Thoughts on Civics Education
Our latest volunteer, Jenny, is a lover of the arts, especially music, a hopeless liberal, existentialist, wife and Mom. Here’s her take on the importance of bringing back Civics Education in our schools.
“For every generation democracy must be born anew, and education is its midwife!” John Dewey believed this and he was right! When our generation attended public schools, we were assigned mandatory courses in civics and government. A student could not earn their high school diploma without passing a class called “Problems of Democracy.
We knew the three branches of government and how our Founding Fathers envisioned the separation of power. The importance of Supreme Court cases like “Brown versus the Board of Education” gave us insight as to how “separate but equal” was NOT equal. We knew the importance of the Bill of Rights including the amendments requiring the separation of Church and State, the freedom to protest and express one’s opinion and the abolishment of slavery.
The truth that our Founders fled Europe to escape kings, dictators and state religions was made plain. Those same teachers who worked so hard to prepare us to be well-informed citizens in a vibrant democracy would be saddened to discover curriculums with no courses in these vital areas. Students today are very well-versed in technology and science. They are fortunate to live in a land of such abundance where there are so many opportunities to be productive and creative in a host of new fields.
If they do not learn of the social contract which our founders created in which each citizen is responsible for participating in a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, we will lose our great country to billionaires, bankers and boors who rule over us for their own personal profit and not for the good of all people. Make America GREAT AGAIN and bring back mandatory Civics Education!!!
Photo: John Dewey – Eva Watson-Schütze [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
