What's the Big Idea?
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What's the Big Idea?
Engaging Our Students in a Democratic Society
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In which Dan examines the place of civics education in a democracy and the state of civics ed in America today. First he's joined by Emily Cardinali, who reported for NPR last year, to talk about what we mean by 'civics' and where civics in American classrooms stands today (3:50). Then he speaks with Joel Westheimer, researcher and professor at the University of Ottawa, to talk about why civics is so vital in a democratic society (20:00). Comments and questions are welcome on Twitter @BigIdeaEd
Today's episode of What's the Big Idea is brought to you by Role Modeling. Role modeling. Preparing our students for tomorrow is not simply about delivering our lessons. Teachers, if we want our students to take on the world's challenges in a proactive way, we have to model that initiative and risk taking for them on a daily basis. Role modeling. Check it out. Now onto the show. Welcome to today's episode of What's the Big Idea? I'm your host, Dan Carney. I'm very excited about today's episode, as I have two outstanding guests on to talk about the place of civics education in a democratic society and the state of civics education in America today. Very shortly, I'll be joined by Emily Cardinali and then later Joel Westheimer. Those interviews are coming up shortly. But first, a story. Just over a decade ago, my wife and I were in the Peace Corps in Macedonia, working in education and youth development. Macedonia, if you're not familiar with it, is the southernmost state of former Yugoslavia, and it had only recently emerged from fifty years of communist rule. We loved it. It was an amazing place with fantastic, generous people, and we often talk about going back to visit. But communism had completely destroyed civic engagement. While Macedonians took immaculate care of their homes, they had virtually no sense of what an active citizenry looked like in public. It's like they were completely detached from their own personal stake and role in society. My wife and I quickly shifted our main mission towards helping local teenagers see themselves as agents of change and involvement in helping their struggling country. And I often reflected on the importance of civic education, which was completely absent from the schools there, but largely seen as vital in America. Lately, though, I've been thinking about that. Over the last decade plus, American education has gone through a shift in at least two distinct directions. One direction has been towards more standardized testing, particularly in math and literacy. The other shift has been towards STEM-based education, with many companies sprouting up to cater to what I would call a bit of a craze over science, technology, engineering, and math education. What has been pushed aside in the process has been the humanities, specifically languages, history, literature, and civics. But 2016 marked a turning point. I think for a lot of Americans, the presidential election of that year and its aftermath, the flow of fake news reports, the social media disinformation or dubious sources, it got a lot of people, both in and out of education, taking a step back and asking, are our kids ready to take on a society in which power and information is being rapidly diffused? A poll conducted by Edweek in the summer of 2018 found fifty-two percent of teachers surveyed felt there is not enough civics education in schools, with the number one reason being pressure to focus on subjects other than civics because they are tested or emphasized. With another presidential election just around the corner, it felt like a perfect time to investigate the state of civics education and why it's so important to a democracy in the first place. To get some context, I reached out to writer Emily Cardinali, who did some reporting for NPR last year on civics education. I'll link some of her work on our Twitter feed. I started out by simply asking, what do we mean when we say civics education?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, civics education um covers kind of a broad general topic that involves US government and also touches a little bit on history. But when it's taught in schools today, most of the time it's that half a semester where you just talk strictly about the US government, and it includes the federal government, your state government, and sometimes even your local government.
SPEAKER_03And what is the state of civics education in the US today? If I could ask you such a broad question about the big country.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um so I will start off with my story as a launching point. Basically, I wrote this story about where civics education is because I started to notice a lot of different states in the US had different legislation about what they want to do for civics education in the high school level. Um, and to me, I see it, I saw it as kind of a turning point where beforehand they had maybe stale or old legislation that existed because you need to have these classes, but never was revamped to meet like a like a changing environment of me, like media and a changing environment of what the government is doing these days. So after, and when I was reporting this story, a lot of different educators told me after the 2016 election, people started to realize that there's such low voter turnout in the youngest group of voters that they wanted to address that. And that means that civics education for a while wasn't doing its job because people were not voting after they were old enough to, so they had no engagement in the civic community. So now educators and legislators want to change that. So it's kind of at a pivot point because these last two years, a lot of different states have proposed legislation to beef up their civics and approved it as well. Wow.
