(no subject)

[fabrisse]

I don't know how many of you have been following the articles that say our current crop of high school students don't believe in the First Amendment. If you're unfamiliar with it, please go to a news page that carries Associate Press articles and look up the one by Ben Feller from 1/31/2005. siskodax is the one who brought this to my attention.

Now the first thing to remember is that we don't know what questions were asked or how they were phrased. eanja pointed this out to me a couple of days ago, and it is an essential point. If anyone has access to the original survey or can present anything that might skew the statistics, I'd really like to know about it.

Because, my first thought is, "it's true." During my year of tutoring at the local Boys and Girls Club there were two things that I found common to the students I talked to. The first was that there was nothing they could do to make the world better. Their own lives felt, to them, to be so predetermined that for many of them even thinking about college or a career was foolish.

The second was that, although the constant vulgarities that come out of their mouths are a prime example of it, they don't really believe in free speech. Some of this may just be that they've had too many authority figures tell them to shut up, but I believe, from the students that I tutored, it has far more to do with the way that American History and American Ideas are being taught.

Now some of you may know that the job that currently pays me so inadequately is as a textreader. What I'm reading are the state exams for 20 states. Every comma, plus sign, and page number is read out loud. And several things have struck me. The first is that fewer than half the states have a history or social studies requirement. Slightly more have a science requirement. The rest have only English and Math requirements. Of the English requirements only about half the ones I've read require written work (and I'd argue that only one or two of those states requires critical thinking in the written work).

On the social studies tests there are questions about map reading and geography and occasional questions about big events (Lewis and Clark seems to be everyone's favorite expedition). The Southern states are more likely to ask questions about the bill of Rights while the other states are more likely to ask questions about the Declaration of Independence. Several states ask questions that clarify the separation of powers, but they are more likely to do it using examples at the state level than the national level.

What I'm seeing only rarely is anything that asks what specific rights are defended by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Civil War gets some interesting play, but no one seems to ask about the meaning of such key phrases as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Basically every student understands "of the people" and a few get the whole "for the people" idea, and those are the pieces that I'm seeing reinforced in these tests. "By the people" keeps flying under the radar.

Let me be clear. I don't like these tests. I think that they favor the kids who do well on tests (I was one; my sister wasn't. I know both sides of the arguments.) often at the expense of any real understanding of the issues that they are being taught to parrot on the tests.

However, if these things are going to be required, then they should:
1) be more uniform from state to state.
2) cover history.
3) require critical thinking in areas other than the English section (for those that require critical thinking at all).

Without critical thinking, we are going to continue to breed students who cannot and will not think for themselves. Without addressing U.S. History, they are only going to know "facts" without contexts and without ideals.

I have a question for anyone who is reading this. How would you teach the little bastards to value their freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, and fair and speedy trial and their freedoms from established state religion and cruel and unusual punishment?

On a related note: Is anyone else appalled at the number of people on cop shows who don't ask for a warrant when the police come by? I'm even more appalled by the regular implication that people only request that the police get a warrant if they are guilty. It's one of the things that I see becoming ingrained in our culture, and it scares me because it's another step away from the Founding Fathers and the intent of "The American Experiment."

Comments

teaching the little bastards

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

I have many reactions to your comments. The main one is this: if most adults don't know the stuff, as it seems to me, it's unlikely that most little bastards will. Between the fake patriots and the "politically correct" among us, there are plenty of folks teaching that freedom, of speech and of some other things, is not for the other guy. I don't know whether kids these days learn a lot less about history, and especially about principles of governance, than they did when I was one. I had some fine teachers, but I now think there's a good deal I should have been taught. The adults who pretend that the Second Amendment established only some sort of "collective right" to keep and bear arms (in other words, it doesn't exist), or that a president can ignore anti-torture treaties and laws he finds inconvenient, or the idea that the congressional power to regulate commerce among the states implies the power to regulate the amont of wheat you can grow for yourself and tell you what dope you can smoke or otherwise ingest--most of these folks, I think, grew up when we supposedly gave more attention to history and government. The late sixties, when I began to learn how to think carefully and about fundamental things, didn't prevent a lot of the intellectuals of the time from becoming leftist thought and word police. "Where's the beef" might not be the right question, but surely "What's in the beef" is!

Then again, though presumably very fresh in their minds, our constitution didn't prevent adoption of the Alien and Sedition legislation or imprisonment under it for criticizing the government. It also didn't prevent a key author, Madison, from adopting for a time a doctrine of nullification in reaction to that legislation.

I've long believed that our general failure to take the responsibilities of democracy (direct or representative) seriously enough has a lot to do with where it doesn't exist. We find it at the ballot box, at least in theory, in some of our studies, and in some of our private organizations. We rarely find it in the workplace, where most of us spend the majority of our waking hours. Related, I think, I've never seen a TV show about a starship on which the captain was elected: most heroes, real or invented, and even in democratic settings, are autocratic, as far as I can tell. We have to go somewhat out of our way to learn the skills of democracy.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

In fifth and sixth grade, I had a teacher who made it a priority to teach us about democracy. When we studied the Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution, he taught us about some of the arguments that went into shaping it. He had us write essays on questions such as: "Which is better, a bad president or a good dictator?" The answer he was looking for is that a bad president is better because he can be removed: in other words, the power is still ultimately with the people. He also told us that people who don't vote deserve not to be satisfied with their leaders.

Moreover, he had us establish a class government, with elections every month and class meetings every week. In this way he taught us the basics of parliamentary procedure.

So it definitely can be done. Of course, now teachers who indulged in these sorts of exercises might be accused of taking time away from prepping kids for the tests.

[kstanley.livejournal.com]

I have a question for anyone who is reading this. How would you teach the little bastards to value their freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, and fair and speedy trial and their freedoms from established state religion and cruel and unusual punishment?

I would lay the principles out and talk about the reasons behind them. Then I would break the kids into groups and give each group some sort of legal/ethical dilemma/case that they had to solve/legislate (you can even pull from real Supreme Court cases).

Afterward, they would present their judgement the class and their classmates would be given a opportunity to critique their conclusions--with emphasis on finding any loopholes, pitfalls, or weaknesses. Not only could this be lesson on the intricacies of law, but on society itself.

I think getting the kids to think about these things--setting it up like a problem solving exercise, gets them more motivated. Because they would feel more invested in the decisions, in the laws. I don't think you can't just lecture about freedom of speech or gun control or these issues. You have to encourage children (and everyone actually) to see these issues from both a personal and a objective standpoint.