Problems in Civics Education

The nation's report card in civics is just in. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in civics education has just been released. The news is not good.

We are not doing a good job of educating our students for their role as citizens. And the scores are not getting better.

Take a look at the report card and the sample questions, and you'll see what I mean. We need to do much better.

Church and State

Today's Washington Post addresses the history of church and state in America, as one of their "Five Myths" series. Today it was "Five Myths about Church and State."

It is worth reading.

When I was in grade school in rural Oklahoma, we routinely recited the Lord's Prayer. This never raised any opposition, because so far as I know, all of the students came from white, anglo-saxon protestant families.

I never noticed that reciting the prayer had any beneficial effect on student conduct, but neither did it seem to do any harm in that setting.

I learned one thing from the exercise - Methodists prayed for forgiveness of their trespasses, and Presbyterians prayed for forgiveness of debts. Maybe that's why, at least in our community, the Presbyterians seemed more prosperous.

Brains, Education and Jobs

My favorite economist, Paul Krugman, has just begun to address computerization and its effects on employment. Today's column addresses the "hollowing out" of the distribution of jobs. He includes an interesting graph comparing job distribution by skill level in the 80's the 90's and the first decade of the current century.

In a nutshell, mid skill level jobs are disappearing. In the past decade, so are jobs at the higher skill level. In another post, he shows how the ratio of pay for college graduates compared to high school graduates stabilized more than a decade ago.

If your children and grandchildren want an occupation with a reliable future, they need to find something that isn't easily replaced by computers and can't be readily outsourced offshore. Crafts such as plumbing, cabinet making and welding might be good candidates.

Education: What is it? How to do it?

If you sense a lack of agreement on what education is and the best way to do it, there seems to be a lot of ferment in the field right now.

I recommend three recent New York Time articles:

"Challenges in Replicating Charter School Success," which examines whether charter schools are any better than standard public schools;

"The Education of Diane Ravitch," in which the Assistant Secretary of Education in the George Herbert Walker Bush Administration concludes that neither choice nor testing improve education;

And "Plan B - Skip College," which challenges the idea that we should push for college for everyone.

Each of the articles is worth a read.

More on Learning

It's good to learn from your mistakes.

It's better to learn from those of others. As Eleanor Roosevelt once noted, you can never live long enough to make them all yourself.

Learning

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

Will Rogers

Use it or Lose it II: Our Freedoms

Today's Pamlico News has a front page article reporting a case of alleged "cyber stalking" at Pamlico High School.

It's hard to tell from the report, but it seems as though some students at the High School created an entry on a social networking site pretending to be the targeted school official, and advocated obviously absurd actions on the part of students. It's hard to say what the content of the site was which so offended officials, since the site has been removed.

The great mystery is why school officials chose to make this a criminal matter. It seems as though the students in question intended the site to be a parody or satire.

It might have been used as a "teachable moment." It is now a wasted opportunity. Lawyers are involved. Too late.

A classroom discussion might have examined and discussed the literary history of satire, beginning with Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal." It might have examined acceptable boundaries of satire and parody. It might have examined issues related to the internet.

Classes studying History, Government and Civics might have examined the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This is one of the fundamental sources of our freedoms, that seems no longer as valued as it once was. In a 2005 study, high school students seemed to favor more government censorship. The First Amendment Center conducts an annual study, that unfortunately reveals widespread ignorance about and lack of commitment to this most basic freedom. The James L. Knight Foundation conducts detailed studies about the future of the First Amendment. The results aren't reassuring.

It doesn't help when people in authority get carried away.

About forty years ago, many young Americans wore T-Shirts emblazoned with the slogan: "Question Authority."

In a democracy, that's an essential practice.