SPEAKER_03And so what are some of the steps that state that states might take to beef up civics education? What change, what are the most obvious changes you'd see if you looked at legislation?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the legislation, the biggest one that states are doing is asking high school students to take the US Citizen and Immigration Services citizenship test. And the way the citizenship test is actually administered is you meet with an agent and then they ask you 10 questions verbally and you have to conjure the answers up by yourself. But it comes from a bank of 100 questions. So these schools are now having students take the 100 question test in a multiple choice format, and then you have to get like 75 or above to pass. Um, and some states are requiring you to get 75 or above to pass high school, and some states are just requiring you to take the test as a part of the um class.
SPEAKER_03Okay, because I think you mentioned somewhere in your one of your articles that students actually can test out of the requirement, right? If they if they pass the test, is that it? Okay.
SPEAKER_00You can test out of the requirement, and there's a lot of different initiatives as well. So the biggest kind of maybe easiest because there's already a structure on how to get students to take tests, is that um citizenship test. But some other ways states are doing this beefing up is and like some ways that students can learn civics and tests out of that immigration test is things like um participating in their like their city senate, like their city council, that kind of stuff. I talked to a lot of teachers who would bring local council members to the classroom, or they would have the kids go do a city council meeting, or even write legislation that they would bring to the state. And so these kids get to identify an issue in their community and they talk about it with the teacher and their parents and see how they could take it and make it into some sort of law or rule, and then they get to meet with the legislator and then they go from there. Um, and that's one of the most engaging ways that people do it. There are also a lot of nonprofits that are dedicated to um teaching kids civics in like an online video game format. Um, iCivics is one of them, and there's a lot of um free material online too that a lot of teachers have been leaning in on using if they can't get the curriculum support in their school.
SPEAKER_03You talk about in one of your stories, there's an example of a middle school that actually got legislation passed in Florida. Can you tell us about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's uh Jackie Vianna's class in South Florida. Um, I got to talk to her and she told me this was uh about a decade ago. Um, it was I think Jeb Bush must have been the governor, but she told me that these kids had noticed a park nearby had a lot of people who were either um like houseless or they were like using drugs in the park. And this is a park that's next to the school. They wanted to be able to use the park after school. And the kids and the parents collaborated on this community issue, and they got together with their local, I think it was a council member who helped them bring it to the state. And they had they got to go to Tallahassee and meet the governor, and they got to do all these different um face-to-face interactions with local politicians to get this bill passed. And then once it was passed, I I really do think it was Jeb Bush, he flew actually, he flew down to Miami and signed one of the bills in the classroom. And that's the ways that kids just get to really like it's it's an event, right, in their childhood, it's part of their childhood now. So I talked to somebody who was a student at that point, and even though she's not working in government or anything today, and she you know, she's a mom, she works um an administrative job, she's not trying to write policy or anything. She remembers that so vividly, and she also just remembers having this feeling of like my voice has some sort of weight, and I can do something about this, and that's how it influenced her.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Um, that's yeah, that's gonna stay with those kids forever. Um, but you'd also make the point that not everybody has to pass legislation to have a successful civics education. And um, why why is it why is it important for a lot of students to focus on local issues versus sort of the big picture national issues that we see in the news?
SPEAKER_00Um I remember talking to a teacher in Alaska, and he told me that his students, when something happens on the federal level, has no impact on them whatsoever. It feels super far away. It really doesn't touch their day-to-day life. So, one way he got the students to engage with what civics is and what local government is, is they talked about the local curfew because they had a nine o'clock curfew in um must have been Anchorage. And they talked about why they have that curfew, why the government thought it was important for people to be at home at that time, and what you could do if you disagree with that curfew. Um, he also mentioned there was something about um he had a class that talked about gun rights and also medical marijuana because in Alaska, gun rights is a different conversation than it is in California. Sure. And use that to illustrate, you know, at the federal level, we're having a conversation, but to us every single day it's a different story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I guess those you can have the same civics lesson in different classrooms around the country, and it would look very different if you're focusing on those local issues.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Wow. And you said that a lot of the legislation is aimed at the high school level.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03But in your writing, you talk a bit about the need for starting young, that starting in high school actually might be too late. Can you talk a bit about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So some of the educators and um researchers that I talked to mentioned how at high school you've already kind of formed your opinions, and those opinions are probably related to your parents' opinions. And also by high school, you've already lost that opportunity to really care about your local community because you've gotten involved in sports or you've gotten involved in your orchestra, or something else is going on in your life. So you can teach civics to kids in a very easy way when you're talking about power dynamics between like you and your classmates, as a kindergartner, even, or like you and your teacher, you can talk about civics in a way that's just like these are the rules, this is why we have the rule. What do you think about that rule? And that also teaches kids not just about civics, but also like about permission, about consent, about respect, and those kinds of everyday values that are important and you do get from early education usually. Um, and um, I know that some educators were also concerned that by the time you hit high school, not everybody even finishes high school, and most of those civics classes are for seniors. I took civics when I was a senior, and that's not a guaranteed um school year for everybody.
