This topic falls very neatly between GQ, GD, & IMHO: I am basically looking for a factual answer as to how such classes proceed [GQ], but also would thus appreciate some first hand experience [IMHO], with the ultimate end being whether it is healthy for such classes to be as putatively divergent as they might be [GD], or, conversely, if they are taught competently & accurately by their instructor, why it seems to have little to no effect on their charges. Mods can thus move it whereever depending on how the thread proceeds.
OK. Now imagine your first day of the semester as a student, where you are about to spend a full month going over both the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution.
You will end up reading the following snippets, among other things:
So my question is: do history teachers in these places gloss over the philosophical underpinnings of our founding documents? Do they go over each amendment (and expect the student to regurgitate it onto a quiz/test), then do a sort of subtle wink wink nudge nudge somehow, implying to them that that ain’t really how it is, or should be, class? Or do the students simply forget all of that [cordon it off from the rest of their mind] the instant they walk out the door as they proceed to go and throw racial/sexist slurs at the nearest available target?
This can also apply to religious instruction: that kind of hypocrisy I have had first hand experience with, all the kids in my [K-5] parochial school dutifully reciting their prayers about peace & loving thy neighbor and all of that, marching off to their confessionals, only to have them all pelting me with crabapples 5 minutes after the daily services let out.
Factual answers to this question would be so constrained as to leave almost no room for discussion. Rather than stifling this thread in that way, I’m going to move it to IMHO.
Factual answers to this question would be so constrained as to leave almost no room for discussion. Rather than stifling this thread in that way, I’m going to move it to IMHO.
Not in a red state but a deeply red section of a blue state. As a high school Govt/Econ teacher the last few years I’ve been prefacing each semester with a disclaimer that what was going to be taught was theory. I then let the students draw their own conclusions about the way it was in practice. And why. Then I made sure they were all registered to vote.
Or do the students simply forget all of that [cordon it off from the rest of their mind] the instant they walk out the door as they proceed to go and throw racial/sexist slurs at the nearest available target?*
A lot of this. Racism is bred into some people so deep by their parents that nothing I teach them about dead white guys and their silly ideas will last past the quiz.
She is quite expert on all matters educational, and IIRC, I was surprised to recently see she was from Texas (which has an astounding effect on textbook contents.)
I attended one of the most conservative colleges in the nation. The OP seems to imagine that conservative faculty are ashamed of or embarrassed to mention the principles/quotes mentioned in the OP - that everyone has rights, equality, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. They think those things are fantastic, because they view them from their own lens. i.e., inalienable right to life means the unborn too, the right to peaceably assemble means conservatives can peacefully protest! etc.
I live in a “red state” and have several nieces and nephews who are attending public schools in the first to fifth grades. My comments will be second-hand (obviously) and based on casual conversation.
First, “red states” are not monolithic. Some areas are more “red” than others. Many are less “red” than others.
Second, schools and faculties are not monolithic. They may be required to teach from the state-approved curriculum, but Mrs. Smith may put heavy emphasis on a subject that Mr. Jones does not.
Third, the OP may be surprised to learn that “red” and “blue” teachers often emphasize exactly the same issues and emphasize them in the same way. Political theory is one thing. Practical application is another subject all together.
BTW, my nephews are racially mixed, so the subject is one in which I take more interest than an uncle might otherwise.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Are you suggesting that, for example, conservatives have a problem with teaching students that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery? or that they think that was a bad idea?
In my school, we took bets on how long it would take to knock them out. We raised funds for twirling wax for our mustaches and good damsel-tying ropes.
I taught high school science and math at a high school in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area back in the 90s. There were stories of teaching the civil war as the “War of Northern Aggression,” but I can’t independently verify that. We did not celebrate Memorial Day, rather we celebrated Veteran’s Day. Reason: Memorial Day began after the Civil War, and southerners viewed the holiday as a slap in the face to them for losing the Civil War.
On the science side, there were people trying to get creationism included into the biology books, but with cutesy names like “Intelligent Design.” In a similar vein, there were also people trying to get daily prayer included in the school. Christian prayer only, of course. That is an issue that I warned the principal that I would call the ACLU if they kept at it.
