I’m Not Playing It Safe With Civics This Fall

For the first time in my eleven year career as an educator, I will be teaching civics (or United States Government and Economics, as it is officially called at my school). This is something that I have been eager to do for quite some time. In 2009 I was named a James Madison Fellow, which is a Congressional program to provide teachers with their Master’s degree with an emphasis on the study of the Constitution. Now more than ever, students need exposure to a strong, engaging Civics curriculum to put the tools they need in their toolbox to critically think, engage, and act in the realm of politics.

Inscription on the Nebraska State Capitol Building

I was motivated to make this post for two reasons. First, I feel really energized to teach this class. I met with some teachers that have been doing this class for years to learn how they approach the class, and it left me even more motivated to teach it. Many of the things I mention below are because they’re already doing it and I think it is so important. They’ve already embedded really great ways to make the material directly relevant to the students. As part of our professional development last week, we had a session on how to best confront the problem of fake news in our class. I am profoundly grateful I work with such great teachers and work in a district that is not afraid to take these issues on.

But I wanted to articulate my own beliefs here as well. Largely because I think the more we make it clear that we as educators are willing to take these issues on in our classrooms, it will help empower other teachers to do the same. So these are the five major things I want to address above and beyond the standard — and still critically important — examination of the Constitution, the amendments, the structure of government, etc.:

#1: Make It Real for Students

To the best of my abilities I want to ground my curriculum in 2017 and in the issues that are important to them. If I’m not teaching about issues like populism, structural racism, neo-liberalism, the alt-right, and other concepts that have cropped up on the political radar recently, I’m doing kids a disservice. If I’m not talking about issues that they will face in their near future — I’m looking at you student debt crisis — then I’m doing the kids a disservice.

What I have learned in teaching history and geography the past ten years is that students think there is a much larger barrier to political engagement than there actually is, and I think that is one major reason why some students are rather politically disengaged. Encouraging students to register to vote (and subsequently vote) should be where we start promoting civic engagement, not finish. We need to share how to get involved in campaigns, how to lobby elected officials, even how to take advantage of Nebraska’s public testimony approach and go down to Lincoln and testify before committees. I have talked to multiple State Senators who have said that articulate, well thought out communication from high school students has a big impact on them. This is true even if they are not 18 yet, because if a kid is contacting them about a bill at age 16, odds are they will be engaged and at a minimum voting when they are of age.

Source: Pew Research Center, graphic from NPR.

Finally, one thing that I was encouraged to do by my peers is be willing to really let student inquiry drive the course at times. Give them the chance to ask questions and build lessons around addressing them. Most students are genuinely curious and want to meaningfully engage in politics, and encouraging them to ask questions and treating those questions with the legitimacy they deserve is a key building block towards increasing their civic participation.

#2 Confront “Fake News”

The term fake news has been used across the political spectrum to mean a variety of things. To not discuss it in a civics class is equivalent of pulling a tool out of the toolbox. Students need to know about the impact fake news had on the last election cycle. This is a chance to tie in the growing notion of “digital citizenship.” Fake news does not have to be political. I remember several people sharing a fake news story that they were going to do some location filming for the next Star Wars film in Grand Island, Nebraska. For a good two days that article kept cropping up on my Facebook timeline as my fellow Nebraskan nerds were duped into believing they could potentially be an extra in the next Star Wars movie. But literally one click to the “About” page for that site would have revealed it was a completely fake news website.

I plan on doing three key things here:

1. Going over a set of criteria to determine if a news article is fake or not. Last fall I saw lists of fake news websites circulating as teachers scrambled to find materials to cover the issue. I think this is the wrong way to approach the issue. There are bound to be more sources of fake news. If we simply hand kids a sheet of paper and say “don’t trust these,” are we really equipping them with any discernable skill to be an engaged citizen? I do not want a student to know that a website is fake because Mr. Royers said so. I want them to know that a site is fake because it lacks any verifiable sources, the author has no credentials, and nothing corroborates what they are claiming to report.

This caption was shared countless times in the election. It is completely false.

2. Teaching students the difference between biased news and fake news. What has happened in the past few months is people are using the term “fake news” to describe any news segment that they dislike. To be sure, there are plenty of news sites out there with an agenda. Huffington Post. Fox News. But biased news is an entirely separate issue from news that is completely untrue. The challenge here is that it is predominately the President and many of his supporters that use the term ‘fake news’ inappropriately. A civics class should never have a partisan angle. It should be a place where students are given the tools to freely form (or affirm their already existing) political beliefs. But, we also have a responsibility as educators to be objective. And objectively, this is an issue that is predominately on the right side of the political spectrum right now (although, sadly, is a growing problem on the left, too)

For several months a fake news story grew that DNC staff Seth Rich was murdered on the order of Hilary Clinton because he knew too much. There was no basis for this whatsoever (he was killed in an apparent robbery attempt). Seth Rich is an Omaha native. His parents have asked people to stop peddling this false story as it is harming their lives: http://www.omaha.com/mary-and-joel-rich-stop-politicizing-our-perso...

