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Feb. 4th, 2005 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseI 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. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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."
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."
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teaching the little bastards
Date: 2005-02-05 06:43 pm (UTC)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.