This morning’s Civic Learning Week blogpost comes to us from FJCC/LFI Civics Instructional Specialist Kimberly Garton. It’s a consideration of new perspectives, and we hope you find it helpful.

Recently I read a piece of advice that encouraged individuals to start saying “thank you” instead of “sorry”.  While obviously there are situations where an apology is necessary, somewhere along the line, we became a society that constantly apologies and the phrase lost its value.  So, the idea is, instead of “sorry I am late” to swap it with “thank you for waiting for me”.  The psychology behind the change in behavior says that when we start saying thank you more often, we become more confident, improve our self-worth, stop judging ourselves harshly, and it overall helps us see the good in the world around us.  A simple change from a negative connotation to a more positive outlook can certainly do wonders. 

In the world of education, especially civics education, the negativity can be overwhelming.  Recently for teachers in Florida, it has been a constant bombardment of negativity towards education and educators.  Whether accurate or not, the messaging has tended to focus on limitations placed on teachers and schools: don’t read these books, don’t teach these topics, don’t say these phrases, don’t use these resources.  As educators, we often choose frustration and feel “sorry” for content or pedagogy we perceive to have lost the ability to engage with.  So instead, this Civic Learning Week, let’s try some “thanks”:

• Thank you for the opportunity to teach about the brilliant young individuals who founded this country.  Individuals who read, debated, compromised, and fought to build any incredibly durable system of government.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach about the language and components of the U.S. Constitution, a framework for government that also protects sacred rights and liberties.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach about individuals from all walks of life and their courageous struggles and endeavors to fulfill the promise of democracy and bring us closer to “a more perfect union”.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach about ways citizens can and must be involved with their government, and the power and responsibility behind the phrase “We the People”.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach the meaning and importance of rule of law and due process in the United States legal system.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach about world affairs and U.S. foreign policy methods available for interacting with the international community.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach patriotism through our country’s aspirations.  In the words of Fredrick Douglass “I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes and at whatever cost.”
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach using a vast number of primary sources that allow for deeper understanding, greater student connections to past events, and as the National Archives puts it, “History in the Raw”.
• Thank you for the opportunity to teach students how to “develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping on individual freedoms, and examine what it means to be a responsible and respectful person, for the purpose of encouraging tolerance of diversity in a pluralistic society and for nurturing and protecting democratic values and institutions.” (Florida State Statute 1003.42-Required Instruction)

Many Framers had concerns about the practicality of the newly established government.  But in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “education would facilitate the people’s good sense on which we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty”.  The ability to teach or be a part of civics education in any way is truly a gift and a blessing.  Together, we ensure this “great experiment” continues and each generation is equipped with civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions to be citizens capable of participating in civic life.          

So I encourage you to take this Civic Learning Week and reenergize your passion.  Re-read your standards, benchmarks, and state statutes and remind yourself of all of the amazing content and skills you get to teach and share.  Listen to a new podcast, attend a professional development opportunity, pick up a book, or engage your colleagues in a conversation about their favorite civics topic.  Take a moment to see the good in the world of teaching civics and government.

And thank you for all that you do.

A city or town newspaper was nicely designed to keep people informed about their own elected representatives. Traditionally, it appeared on your doorstep, offering a mix of features that might encourage you to open it up. Election news would often appear above the fold on the main page. Elections in your own community would be emphasized. You didn’t have to be curious about politics to receive the most relevant political news.

As the chart with this post shows, most Americans (69.3%) claimed they read a newspaper “every day” in 1972, but that proportion has been around 20% since 2016, mirroring a 50% decline in the number of paid journalists. People still consume news, but cable television is national, local television tends to skip politics, and online sources require you to seek them out. (They mainly reach those with prior interests.) Besides, very few people are paid to report factual information about local politics.

I wish I could test whether the decline in daily newspaper journalism and readership explains current low levels of political knowledge. Perhaps that can be shown, but I have not found a long-lasting survey that asks about both news consumption and political knowledge in consistent ways.