3. I hope that after taking my class, students learn to become purposeful in how they read the news. They don’t hit share or retweet the second they read a headline. They take time to read thoroughly, find corroborating sources, and maybe even try and find a counter point article before forming their opinion. But even if that happens in every government class across the entire country, there are still plenty of adults that have formed opinions on people, proposed bills, and existing laws based on information that is fundamentally untrue. I think students need to be asked how they will handle that, because I think that is a fundamental question we as a country need to address.

#3 Compare and Contrast Traditional Versus Contemporary Politics

Regardless of who you support, 2016 was a game changer for American politics. The way that the Trump administration is conducting itself is fundamentally different than previous Presidents. The way that Congress is conducting itself is fundamentally different than previous Congresses. That is not a value judgment at all — simply a statement of fact. A huge part of President Trump’s campaign was “draining the swamp,” implying he would fundamentally change the politics of the beltway. So whether students support or disapprove of the changed approach in the past few months is entirely up to them, but I cannot in good conscience teach about how the federal government functions as if nothing has changed. It has. So I plan on discussing how things have traditionally gone down in Washington D.C., and how they are currently taking place.

^President Trump here acknowledges that the way he utilizes social media to communicate is fundamentally different from how previous administrations spoke about issues.

#4 Encourage The Investigation of Alternate Perspectives and Beliefs

I coached debate for eight years. One of the most important skills from that activity is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the opposing team and understand the arguments from their perspective. For several years now I have been the Chief Negotiator for the Millard Education Association, spending many months out of the year bargaining for a contract with our school district. As vehemently as I fight for what we would like to see in our contract, I guarantee you that I can articulate how the administration feels on various issues just as well as they can. Being able to understand ideas you disagree with, and why people believe in them, is a fundamental skill that we all need to possess when engaging in political discourse. To that end, I want to challenge students to not just identify what politicians believe on certain issues, but try to be able to articulate why they believe them.

Senators Cotton (left), Sasse (middle, doing a Jim Halpert impression), and Schumer. Cotton and Sasse are Republican, Schumer is the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. They get along just fine even though they have very different views on a number of issues. That ability to separate personal attitudes from disagreements on issues is sadly lost on many individuals.

This skill, in my opinion, is a gateway to being able to understand one another and foster a climate that encourages compromise and moving forward together to continue to make our society better. The reasoning is simple: if someone is sitting on the opposite side of you on an issue, why do you think the arguments you believe in will convince them? You need to figure out why they believe what they believe, and how you can form arguments that better fit their world view.

Buzz words and slogans that attempt to over simplify a topic and discourage understanding are dangerous and misleading, and that’s a topic that will need to be explored. Nate Bowling summarizes this here better than I can, but he uses the example of how he will not use the terms “pro-life” or “pro-choice” when he teaches government. Instead he uses the terms “supporters of abortion access” and “supporters of abortion restrictions.” His statements are far less loaded, but also don’t make one side more favorable over the other. It is all about creating a space for students to objectively weigh competing viewpoints on a number of issues.

The “Death Tax” is a slogan used to rebrand what is actually called the Estate Tax. Image credit: Bloomberg

#5 Abandon This “Be Sure To Present Both Sides” Dogma

Despite everything I just said, I cannot remain complicit in this notion that any time there is an issue that is controversial in our classrooms, that we have to present “both sides.” To be sure, there are many times where there are two sides to a political issue. But as demonstrated in the last year and a half, there are plenty of competing viewpoints just within the Democratic and Republican Parties. Populism, neo-liberalism, progressivism, libertarianism, democratic socialism — these are all terms being used to describe various political beliefs. This is THE space to acknowledge that although we nominally function using a two party system, that does not mean there are simply two sides to issues like immigration, taxes, and entitlement reform.

Even more importantly, we have to be willing to draw lines in the sand and say that in some instances, there is just ONE side. Climate change is real. Vaccines do not cause autism. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 Presidential Election. Barack Obama is a United States citizen. A perspective on an issue that has no factual basis has no place in a classroom. Period. I encourage debates and discussions in all of my classrooms, and I have often taken the perspective that the minority of the students are arguing to help balance the equation and challenge students to think about a topic from another angle. But I won’t play the “devil’s advocate” for something that simply is not true.

