Each week, I like to take a moment to reflect on what’s happening around the country (and sometimes the world) with regards to civics education. So here’s a look at some news articles from the past week. The common theme this week: testing. More States Move Towards Requiring the Citizenship Test My google alert this […]
A new show debuted on ABC this fall –The Mayor. When I first started seeing ads for the show, I wondered, “Is this going to be good for teaching civics?” The premise is that a young, undiscovered rapper decides to run for Mayor as a publicity stunt – and he wins. On the one hand, […]
It’s January, and that means that the deadline for StudentCam 2018 is rapidly approaching. Submissions to the contest are due by Thursday, January 18. If you’re not familiar with the contest, StudentCam is an annual documentary competition hosted by C-SPAN. Students create a 5-7 minute documentary on a given theme, incorporating archival C-SPAN footage in […]
Every week, I take a moment to look back over news and op-eds related to civics education to see what’s going on around the country (and sometimes the world). Let’s dive in and see what’s going on. Should Voting Be Required? The Times of Trenton published an editorial titled, “To protect democracy, every adult in […]
It’s a common complaint today that people don’t know how the government works and that they don’t learn anything about civics in schools. One reason for that is that we often misuse social studies courses – setting them up as history courses dominated by facts and chronology. Instead, we should organize these classes around a […]
This week’s Civic Spotlight comes from an educator in Nebraska. If you’ve got a story to tell about being a civic educator, head over to the Submissions page. We’d love to hear it and share it with our readers. I live in a very red state. Nebraska’s entire Congressional delegation is Republican, and the state […]
If we’re going to do a good job of preparing our students to be citizens, then we can’t let social studies be driven by facts and chronology. Instead, it should focus on important themes and essential questions. By placing the emphasis on these themes, we turn facts into tools by which we can understand the […]
One way to help prepare our students to be better citizens is to ensure that social studies is not driven by facts and chronology. It should instead be anchored on important themes and essential questions. Placing the focus on these themes turns the facts into tools by which we understand the world. We learn to […]
Project Citizen is a textbook and curriculum designed to help you teach civics through project based learning. You can make it the centerpiece of your civics class or incorporate it as an extended project into a history class. If you’re not familiar with the program, you can read more about Project Citizen here. But today […]
Every week, I take a moment to look back over the week’s news and op-eds related to civics education to see what’s going on around the country (and sometimes the world). This week was a slow news week, so it’s going to be a quick recap. Let’s dive in and see what’s going on. Another […]