The American National Election Survey (ANES) did ask individuals how often they read the newspaper and whether they recalled the names of the congressional candidates in their district. That series lasted from 1984 to 2000. Each year, just about twice as many of the regular newspaper readers recalled the candidates’ names correctly. For instance, in 2000, 51.8% of the regular readers and 24.2% of non-readers got that knowledge question right.

I’d conjecture that if these survey questions had continued, the proportion of news readers would have fallen in the ANES, and with it, knowledge of people’s own local political candidates. But I can’t quite prove it.

Today’s post for Civic Learning Week comes from our own Christophe Spinale, Associate Director of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. He writes for us about the importance of student civic practice!

Despite consensus that civics education is important, there is certainly no shortage of opinion of what civics education should like. Whether from the left, right, or middle, it seems everyone has a view of what civic education should be.  This cornucopia of views got me thinking about the common “threads” that make up civic education and whether or not there will ever be agreement about which ones to use.  I am a bit pessimistic on this point.  As a nation of 50 states, all with their own education policies regarding the teaching of civics, depending on which state students live, the type of civics education they receive is varied. With all this variance on what civic education should be, how can American democracy be expected to survive when, for example, students in Illinois are learning civics differently from students in Florida? Is there enough common ground for the next generation to understand the fragility of our constitutional democracy and what it will take to make it stronger? 

Some argue that the focus should be on the knowledge, but is that sufficient? I would argue no, and I know I would be in good company.  Those considered experts in the realm of civic education have long advocated that knowledge be put to use. This is not a novel approach. For a thousand years, people have learned by doing.  The practicum is foundational to this idea. Seriously, how can this nation’s students learn to “keep the Republic,” if they are not afforded the opportunity to practice citizenship as part of their schooling? Why not afford the opportunity to students to be citizen apprentices? Semantically, I think this is an acceptable approach as the apprenticeship is not novel to education. When I think about those common “threads” and the ways in which they may be “woven” to form a “tapestry’ of civic practice, I am awestruck at the possibilities. Civic education policy makers should be too.

With all the research that shows the effectiveness of coupling civic knowledge with civic skills, the citizen apprentice affords teachers the opportunity to become weavers of civic practice. They are able to take the common “threads” of knowledge and skills and “weave” them together to develop practical learning opportunities around the habits of good citizenship. Of course, this begs the question, what habits?

When thinking about this question, I often think about how the Founders.  This is mostly because they are the ones invoked by the “knowledge advocates” as the basis for understanding our origins. No matter whose story I read, three things strike me – how young many of them were, how well read they were, and how they practiced what they preached.  Obviously, their education provided a foundation of knowledge upon which they could develop the necessary skills to be able to accomplish what they did, but the ages they did it, now that is remarkable. I guess the point is we celebrate these young, bright, accomplished men for their writings, debates, protests, and fighting, so why is there hesitation to include a practice component to learning civics where students learn to deliberate, collaborate, and propose solutions to community issues of concern to them? Shouldn’t there be an expectation to engage in the American experience and participate in political processes as part of learning how to be a good citizen? Shouldn’t these types of “threads” be a basic component for all students engaged in civic learning? 

As a parent, I want my children to have this type of civic education.  I don’t want them being distrustful of democracy. I want them to engage their elected officials responsibly. I want them to have civil discourse and find common ground on issues where there may be disagreement.  In other words, I want them to know how to be a good citizen, having discussed current events and controversial issues, engaged service learning, and participate in simulations of democratic processes.  Imagine the possibilities of allowing our schools and teachers to be weavers of civic practice, where students can truly learn what it means to be  a good citizen, but more importantly, act like one.

I am color-blind. I have the common red/green type sometimes called Daltonism.

I do not mind. In fact, I don’t think I would accept a permanent “cure,” if there were one. I might like to experience the colors that most sighted people see, but I wouldn’t want to leave the world I know on a one-way journey. I love what I experience.

