real-life civic education is serving children, not adults.
First, there ought to be a clear instructional purpose that connects advocacy with what students are learning in classrooms. If the middle-school curriculum includes learning to communicate concerns to public officials, then having students write to the governor is appropriate. On the other hand, a teacher veering off from the curriculum to have first-graders (!) lobby on state aid is clearly out of bounds.
Second, students should have an opportunity to discuss the issue and to opt out if they disagree. This also means students need to be old enough to grapple with the issue. It’s not OK for a principal or a teacher to say, “Put your T-shirts on now and put on your rally faces.”
After a lively and open discussion, it would be no great surprise to learn that students might want to rally to support their own school. So long as participation was not mandatory, that would be fine.
