Does Teaching Citizenship Require Teachers to Go "Off-Script"?

“Again, teachers need to recognize the static nature of standards and frame their instruction accordingly. Recent studies have found that social studies classrooms rarely utilize discussion, and scholars often point to standards-based education as a contributing factor (Parker 2006, Wilen 2003). The SOLS contain few standards designed to stimulate discussion; therefore, teachers must act on their own to foster the ideas of deliberation in their classrooms.  A similar argument can be made for participatory and social justice aspects of citizenship.  It is the responsibility of educators to encourage students to participate in democracy in order to develop the habits associated with active citizenship, rather than to simply reap its benefits as passive spectators.”

Journall, W.  Standardizing Citizenship:  The Potential Influence of State Curriculum Standards on the Civic Development of Adolescents. 2010. 

Wayne Journell critically examines the Virginia Standards of Learning for civics (8^th grade) and government (12^th grade) in this article, which raises a host of questions about both how we define citizenship and how we teach it to our students.  The primary focus of the article is on classifying the content of the standards into different categories of citizenship education.  Unsurprisingly (at least for anyone familiar with Virginia), the majority of the standards fall into the Civic Republicanism category, which focuses on the nuts and bolts of good citizenship – voting, being patriotic, obeying laws, and understanding the structures of the US government.  Even the standards that he classifies as Deliberative or as Social Justice have an arms-length feel to them. (For example, one of the Social Justice standards has to do with understanding property rights, while others focus on protection of individual rights.) 

While the main idea of the article is illuminating, I was struck by a passage above in which Journell recommends that teachers overcome the static nature of the standards by fostering deliberation and encouraging active participation in democratic processes in the classroom and in the community.  He sees these activities as the means by which students develop the habits of active citizenship, not as the ends of citizenship instruction.  This constructivist, learn-by-doing approach is in stark contrast to what too-often happens in the classroom – students passively receive instruction on those habits of citizenship, and teachers hope that some of them will stick.  Journell’s challenge to teachers is to mine the standards as a starting point for discussion, which could certainly encourage a level of questioning and deliberation that I’m sure the SOL committees never intended, but which would engage students in valuable learning and development as citizens.

I found in my own classroom that the standards can be used to launch a variety of discussions.  The most interesting happened when I asked students to consider why the standards writers chose a certain piece of information vs another. In the 11^th grade US History standards for the Cold War era, the recommended “Essential Question” for Standard 13c is “How did America’s military forces defend freedom during the Cold War?”  The corresponding “essential knowledge” includes the following:

•  President Kennedy pledged in his inaugural address that the United States would ―”pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” In the same address, he also said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
•  During the Cold War era, millions of Americans served in the military, defending freedom in wars and conflicts that were not always popular. Many were killed or wounded. As a result of their service, the United States and American ideals of democracy and freedom ultimately prevailed in the Cold War struggle with Soviet communism.

Delivered at face value, the standards offer a very narrow view of both “the ideals of democracy and freedom” and American actions against communism in the Cold War.  Worse, the standards don’t require students to grapple with the tough questions of history, such as whether the US was justified in overthrowing elected rulers in countries that did not conform to the US version of “freedom.”   Was the US justified in “supporting any friend” if those friends were repressive anti-communist regimes?  How do we, as a country, balance competing interests? What do we mean by “freedom and democracy”? Why don’t the standards mention any of the more problematic areas of US actions during the Cold War? 

While these questions sparked lively debate and some genuine soul-searching among patriotic teens, I felt dangerously off-script in asking them.  But practicing these deliberative skills and encouraging students to ask these tough questions are how I hope to help my students develop “habits of active citizenship.”  I wish I had had the time with them to explore ways to apply those skills outside the classroom and to current events, and perhaps to have them write SOLs for more recent US history.  I share Journell’s dismay at the static nature of so many of the civics and government standards, and I fear that the same problem extends into the history standards as well.