There are people out there advocating for the U.S. Citizenship test to be administered as a graduation requirement. Like we discussed last week, this is a bad idea. This legislation passed in some states, including Arizona and Wisconsin, and legislators introduced it in others. It’s not hard to see why. Just about everyone agrees that […]
Youth Participatory Action Research is a way to engage students in investigating an issue of concern that they see in their community. Once they’ve done their research, the students then work on a plan to tackle that issue and make their community better. I first encountered Youth Participatory Action Research – or YPAR – when […]
Legislators take note – tests are not the right answer. They’re an easy answer. They’re a simple answer. But they don’t make education better, and they’re not the way to make civics education better. While searching for some civics related info earlier tonight, I stumbled upon this gem: Civics Education Initiative. It’s an innocuous sounding […]
Did you know that New Jersey law requires that schools help students register to vote? Well, not exactly. To be more specific, New Jersey Administrative Code 6A:32-14.1 does state … District boards of education […] shall provide to each eligible high school student prior to the school year’s graduation date a voter registration form, a […]
The Citizens Campaign is a non-profit that empowers citizens to be civic leaders in their community. One part of their programming is the civic trust – a group of community members who regularly meet to discuss issues facing their community and craft solutions to present to the appropriate stakeholders. Prior to joining the civic trust, […]
It was way back in college when I first read Paulo Freire’s book, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, but one idea has stuck with me since then: the distinction between reading the word and reading the world. As an educational system today, what is our focus – the former or the latter? Paulo Freire and […]