Another mandate that they will likely object to and be wrong on, again

[tulipsandroses]

Discussion on Morning Joe, president of Johns Hopkins University. Discussion about making a civics class a mandatory class in college.
The mouth frothers will probably rant and rave about being mandated to learn something they don’t want to. Just wait till they find out, in college you are mandated to take English, Math, some kind of history class, lots of other mandatory classes.

[Quakerfriend]

1. This should occur in junior high or HS

Additionally, they should teach manners and proper etiquette.

[Wounded Bear]

4. This nt

[dflprincess]

5. I had it in junior high

And I had a great teacher who really deserves credit for sparking my interest in political involvement

[AllaN01Bear]

15. same here . also in scouts

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[pazzyanne]

14. I had it in jr high.

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Isn't "government" already required?

Did they remove that sometime in the last couple decades?

Know this, the Republicans want the populace to be wholly ignorant of how our system of government works.

Ethics should be a required class too.

[czarjak]

6. Critical Civics Theory

[hurple]

7. My HS had mandatory Civics class

Every one should.

[PatSeg]

8. Mine did as well

But it was different for different schools. I wonder how many schools require it today.

[AllaN01Bear]

17. many need refreshers . would be citizens are expected to know this .

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[PatSeg]

30. That is true

I know that I've forgotten a lot of what I learned in school and had to relearn it as an adult.

[Lonestarblue]

18. The last time I checked (maybe three years ago), only 17% of states required civics.

When the US changed education to a test-based system focused mainly on math and reading, some social studies courses and requirements were dropped so kids today may be required to take only a couple of history courses, and even those courses have been so whitewashed that they’re as much fiction as fact. The well-rounded liberal arts curriculum is mostly a thing of the past.

Civics/government should be taught in 8th grade and then expanded/reinforced in high school with instruction on our court system and the analysis of actual cases that affect politics and how the country operates. Media literacy and bias needs to be taught as a part of several courses.

[róisín_dubh]

21. As a university history professor...

The very little students know is appalling. Absolutely appalling.
It explains a lot about where we are as a nation.

[calimary]

25. Yep. THIS

[plimsoll]

27. James W. Loewen would agree.

But if you actually read what he says, the lack of knowledge is by design. Let's pretend ugly things didn't happen. Or the great papering over of causes of our Civil War.

The information was out there, but too many people are afraid to acknowledge that their forebears did horrible things. Too many of those get to choose high school text books. I get lectured on the biased history I was taught by my son, but I point out to him that I'm the one who was telling him that.

The problem comes to a head when students follow up on some piece of "knowledge" passed down by the history texts and discover that other interpretations exist and usually source materials support neither side fully.

[PatSeg]

32. That is so disturbing

But I suppose we see the results all the time in our young adults today. Kind of a dysfunctional Brave New World with very few informed critical thinkers.

[PatSeg]

31. When I went to school, a very long time ago

Our high school had higher requirements than others in the state and four years of social studies was mandatory - Geography, World History, American History, and Civics/Political Science (in our senior year). We were also required to take a semester each of Art Appreciation and Music Appreciation in our Freshman year.

I took so much of my education for granted and now I realize how lucky I was.

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Civic

Study World War II. Read biographies of the era. That was defense of democracy.

[mwooldri]

10. They call them "requirements" at University.

And Colleges for that matter. Yeah it's semantics but that's the word they use.

Then again the same people who are frothing at the mouth about vaccine requirements probably don't care about required courses to graduate university. Otherwise I'd take a bunch of courses in physics and computer science and claim I got a degree in History.

[Champp]

11. Republicans want to keep their proles stupid.

That way they will swallow all the bullshit and lies the GQP pumps out through its right-wing propaganda spigots on TV and radio. Totally toxic.

[KS Toronado]

12. Civics classes should start in the 4th or 5th grade

and continue every year through high school. IMO

[kimbutgar]

26. I have taught civics in 4th and 5th grade as a substitute teacher recently

We still do social studies in our school district also.

[calimary]

28. Definitely!

I had civics in high school, freshman year.

[IronLionZion]

13. I had it in high school, but it should start earlier

so people can learn about the constitution, the branches of government, how a bill becomes a law, etc. It's good to know this stuff.

[PatrickforB]

16. I had civics is High School, and again in College.

[nykym]

19. When my daughter was in high school

they had the traditional meet the teachers night.
She was in AP history, while the teacher was getting ready he threw out the question to the parents.
What are the 3 branches of government?
Not one of the parents there knew the answer, but I did.
When I finished my reply he said you must be Arianna's dad.

But come on the 3 branches of government!

[Hekate]

20. In the 1960s I had required high school Civics, but that was college prep track...

So I don’t know about the rest. We all had to have a range of required classes though, college prep or not.

I do remember being uneasy in the ‘70s or ‘80s when the big push around the country came to make high school classes “relevant” to the average person’s future adult life — to drop algebra, drop foreign languages, and drop civics, as boring and unneeded. The explanations never satisfied me at all, because I thought the underlying message was that the Average American was dumb. JFK pushed a whole generation of us to to excel, in competition with the USSR. Congress and state legislatures spent a lot of money on our education.

Like a lot of bad ideas it looked as though it was grass-roots — parents voted, or at least answered polls. 50 years on, having seen a lot of astro-turf “grow,” I wonder just who thought it was a good idea to make us dumb. You do not have to be preparing for college to benefit from the classes that were described as irrelevant.

[róisín_dubh]

22. That push is still occurring at the uni level

Out with the humanities and in with tech, science and math.

We have a stupid shortsighted population. It’s all about how “my kid” is gonna make big money after college.
Also parents are waaaaaaay to involved in their adult children’s lives. The calls/emails I get from parents are simply shocking.

[plimsoll]

29. One thing that has always bothered me about the STEM push.

The people who are pushing STEM are usually lawyers, or business types. Fundamentally they aren't STEM educated themselves. Why do lawyers want your kid to study the hard sciences? The people who wind up in control locally generally aren't the engineers, mathematicians or other science related disciplines. The people who wind up in control are the people who took political science and other liberal arts classes, they're the people who inherited money, join the country club, joined a nationally affiliated fraternity/sorority and play the old boy network.

We wonder why things look the way they do? We have turned into a hereditary oligarchy and no one wants to talk about it. The STEM people don't have the background to analyze it, and not requiring those courses insures that they never will.

[halfulglas]

23. One of the appeal of Trump to his voters was that many were ignorant

Of the way government worked and laws were made. Why shouldn't the president be able to declare something and it becomes a fact? He could use laws when he wanted and ignore those he doesn't like or they don't like. It's just a skip and a jump to minimobs storming schools and making kids walk through taunting screamers for wearing masks and hospitals for treating a disease which is a hoax. It's nice when schools can help keep kids engaged in classes they like, but they also need classes to teach them what a citizen needs to know to participate in a civil society.

[Mickju]

24. It was mandatory in the 10th grade. (1959)

This was the Dallas public schools.