SPEAKER_03Did you get a sense from um the people you interviewed that was there for any frustration about the state of civics education in the US that that we have kind of ignored it for too long or that it's been on the back burner?
SPEAKER_00I did get the sense that a lot of people they saw the civics classes as important to have, but they also acknowledged that nothing had developed or changed. And so recently there's been a paid attention to it, people have been paying attention to it because where, you know, through maybe the 80s and 90s, the development of curriculum might have slowed down, but the development of technology had increased so quickly. And today the problem that teachers and uh legislators are trying to address is media literacy, which is a huge um result, like a huge lesson we've learned from the 2016 election. And it's also something that even like everyone from kids who are digital natives to um grandmas and grandpas who are now online as well, everybody needs to learn it. So, what I understand of the frustrations are that they've had civics education, people know what the like Bill of Rights is and you know who the founding fathers are and those kinds of facts, but they don't have any kind of adjustable skills or tools to uh uh interact with today, today's like voting situation and the internet.
SPEAKER_03Okay, because you one one of your articles actually you begin by you begin with the words fake news. And that and that we we might think of fake news and and media literacy, as you say, as being an English class thing or maybe something that's done in in history, but not in the civics domain, but uh but it does empower citizens in in the ways that you've described. Yeah. How can civics education empower or impact disadvantaged groups in society?
SPEAKER_00So the disadvantaged groups in society are usually kind of like trapped in a structure. And that structure is oftentimes a government structure that has been decided through voting, but through people who like one, know how to register to vote, two, know that there's even voting happening, three have the time to sit down and look at the things that are being voted on, and four can understand all the jargon. So if you are in a community that um they want to redistrict and turn your parks into warehouses, and it's a low socioeconomic community, the people who are stakeholders, like who want to build that warehouse, they have the lawyers, they have the power, they have the education, they've usually been to college to move that forward. But the people who are living in that community, um, based on like the data and the trends, people in low socioeconomic areas might not necessarily have had the opportunity to go to college, or they don't have the time to get out and vote, or have the opportunity to sit and flip through all these pages or pamphlets. And often they're not even, there's not an organization looking out for them to let them know, like, hey, this is happening in your community. So if you teach kids from the beginning that every single thing that happens around you is decided by someone and that someone is you, then that helps kids have that consciousness as they go on.
SPEAKER_03So it really becomes a part of their education that can help them change their community, change the change their circumstances, right?
SPEAKER_00It teaches them things about protests, it teaches them things about petition, um, and just being aware that there's supposed to be somebody representing you, and there's supposed to be somebody who is supposed to listen to you.
SPEAKER_03Wow. During your reporting, what surprised you the most about this topic?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think that I was really surprised that kids were really excited about it. I remember my high school civics class, and it was my last semester of senior year, and I just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge. We had to do a combined year of civics and economics, and economics is all teaching us how to invest in the stock market, which was horribly boring to me. And then civics happened, and I was like, Well, this is important and interesting, but uh like this is like at this point, I just didn't really think too much about it. It wasn't very important to me. Also, by the time I had it, I was already accepted into university, and I was thinking about that. So when I was talking to students who were in eighth grade, they were telling me about these games that they would play on iCivics, or they were telling me about how you know their classmate wanted to run for president, but people didn't like his ideas, and then he got voted off. And then afterward, there's a big fight and there's all this drama, and it really played into like the politics of the classroom. At the same time, it taught kids how to respect each other's opinions. And that's one big thing that educators were concerned about too, is the dialogue that we have today. Everybody feels like they're backed in a corner and they can't really share their ideas and in a respectful way. But these kids, they would have these, you know, conversations and discussions about why classmate A shouldn't be president, president, but class A class uh mate B should be president. And afterward they would come to a consensus and then they would move on and go to recess. And it sets a it sets a really healthy precedent on how to talk to people. And I just didn't expect that because my civics class was so boring and I don't remember anything from it, and everything I know about the government is just from being an adult. Um, and the kids were really engaged, and that that made me very happy to see, and it made me very hopeful.
