It’s impossible to be politically engaged without being partisan. If you care passionately about something you’re going to pick a side. The best way (in my humble opinion) to get kids interested politics is to demonstrate that it’s a battle with real-world consequences in our day-to-day lives. That’s the foundation of good citizenship.
Part of the reason that it’s hard to characterize what the two parties stand for is that one of them (the Republicans) has been working very hard for the last thirty years to HIDE what it stands for: More Money For Rich People. They spend time talking about smaller government and “family values” and immigration reform and other things that appeal to their various voting constituencies. But even now – when they’re solidly in control of Congress and the White House and have a friendly Supreme Court – they don’t push forward legislation in those areas. Instead they put most of their effort into More Money For Rich People: Tax cuts for the wealthy, tougher bankruptcy laws, tort reform, fewer environmental regulations, eliminating Social Security, and, most of all, barrels and barrels of pork funnelled to big contributors and political cronies.
You could use examples, as this helps the young uns.
For example, most major cities are run by Democrats and have huge Democrat-voter bases to ensure that generation after generation is enjoying urban life under Democrat leadership. Arent big cities swell? Wanna live in the hood?
See that big company that employees 175,000 people? All the leaders of that company are probably Republican. Want a nice job with benefits?
I’ll second this approach, whether it’s theoretical or not. Too many people (from my observations anyhow - YMMV) use the poltical parties as a crutch for not having to analyze issues themselves. i.e., a person feels strongly that the US should go to war and whoop-ass on non-conforming countries, they may say “well heck, the Republicans agree with me, I’ll vote with them”…but then they never get around to analyzing other issues, such as tax-cuts for the rich or laws which may infringe individuals’ rights, because they feel those issues aren’t important or don’t affect them. An approach like John’s hopefully wouldn’t encourage a 4th grader to go down that path.
yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Without straying too much into GD territory… we’ll never break the partisan cycle if we encourage voting along party lines. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that cycle can be completely broken, but anything we can do to lessen its effect is good.
That is true…BUT, the OP is talking about a teacher, here. It is not the teacher’s job to be partisan, or to influence 4th-graders about what they should think about politics.
I read a letter to the editor of my local paper once from an irate parent whose grade-school-age child who was given a handout from their public school teacher that was blatantly partisan in the way it described the two parties. If I saw this, I think I would pull my kid out of school…and I wouldn’t care if it was partisan in my direction, either…this kind of thing is completely out of place in the public schools.
You are completely entitiled to explain to YOUR 4th grader your view as expressed here. If you were a teacher and you explained it that way to MY 4th grader, I would be furious.
So would you advise teachers to avoid explaining the difference between the parties altogether, as it is certain that no matter how you described them, some parent, somewhere, would be furious?
Then how would YOU explain, in a non-partisan way, the difference between the two parties? Mostly what the Republican party DOES these days is funnel money away from the poor and the middle class and toward rich individuals and corporations. I realize that this information is rather embarrassing and inconvenient but it also happens to be true.
Most of the major Congressional battles between the Democrats and the Republicans during the Bush administration have been over issues of rich vs. poor: Social Security, the prescription drug plan, the bankruptcy bill, the tax cuts, environmental regulation. It’s the fundamental dividing line between the two parties right now. The Republicans vote consistently for policies that benefit big business and the well-to-do, and the Democrats oppose them.
Meanwhile the Republican leadership labors mightly to obscure this fundamental policy divide. They do so by waving the flag and pushing cultural hot buttons. But, really, is either party more patriotic than the other? And the cultural issues are all minor diversions. The Republicans haven’t tried to push any real changes on the cultural front (banning abortion for example) because the cultural issues are merely a means to fire up their religous base, not an goal in and of themselves.
(And if you don’t believe this last point, read whatDavid Kuo has to say. He’s a conservative Christian who was second-in-command at the office of Faith-Based Initiatives. And he’s just written a big book about how evangelicals like him have been suckered by the Republican Party … .)
I think it might be a subject best avoided with 4th-graders, as it is kind of loaded.
However, I have seen several descriptions in this thread that explain the differences without being partisan. I think that, given the explanation that Pochacco gave, you might expect a pretty fair number of parents to be furious, based on the content of the lesson.
Whereas, if you gave the description that SageRat gave, it would be an extremely unreasonable parent who would object to it.
My point, however, isn’t that the schools should worry about what makes parents irate or not…it’s that it is not the place of the public schools to champion one political philosophy over another…IMO, this is as inappropriate as championing one religion over another. This is simply not the role of the public school. I don’t think any of us are going to be disingenuous enough to claim that they don’t see why Pocacco’s explanation might be considered inappropriate, or why a parent might have an objection to it (again, not that I am implying that it was wrong for Pocacco to use this explanation as a parent, only that it would be inappropriate coming from a teacher).