On racial issues, I saw a case where equivalent work resulted in Bs for the white students, but Ds for the black students.
Not necessarily. All I know is that there seems to be a disconnect somewhere between what our Constitution says, and how people do their civic duties in practice, otherwise Trump wouldn’t be in the White House.
My core question is why, if these facts & principles are indeed taught openly & comprehensively, with little to no distortion or bias on the part of the instructor, why it then seems to have relatively little effect on the young minds as they become adults & are eligible to vote. I’m not sure, if the effect is indeed small, if this means that schooling (in general) isn’t an effective way to obtain an electorate of enlightened citizens, or to have any positive philosophical impact of whatever sort (in whatever realm you care to name). Which, if true, then leads to whether anything would be effective to that aim.
From my experiences with my kids in school in Missouri, they emphasize different things and even cover different material than schools in CA or OR. My kids were in elementary school at the time, so they didn’t get into too much of the actual documents. They did however learn all about 9/11 and the towers falling, and who was bad. They were taught a few other things, non-civics related, that I had to un-do, like being gay is unnatural. It’s also the first place where my son was called a nigger, so there’s that.
I have to say that I appreciated the 9/11 talk. On the West Coast, it seems to have slipped from memory. We have family connections to 2 of the flights. It’s not a day that I will forget, and the consequences are still playing out today.
My summary would be that there is more emphasis on how fantastic America is, with a big dose of religious influence.
My wife attended high school in Obion County Tennessee in the seventies. History stopped in 1860 and never progressed past. She knows almost nothing about the civil war, reconstruction or the Civil Rights era. Never knew who General Sherman, Rosa Parks, Emmitt Till, Ruby Bridges, Medgar Evers or MLK were. She learned more in the international school in Delhi about post-Civil War America than she did in TN.
I went to high school in Florida. Admittedly, pretty much everyone was college bound but I don’t think there was any real bias towards the Southern point of view. Obviously, I’m sure the teacher wanted more time to cover topics, but there’s only so much you can do.
Plus, the school tied history to English class so you often read a novel related to a period of history you were studying. And, social studies class was often the place for the anti drug and anti suicide lectures as well as used for pep rallies.
We certainly covered plenty of reconstruction and civil rights stuff. We kinda blew by WW I even though we were still reading All Quiet on the Western Front.
I grew up in Philly in 40s and 50s. One thing we were taught is that the US never started a war and never lost a war. What about 1812? There was no discussion of the provocation of both sides, and it was mentioned that Washington was burned, but it was asserted that the US won. The view here in Canada is different. Then there is the Spanish-American war, but they slid over that.
In accordance with state law, 10 verses of the bible were read at the start of every day. Always old testament in my schools. And evolution was a given in biology classes.
Ironically, I teach in a deeply blue area of a red state. I think my kids all pretty much know my political views. I don’t preach them, exactly, but I also don’t go out of my way to hide them: instead, I work very hard to set the tone that disagreement is not only acceptable, it’s laudable, and that I don’t pin my respect for a kid based on their politics. But I don’t hide them, if for no other reason than that my mostly-poor, mostly-minority students would probably assume that middle aged white lady teacher was being vague because she was a Trump supporter, and then I would get nothing done. Also, I don’t have a poker face.
I think you are underestimating how stupid* children are, and how little time we spend on the founding documents. Have you ever pulled a room of 16 year olds through the preamble? You’re not talking about nuances, there. you’re talking about, well, vocabulary. I’ve done it more times that I can count, and I’m a very good teacher, and , well, if they come out of it able to paraphrase it, I am pretty happy. If you look at the AP Government curriculum, you’d be pushing it to spend more than 90 minutes on the DoI, and while constitutional principles are threaded through the course, laboring your way through the text itself seems to detract from what you really need to be doing. There’s also SO MUCH theoretical material to cover that you really don’t spend much time at all talking about actual application. Government ( and Economics, and Geography) aren’t classes in the contemporary world: they are classes that give kids the context they need to inform themselves about the world they live in (by watching the news, etc.).
*They do get better. It’s a process. I was stupid, too.