[On September 17,] the Civics Education Initiative announced its intentions to introduce legislation in seven states—Arizona, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah—to require students to take and pass the same exam required for immigrants to become US Citizens before receiving their high school diploma or a general equivalency degree.The article also mentions a sense among civics teachers that they feel overshadowed by the emphasis of STEM. That's understandable, perhaps, but surely it would be helpful to the knowledge of civics for students to learn, via STEM studies, that the way to answer a number of questions is to consult the unambiguous facts, so far as they may be available to us, in an initial inquiry. Lots of civics questions may be imponderable matters of opinion, but not questions like "how many votes does it take to override a veto" or "which party holds a majority in the Senate at the present moment."
Ejjimacashun
AEI reports that there's a move afoot to ensure that schoolkids learn some basic civics facts:
It's good to know the answers to those facts. It's also good to consider some of the more complex questions, such as this: "What is a citizen's duty?"
ReplyDeleteTo answer the question of what a citizen's duty is, it's first necessary to answer the question of what is a citizen.
ReplyDeleteCivics oughtn't be something to be taught for a semester or two in high school, even at the level of rigor posited in the OP. This should be a 4th R (with economics the 5th) and taught with the first three Rs from kindergarten through high school.
If the civics "teachers" feel overshadowed by other subjects, they should do something about that.
Eric Hines
That's a fine question. Can we answer it?
ReplyDeleteI would say that the definition itself defines different kinds of political orders. All political orders are composed of people from different families. (Aristotle, Politics 1.) In order to be sure that favoritism to members of your own family is does not overwhelm fair treatment to others, it is necessary in any order to create classes of members of the order that will be treated alike by the law.
It is possible to do this in many ways, for example, a corporatist order (such as the one Plato draws in the Republic) creates different classes which have different rights and duties because they have different functions in society. In that case, a "citizen" may be one of those classes -- Guardian, Auxiliary, Citizen.
What distinguishes modern citizenship is the idea that there should be only one class whose members are treated alike before the law. Every member of the political order is a citizen excepting only those who are not yet citizens (resident aliens, children), or those who have lost the right to be (felons). Those other classes do not have the same rights as the citizen class, but are unequally treated. Nor does modern citizenship admit (as did Roman citizenship) of internal divisions that alter basic rights and duties before the law.
I would take as my thesis the definition of citizen implied in our two social compact documents (since this is an American civics class), and spend the 13 years discussing how that's made concrete in the US and comparing and contrasting it to other systems, including (but not limited to--we have 13 years) Greek and Roman definitions, and other modern definitions.
ReplyDeleteEric Hines
Requiring any test for HS graduation, STEM or Civics, will result in too many failures, and will be abandoned if started. Though the possibility of gradually forcing the tests over time into some unrecognisable form which students can pass is at least possible.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it has disparate impact, he will be vilified.