As important as it is that we teach students about exploring the perspectives of others, trying to find common ground, and encourage compromise, we also need to empower them to understand that those goals are only achievable when a) all parties have beliefs that are grounded in fact and b) everyone is operating within the norms and values that we expect and promote in our democratic society. The example I use when explaining this to my students is this: if someone argues that the Earth is flat, do we try and find common ground and compromise with them? Where is the middle in that “debate?” Do we ignore scientific fact and reach a middle ground conclusion that the Earth is a cube? No.

There are some things we cannot compromise on. Whether the Earth is round or not is an example. I’m not meeting Kyrie Irving halfway here. He is wrong.

This component is even more paramount now after the recent events in Charlottesville. White supremacy has no place in my classroom because it has no place in American politics. Nazism has no place in my classroom because it has no place in American politics. I am not going to roleplay a white supremacist. I am not going to ask my students to identify the common ground they might find with a Nazi so they can have nice, peaceful relations with them.

We didn’t compromise with these folks in 1945

Teachers are often understandably afraid to draw a hard line like I am proposing because of fear of pushback — from students, from parents, from the community. But if we are clear and purposeful in how we approach these issues, there is simply no ground for complaint. If a white student in my classroom told a student of color that they were inferior and that the United States was a country for white people only, they would be egregiously violating the student code of conduct and I would be well within my right to refer them to the office for the administration to punish them. So why would I create a space for those beliefs? Similarly, if a student said those things in my classroom and I did nothing, I would be in huge trouble for allowing a child to be racially harassed and intimidated. I feel very strongly that if I were to ignore the growth in political activity on the part of white supremacists and Nazis, I would be just as guilty as if I ignored it being directly said in my classroom.

I want to be very clear about something. Students have an undeniable right to freedom of speech, as clearly upheld in Tinker v. Des Moines. The Tinker standard is very clear that maintaining students’ rights to political speech in particular is critical, so long as it does not substantially disrupt the educational environment. But nothing that I am proposing is new or different than how we are operating currently. The wrongs of Nazism are already taught in United States History. Why not United States Government? The wrongs of the Ku Klux Klan are already taught in United States History. Why not United States Government? Furthermore, I think it is pretty clear that politics of hate, based on components of individual identity, is fundamentally disruptive to the educational environment. What if a student espoused their belief in eugenics (a component of Nazism) that people with “deficient” genetics should be killed by the state? How does that not fundamentally disrupt the educational environment of that classroom, especially if someone in the room receives special education services or has a family member with a physical or intellectual disability? And legal counsel for various school districts across the country have affirmed this interpretation that the articulation of hate based politics in the classroom would most likely constitute a violation of the Tinker standard because of the disruption to the educational environment.

The United States prides itself on its unfettered access to political free speech. This is based on the principal that we should not let the state have the power to discriminate speech on the basis of content. That philosophy only works, however, if the citizen body then reaffirms the values we want to see in our society. Freedom of speech means you have the right to say it, but it does not mean you are free from consequences for your speech. Even as we speak, people that attended the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville are losing their jobs because the companies they work for do not want to employ people who publically profess ideas that go against the ethical beliefs of that corporation. As educators, we cannot pretend that this isn’t an issue in our country right now. As educators, we need to thread the needle on this delicate issue and confront this issue in a way that educates and empowers our students.

Ironically, I am well protected in this endeavor. During the early Cold War and the United States experiencing peak McCarthyism, Nebraska passed a statute (79–724) that outlined the standards for “Americanism” in Nebraska public schools. The usual stuff is there — recite the pledge, teach about important people in our nation’s history, teach the strengths of democracy. But of particular note is a requirement that all teachers educate their students on the “dangers and fallacies of Nazism.” So state law is on my side.

But I will say one final thing on this issue. I do think we need to address whywe have come to the collective conclusion that ideologies like Nazism and White Supremacy have no place in our society. Like what I mentioned with fake news, if we just tell kids that certain political ideologies are bad, what skill set have we equipped them with? We need to walk that fine line where we discuss what the beliefs are and why there is such a near universal rejection of them without doing it in a way that legitimizes their positions in the classroom.

Let’s Get to Work

My school is on the 4x4 block schedule, and our government and economics class is only a one semester course. So for me, each class is only nine weeks long. I plan on posting a follow up about how well I was able to put everything I just wrote into practice, because I’m not so naïve to think that I won’t hit some turbulence as I try and take on a new prep for the first time. I am excited to teach this class because I am deeply patriotic, and I fervently believe in the grand experiment that is American democracy. But in order for that ongoing experiment to be successful, in order for us to continue down that never ending quest to form a more perfect union, we need to be fearless in how we teach the next generation when it comes to government and politics.