Miguel Fructuoso, Maria Sanchez and Miguel Angel Tornero are established Spanish artists. Although Fructuoso was born in 1971, he was recently diagnosed with Daltonism. I am curious about that story. Adults realized that I was color-blind when I was still a little kid. Fructuoso is a painter, and he has the same physical condition I do. I am not sure how he remained undiagnosed for half a century. It has been suggested, but not widely accepted, that the English landscape painter Constable was color-blind at a time before that condition was recognized.

In any case, Fructuoso’s realization “initiated an intense collaboration” with Sanchez and Tornero, who have co-produced works as “formal exercises” that help them to explore “empathy and exclusion, the rare and the common, individualism and the collectivity.”

They have created several such works for the Centro Jose Guerrero in Granada. Guerrero was born here in 1914, spent a considerable portion of his life as an abstract expressionist painter in New York City, and died in Barcelona in 1991. He was known for vivid color. That makes his eponymous museum a perfect location for an exhibition about color-blindness.

The photo (above) that illustrates this post shows a painting by Guerrero from ca. 1970 (I think), copied by the three contemporary artists, with color-blind “Bill” choosing the paints. Yes, the two images look very similar to me, except along the top band.

Below is the result when many people with red/green color-blindness were offered a large selection of paints and asked to paint a line of a single color around the room in the Centro Jose Guerrero. Yes, I perceive a green line going all the way around.

And here, the artists have reproduced the standard tests for color-blindness as gallery works in paint and print. (No, I cannot see any numbers, but I do like these images.)

Since I have not felt mistreated as a result of color-blindness, I was not deeply moved by the exhibition’s message of empathy and inclusion, although it’s certainly benign. And I suppose I am sympathetic to Fructuoso, although he has done very well in a conceptual/expressionist mode.

I find aesthetic questions about color-blindness interesting. For example, how might we compare the art that I see (and love) to what most of you see? Does it matter that I don’t see what was intended? And how should I feel, as a person with Daltonism, about monochrome art, expressionist art that is meant to look different from the real world, or impressionist works that reproduce nature’s colors for me even though both the paintings and their objects look different to you?

Proposals for sessions at the annual Frontiers of Democracy conference are due by March 31. You can propose a session here.
 
You are also encouraged to register and purchase tickets soon since space is limited.
 
Proposals are welcome on any topic at the “frontiers of democracy”—for instance, political reform, organizing and social movements, dialogue and deliberation, journalism and media, civic education from K-12 to college or community settings, nonviolent resistance, collaborative governance, social entrepreneurship, democratic theory, online forums and tools, issues such as climate change or racial justice, engaged research methods, democracy in any region of the world, and more. Many formats are welcome with a preference for interactive designs over pure presentations.
 
The last face-to-face Frontiers conference before COVID-19 drew about 140 people, of whom 30% were nonprofit staff, 25% were scholars/researchers, 15% were educators, 5% were community-organizers, and the rest came from many fields, including the arts, philanthropy, business, and government. Most came from beyond the Boston area and a few from overseas.
 
Most proposals for 2023 are not expected to address the special theme: religious pluralism and robust democracy in multiracial societies. That theme will mainly be a topic for two of the plenary sessions, which will be panel discussions involving Cornell William Brooks, Brandon Thomas Crowley, Diana Eck, Andrew Hanauer, Aminta Kilawan-Narine, Eric Liu, Cristina Moon, Simran Jeet Singh, Michael Wear, and others to be named. Some conference participants may be interested in considering connections between religion and your proposed topic, but you do not have to mention religion in your proposal.
 
The submission form for a session requires a title and description for the conference agenda, some thoughts about your format and audience, and the contact information of confirmed collaborators.
 
This year’s conference will be in-person, not hybrid. However, session organizers may propose to include remote people in their own sessions.

Time and location: July 13 (5 – 7 PM) to July 15 (noon) on Tufts University’s Medford, MA campus near the Medford/Tufts Station on the Boston Green Line.

Cost: $240 for a standard ticket with discounts for current students. This includes hors d’oeuvres on July 13, breakfast and lunch on July 14, and breakfast and lunch on July 15. Other meals and lodgings are not provided.