SPEAKER_03So they're experienced something in the classroom.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a lot of the classes nowadays, I think especially I don't, I think maybe all classes are a little bit more hands-on now. Um, but these kids were living the civic situations because they weren't old enough to vote yet. Or I mean, even there's a high school in Nevada where they had a register to vote day, and you know, once you're 16 or 17 in that state, you can pre-register. When you turn 18, you're just like ready to go. And there are these big drives, and kids would get make these posters, and the principal would say that you know, juniors and seniors felt really excited about it because it made them very cool. Like this was an exclusive thing that you can use older kid. And I just I can't even imagine that happening at my old high school. So it made me really positive, it was a really positive and made me very hopeful.
SPEAKER_03That's really great to hear. Um, what so based on your reporting, what single piece of advice, if you could give one piece of advice to a school, to a social studies department about how to get civics education really off the ground or maybe dust it off, revamp it, what would you say?
SPEAKER_00Um the biggest piece of advice that created the most civically engaged students that I received from teachers was you have to simulate it. You have to have a you have to have a classroom situation where somebody is running for a president and you have to have a classroom situation. Maybe you you simulate like even the United Nations, and you have to make a decision together, and you have to brainstorm together why it's important. And you have to get the kids really believing in that group effort to make an education stake.
SPEAKER_03Thanks so much to Emily Cardinali for her reporting and the wide range of perspectives she brought to our conversation. I was especially struck by her juxtaposing the slowing of curriculum development at a time when technological change was really accelerating and the unforeseen consequences that had on curriculum. Next, you're going to hear my conversation with Joel Westheimer. I was first introduced to his work when I saw a used copy of his book, What Kind of Citizen, at a bookstore. In it, he makes a very persuasive case for having a robust citizenship program and civics education in schools. He describes types of citizenship programs and explains why a thriving democratic society requires this sort of education. He's a professor at the University of Ottawa and a regular contributor on CBC Radio in Canada. Could you start by talking a bit about the research work that you've been involved with regarding civics education?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Uh for a number of decades now, which really ages me, but for a number of decades now, I've been doing research on what kinds of programs uh schools and other educational institutions do that help to teach kids how to be, you know, what we might call good citizens. And what I've been most interested in, um colleagues and I have been in the the values that underlie those different programs. So, like what are different programs trying to accomplish um when they when they talk about teaching good citizenship?
SPEAKER_03Okay. Are teachers equipped to teach citizenship in your estimation?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a good question. And and of course, it depends. You know, we um we many of us, and I'm sure many of your listeners have experienced some kind of death by civics class where they were asked to memorize, you know, inane facts about things or um or disconnected pieces of information. And um, a lot of teachers aren't. Equipped to do it, and civics is often too often given to whatever teacher has time to uh to be doing something. Um, but when it's done right, and we have a lot of uh research that shows um what doing it right means and um and what happens from that, when it's done right, uh both you know, teachers excel at this kind of thing because um, well, I'll talk about that in one second, but teachers excel at this kind of thing and and students you know have a ton of benefits from it. Um one of the things that I always found interesting is that no matter what subject one is teaching, um civics or you know, issues about civil and civic society um play a central role in in whatever you're doing and make the potentially make the kind of teaching and learning you're doing exciting. And uh it's because of that that I think that civics has a role to play in not just for social studies teachers, but really ideally across the board in the curriculum throughout schools.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Yeah, you so back to how it's done right. You talk in your book, What Kind of Citizen, about three types of civics education. And I think the first one, probably all listeners will remember from school, the personally responsible. Sort of, hey, if you're a good person and you pick up your trash and you know, then you're a good citizen and you you make it pretty clear that that's not really enough because it's not addressing root causes. But then you go on to talk about participatory and social justice-oriented civics education. And I wonder if you could elaborate a bit on what you meant by those two terms.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Why don't I take people just through the three terms briefly just so we're all on the same page? Um, what happened was from research that we did on programs, K-16 programs, so we looked at elementary school programs, middle school programs, high school programs, higher ed programs, and also some out-of-school programs, all of which aim to teach some vision of good citizenship. And what we found is that most programs, you know, professors love to put things in little boxes and categorize them, right? And um, it doesn't mean that each program can fit neatly into one of these definitions, but it gives us a helpful way of talking about them. And what we found is that most programs could, loosely speaking, fit into one of three kinds of visions of a good citizen. The first was the personally responsible citizen, as you mentioned. Um, the second vision of a good citizen was the participatory citizen, and the third was the social justice-oriented citizen. And personally responsible citizenship programs are ones, um, like you said, that uh that everyone is kind of familiar with. They're the ones that teach people um volunteering, uh, teach them to be nice to each other, um, to um help an old person across the street, you know.