If you say so. I don’t happen to agree, but it doesn’t matter. The OP asked, politely, for a non-partisan explanation. You may think your response is accurate, but it is not non-partisan.
Because of the forum we are in, I am not going to debate the rest of your post. I fully understand that what you are saying you believe to be the truth. I happen to disagree, and this is why we have to be careful about what is taught to small children in grammar school. If you can’t understand that it is perfectly valid to disagree with you, then I really don’t know what else to say except to tell you that people do, in fact, disagree, and the place for children to learn about it is in the home, not in the public schools.
Yes and that big city is a net exporter of tax revenue so the citizens of East Pig F*ck can have their mail, schools, and roads subsidized. Then, on the off chance that a talented child survives being taught creationism, they will move to the big city so they can get a good job and be surrounded by intelligent people and a cultural life that goes beyond renting Burt Reynolds movies at the Piggly Wiggly.
This could be an opportunity for a good learning exercise. Have a child write to the head of the state’s Democratic Party and the state’s Republican Party*, and ask them to explain, in terms a fourth grader could understand, what the difference is between the parties. Taken singly, either party’s response will undoubtedly be biased toward itself. But taken together, the responses will allow the child to compare and contrast, and come to some of his or her own conclusions. (And learn something about different points of view.)
An alternative would be to write to Republican and Democratic members of Congress from your state.
My current analogy is "it’s a rainy day - and you and two of your friends want to go to the store to buy something.
"Your first friend says ‘Let’s make a run for it.’
"The other one says ‘We’ll get soaked. Let’s go under the awnings all the way.’
"The first says ‘That’ll take forever. My way is faster.’
" ‘My way is drier.’
“So, you get to choose - do you get there quickly and soaking wet or dry but really, really slowly?”
Of course, I really want to believe that both members of parties want to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility…etc. just are divided on how to get there.
In an attempt to make this approachable and non-partisan:
Democrats: To improve society, everyone should work together and respect each other, and the Government is here to help and enforce the rules for fairness.
Republicans: To improve society, the Government should dictate standards for proper/moral behavior, but otherwise leave people alone to improve things on their own.
The foundation of good citizenship where our children are concerned is giving them the tools neccesary to think critically and make informed decisions, not to load their wagons with the same old shit that we’ve been hauling around for years. My grandfather once told me that the reason he was a Democrat was that his father was a Democrat, and his grandfather was a Democrat before him. I thought that was the most ridiculous reason in the world to choose a political party. It didn’t occur to me until later that, being raised on a farm in rural Georgia, he probably never got much exposure to anything else.
I have no doubt that someone could come up with a list of grievances about the Democratic party, but in what way would it be instructive to a 4th grader? This is the first point I attempted to make: All of your posts in this thread have been whole paragraphs about how horrible the Republicans are, yet your only brief remark about the Democratic party can be summed up as ‘Well, they care about trying to make everybody (except rich people) happy.’
Remember that every child has the potential to become very wealthy, and try not to encourage yours toward mediocrity and negativity just to spite The Man. Because it seems to me that what you really ‘care passionately about’ is hating Republicans (or ‘rich’ people, the two seem interchangeable in your vocabulary).
Democrats eat cute little kitties and puppies. Santa Claus, Spongebob Squarepants, and Mario are all Republicans.
(I’m an evil lying opportunist AKA Republican, though not Bush-style religious-corporate-socialism. So, I’m indirectly demonstrating at least one trait of Republicans.)
I like that because it’s a completely neutral analogy. The problem is, it doesn’t give an explanation of what the parties stand for.
I like Walloon’s idea of getting a local congressman to give an explanation of what his or her party stands for. I think the way to do it is to approach it from the standpoint of giving the philosophy of each party, and why that party believes it to be the best approach to government, and why…positives, not negatives. For an older group (not sure if 4th grade is the level I would do this at, but I wouldn’t necessarily object), also give a rebuttal of that side from the other party.
The idea being that the first part will give a basis for what each party is *supposed * to stand for, and the second part will give a chance for the kids to think critically about whether or not they are actually standing for what they say they are (which is why this might be an area for older kids).
Giving kids an angry diatribe about what the teacher doesn’t like about one party or another will not serve either of these purposes, and therefore would not be a very effective civics lesson, IMO.
I asked my dad that question when I was about that age. He told me that Republicans were all rich people who wanted all the money and didn’t care about ordinary people like us. So I recommend that approach. I mean, I turned out okay, right? AND I know better than to vote for Republicans. Thanks, Dad!
I think there is some truth behind the titles to the parties. People vs. Republic.