another time altogether. Civics and Government were part of classes, beginning in third grade in my public school system. Every year, we learned about something from federal, state or local government as part of our history/social studies curriculum. The information was more or less refreshed every year. In the 5th grade, I remember spending an entire semester in that part of the school day learning about the US Constitution. We read it. We studied it. We took tests on it. The next year, we studied California state government and did the same with the core of its consitution. We learned how ballot initiatives got on the ballot, as well.
I started High School in 1959. The next year the entire school year in social studies/history classes was spent on the 1960 election. We learned about the party system, party conventions, and even the caucus system used at those conventions. We learned how elections operated and the rules for registration and voting. We wrote reports on candidates. We wrote reports on political parties. We talked about issues.
That was how it worked back then. Those of us who were paying at least some attention came out of our school system with a pretty fair understanding of how it all works.
We need to go back to that focus on government. We need to understand how our government functions.
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