SPEAKER_03It's it's the sort of thing you sort of see on every school wall as you enter. Like we are a community, we take care of each other, and it's just kind of exactly.
SPEAKER_01Uh those people who have character education programs in their school, that would be a really good example. Character education has those great posters um, like uh, you know, today's Monday, so we're doing honesty, and tomorrow's Tuesday, it'll be integrity, and Wednesday you don't have to be honest anymore because that was Monday. Like that. Um But we did see, and a vast majority of school programs do foster that kind of vision of a good citizen, right? But we did see a number of other kinds of programs, and um, the ones that fell into this participatory, which you know, the word participation, those were programs where teachers really wanted kids to understand how things work in their local community and how to organize with other people to uh do things in the community, like organizing a recycling drive or something like that. And they'd know how government works and and and how democratic processes work. So, this example that I like to give is if the participatory citizens are um organizing a food drive, let's say, the personally responsible citizens are donating cans of food, right? Because they're nice, responsible people. And then the third vision of the good citizen, and and there are some programs that do this, although not many kind of systemic programs, not very many institutionalized ones. They tend to be more ones where teachers are taking it on their own, um, are the ones that pursue a social justice-oriented um vision of citizenship. And those programs ask kids to look at the root causes of problems. Um they they study how social movements happened, how social change happens, and um what what the problems are around them, what causes those problems, and how they might address the root causes rather than just the symptoms of those problems. So if I use the example I did before, if the the participatory citizens are organizing a food drive and the personally responsible citizens are donating a can of food, then the social justice-oriented citizens are asking, how come in one of the richest countries in the world there are people who are hungry, right? And trying to figure out what to do about that.
SPEAKER_03Sure. And in your research and visiting schools, have you found a tension between sort of action-oriented desires, maybe of some teachers or administrators, and then the counter of, well, our students need to know. They need to know the foundations, they need to know the key terms, they need to know the organization of government, sort of the more textbook civics rather than the action.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's such an interesting thing, Dan, because um we I think we all have this idea that knowledge has to come before action, right? That we can't go, we can't have kids go out and do things before they know stuff, because that would just be silly. They'll be, you know, protesting something they don't know anything about or working on a campaign for something they don't know. Um, and that sounds like common sense, but what what I've seen in the programs I've looked at is um that that's flipped exactly on its head. Um, and that in in real life, both in school life and in life outside of schools, um, for most of us, action precedes knowledge, right? We we get involved in something and then we learn about it. So we do something, we we see the results of something, you know, some intermediate step, and then we want to learn more. And that's how it works, um, not just for kids, but for adults too. And so a lot of the most successful programs we've seen start with some kind of community work, you know, action in the community, and then bring it back to a kind of reflecting and learning about those issues.
SPEAKER_03In my own experiences teaching uh social study at different levels, I found that the conversations we have often about things that students have only heard about, uh, often opens the door into their desire to take action. Um last year I was listening, you were you were doing one of your um appearances on CBC in Canada, and you you said that in a democratic society, it's important that students can talk about controversial topics. But you also noted that traditionally schools have run from controversy like the plague.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Could you elaborate on that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, let's talk about that, Dan, because the the the democratic society is something relevant here, right? Because if we go back to those three kinds of citizens, um, you know, no one's against kids learning to be nice, right? Or not littering or or helping other people. Everyone wants that. There's nothing wrong with that. But when we think about it, that's true. Um, you know, teachers would want that, and parents would want that, and government leaders would want that in any kind of society. A totalitarian dictatorship, uh, you know, a monarchy, a military junta-led society. Everyone wants citizens who, you know, pay their taxes and listen to the rules and listen to their elders, right? But um, that's not a kind of citizenship that has much to do with democracy. Um, we might want people to be nice, of course, but we also need people to be able to deal with multiple perspectives and controversy, because that's kind of what drives uh, you know, drives democratic societies forward is this idea that we have many ideas competing and that we work out our differences through democratic deliberation. Um and so I think that that is a really important um important issue for us to think about as you know, as educators, is in a demo specifically in a democratic society, what is it that we want kids to be able to do? And as you say, uh schools tend not to like controversy, right? There's no principal who who wants um to get you know 20 calls from parents saying, how come you brought up you know abortion or pro-life uh um topics? I don't want my kids talking about that. But a good principal, and there are many out there, um, will rather than going to the teacher and saying, hey, don't talk about that, a good principal would go back to the parents and say, you know what, nobody here is telling your child what to think. But it is our job as uh a public school to expose your child to multiple perspectives because um in our society we need um people to understand that that thoughtful, well-meaning adults differ on in their opinions on important matters of social concern. And that's part of the education here at River Valley High School or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_03And then and then, of course, you'll have, especially in some more um polarized parts of the US, certainly, you would have uh accusations of indoctrination, you know, that that the teacher is taking students that don't understand this topic very well and indoctrinating them into his or her beliefs. And I'm sure you've you ran into that in your in your work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, I'm more worried about the idea that um that we expect teachers to be these neutral blank slates with no opinions. Um, because you know, children spend um more of their awake hours with their teachers than they do their parents, uh adult in their lives. And uh and that means that teachers really need to be role models. And a role model in a democratic society is someone who is not going to, of course, abuse their position of authority to force their opinion on some student. And I don't know of any teacher who you know has that as their goal, um, but it is to show that um that that uh political and social issues matter, and that um you know you and I as uh adults in this world have beliefs, and we um we work to pursue those beliefs and to make those beliefs happen, and that it's up to students to listen to different perspectives and uh and then make their own decisions about how they want to act in the world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, students I think they're inspired when they see teachers passionate about something, particularly when we we model um seeking out other perspectives. I I was thinking about this actually, just watching the latest democratic debate here in the US and the issues that were coming up. And I'm thinking, you know, that you want students to care about what these candidates are talking about uh and and and modeling that kind of interest and caring. And well, let's let's look into what this senator said is a great way of of uh of show of modeling that kind of behavior.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know, when you think about the way schools are set up, you know, it's what Dan Lordy called the the egg crate model of schools where every teacher's in their own little egg container and you hardly get to see other adults, right? Well, you think about it from a kid's perspective, they never really or rarely get to see adults discuss anything or disagree on things, you know, in front of them. And so um I think the more that we could build that kind of thing into the the school day, um, the better. And in fact, like, you know, what's one of the classic kind of um social studies teachers thing is is you know, the social studies teachers supposed to say, um, well, on the one hand, there are these people who who do this, right? And on the other hand, um, there are people who think this. And then, and then the kids always say, what do they say? They say, What do you think, Mr. Dan? And you're supposed to say, Oh, oh, I don't think. I I just I just tell you on the one hand there's this, and on the other hand, there's just uh yeah, I don't I don't think kids are that impressionable that if you give your opinion on something, um, you know, that it's gonna result in uh in this kind of concern of indoctrination. But it is a pedagogical problem that I think we have to be aware of. Um, even with my graduate students, adults, I sometimes say, listen, um, I I know you'd like to hear what I think on this, but in my experience, if I say what I think now, it's gonna change the conversation. So I'll wait. I have a strong opinion on this, but I'll I'll tell you what it is later. Right.
SPEAKER_03And it is always a bit of a you feel like you've done your job right when weeks later the students still aren't quite sure what your opinion is.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Okay.
SPEAKER_03I guess I guess I'm I'm I'm walking this line well here.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think I think one of the things, and um I really love this topic uh because I I've I've thought about it a lot because it's so tricky, right? We don't have any easy answers. But I think one of the things a great teacher does is um use their uh greater knowledge and experience to help a student make their argument. And so it's fine for the student to possibly know where you stand or not know where you stand, but whatever the case, you're gonna help them make the best argument they can make based on evidence and and and reason, right? And uh I think students really value that when a teacher can help them do that, even or especially when it goes against what the teacher believes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Often it's just a well-timed nudge or a well-timed question that makes all the difference rather than telling them what the answer is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um could you talk about a school that in your estimation is doing it really well that you saw that you think is a great example?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's um a school I um visited some time ago in San Francisco. Um, and uh it's called Horace Man Academic Middle School. It's a school within a school. Um and and they had this fantastic um set of programs. It was a very intensive, you know, there were a lot of young teachers with um a lot of commitment and a lot of a lot of um time to devote to this, but they would um kind of pick a theme to organize their years curricula around. So all the subject area teachers would would kind of um play into this theme, and the theme sometimes was developed with the students, sometimes not. Um and so, for example, one year the theme uh was um hunger and homelessness in the in the community, and then different teachers uh sort of tied their particular math every day, but as much as they could to this theme. Um so the you know, literature teacher was you know assigning books on um hunger and and that had to do with homelessness, um the social studies teacher was looking at uh hunger and homelessness in the community and the nation. Um, the math teacher was looking at statistics on on homelessness and so forth. And they even did things like um uh they the roof of the building wasn't being used, and they decided that they would uh grow the science teachers started this, that they would um create a garden up there, a vegetable garden. And they they did all the science of soil and everything else, and uh and they built a vegetable garden up there and held a fundraiser by cooking the vegetables and serving dinner on the roof of the school. And then they they researched which organizations in the community they wanted to donate those um funds to. So um, so it's it's that kind of thing. And it's not a it's not a gimmick like, okay, this year we're gonna do sailboats, right? It's it's a it's a real issue of concern to the community that the that the kids care about as well.
SPEAKER_03And that's actually another one of my favorite topics is the interdisciplinary learning. I think it it makes it so much more uh relevant and alive to the students when teachers are able to collaborate like that.
SPEAKER_01That sounds like yeah, well, you know, it's it's funny because you and I, and and really, I mean, all of us forget what a weird place school is because we're so used to it, right? We've been to school for so many years, we forget how weird it is, but uh we should remind everyone that school's really weird, right? In the real world, you are not interrupted every 35 minutes with a bell and then switch to a different subject and and and you know, each right. Um that's not how things work in the real world. You you try and accomplish something and you need to use all the subject areas, all the disciplines um back and forth in in you know recursive ways to get something done. And that's of course what project-based learning is trying to go for. And I I think that project-based learning is kind of very compatible with the type of civics education that that you and I are talking about.
SPEAKER_03I agree with that. Uh last year, uh Edweek, an American publication, they polled teachers and found that 52% said that there's too little civics being taught. Uh, but the number one reason they gave was that there's pressure um to focus on subjects other than civics because they are tested. Um, and I wonder what you think about um I I don't know about Canada, but in the US, certainly in the last decade, we've had what I would label a STEM craze and a real emphasis on particularly science and math to the detriment of um civics, history, languages. And I think it at least in the US, it took the 2016 election and the aftermath and social media for people to start saying, well, maybe our students need more of those things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, well, so first of all, we'll get you and I are gonna have to do a whole other episode of your podcast on testing, right? Okay, yeah, we'll maybe leave that aside for now. Um, but I think because I think testing is is part of the problem here. It's not just the focus on STEM subjects, it's it's testing altogether. And also this this shift that we've experienced in the last um 20 years or so in thinking about schools. Um, we no longer think about schools as as ways to prepare citizens to live in a in a society, but more as job training institutions, right? I literally, this document just crossed my desk that that talked about career readiness skills for kindergartners. Um, you it's hard to it would be hard to make this up, right? Um and the more that we think about schools as job training institutions, the less room there is for um teaching a lot of you know the of what matters. I mean, the reason that so many people go into teaching. Sure, you're a history teacher or you're a science teacher, but really you're teaching kids. You're you're you're trying to help kids become the best version of themselves. And that involves things that go way beyond the subject, the immediate subject matter that you're teaching. You use the subject matter as a vehicle to teach kids processes of thinking and being. Um, but but when we do, when we emphasize testing, we of course get obsessed with rankings and scorings on those tests. And then it's true, of course, as you say, that uh even within those tests, um we're only testing two subject areas, you know, math and literacy. Uh and and of course, we know that uh in most schools, uh, you know, teaching time for almost all other subjects has been curtailed, especially in the months before those tests, or subjects are hygienic. Go to the science and say, listen, I I know you're you're doing science, but could you have them write this week on something, right?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. How do you find your college students? They come to you uh as adults, or what's the uh their level of civic engagement? What do you see?
SPEAKER_01Well, this you know what's what's interesting about being in in higher education and teaching college and university students is um uh I feel like sometimes when I when I talk to uh talk to to higher ed, you know, to to other professors and to people working in higher ed, I kind of feel like I have a crystal ball because I study K-12 education. And what happens in K-12 education starts to slowly seep its way up to higher ed. And so while you and your colleagues um have long ago been hit by uh all the testing, the standardization, the metrics, the value added, the the merit pay scores, you know, all that crap that hit K 12 education in the last couple of decades is now making its way into higher ed, where we are also being asked to see higher education as simply a vehicle for the economy. Economy and for job training and not for developing well-rounded, healthy, and happy individuals. And I'm seeing that reflected in my students. I've seen a change since I've been teaching at the higher ed level. And that is that students are stressed, they're extremely focused.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Yeah, I I feel really strongly that as teachers, we have to model what we want our students to be. It's not just the content we're delivering. And you know, even before we got on uh with the interview, we were talking about um I I have two young kids, and I I gather you have uh a son as well.
SPEAKER_01I have a son and a daughter, my son and a daughter. Yeah, a little older than yours, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I and I always reflect on that and just how I want them to feel like, you know, at the risk of sounding corny, the old this land is your land, that if they're going to inherit our country and be civically minded, I have to do that. I have to show them what that looks like and not expect them to do that. I think it's the same with our students. So we um we have to be teachers that are willing to demonstrate that, or else our students aren't going to pick that up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I had a group of students come into me, uh, my office one day, and they were they just were like bubbling over wanting to tell me something, and I said, What? What is it? And um, it had just been been the beginning of um um it was some military action, uh you know, that was I can't remember if it was in Iran or Iraq or wherever it was, but um they had there was you know, everyone was talking about it, and it was in the news, and they had just come from a lecture in their course on conflict resolution. And what they were excited about is they were just dismayed that their professor did not even mention this event, right? And when we view education as so you know walled off from real world that we have this thing right in front of us that's right on the topic we're trying to teach and ignore it because we have uh you know a lecture prepared, um, it's it's uh it's it's a problem.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Well, Joel, I want to thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. Um it's been a real uh pleasure. And and I do want to leave you with one question though. I I have to ask, I read somewhere, uh, I don't know, it was a bio of yours I saw somewhere, that you've been known to ice skate to and from work. Is that a factual statement?
SPEAKER_01I know, Dan. I do whatever I can since I'm originally from New York and I've now been living in Canada for about 15 years. I do whatever I can to perpetuate all Canadian stereotypes among Americans. So, but it is actually true that I do uh I live in Ottawa, and Ottawa has a canal that runs through the middle of the city, and my university is on one end and I'm in the middle, and my my wife is also a professor, and and she teaches at another university that's on the other end of the canal. So both of us actually skate to work in winter. Um, unfortunately, with climate change, yeah, um, the number of days that the canal is open has been diminishing.
SPEAKER_03Um are your rowing skills, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. But still, it is great. So yeah. And I I so I I like to the image I'd like you to have is of me getting out of my igloo. Okay, getting out of the canal. Got it. Got it. Eating some sealed lover and uh eating for it. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_03Amazing. Uh Joel, thanks so much for the conversation. I really enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01Hey, thanks for doing this podcast, Dan. This is a great thing.
SPEAKER_03I hope, like me, you came away from that conversation with a lot to think about. Joel Westheimer brings a really unique and informed perspective to the conversation. And though he's a researcher and a professor, uh what impresses me about him is uh underlining everything he says is a real passion for helping students become the caretakers of the nation. And that's and that's who we have in our classrooms. We have the citizens who are going to take the country from those who came before them. And civics education, as I said at the beginning of this podcast episode, uh I feel like it's been marginalized for a long time. It's making a bit of a comeback as people look at the world we live in post-2016. And if you're someone out there who uh wants to get more civics into your school, into your department, into your classroom, there's some great resources. Uh Emily Cardinali mentioned iCivics, that's online. There's the Center for Civic Education out here in California. They're the authors of the old We the People series, which is really solid. But ultimately it's going to come down to what both Emily and Joel talked about, and that is you, the teacher, inspiring students to take action, to care about the country, to care about their community. Uh-huh. And of course, we want them to know things about how their government works. That kind of knowledge is fundamental to citizenship. But they have to want to make changes for the positive. They have to want to inherit this country, make it a better place, and be the best citizens they can be. And as always, Pierce Murphy's got our music covered. Thanks for listening, everyone.
