Whose ethics are they anyway?

"The personal values that drive their attitudes towards ethical issues may be more resistant to change."

Throughout the course, I've asked myself, "what is the purpose of teaching social studies?" And I still remain positive that it's to produce civic minded, active, worldly citizens. By extension of this, what would be the purpose of teaching ethics? I don't think we could come to a unified decision on this. By using extreme examples such as sweat shops and organ donations, it seems we don't require students to think more personally about value systems and ethics, and to use less extreme examples would probably cause an uproar. For instance, what if we started by looking at factory workers, or the access of healthcare, in America? Just thinking aloud.

I'm not entirely surprised by the outcome of the study done in the article, and it's clear the point of the curriculum/article was for students to change their thinking on ethical issues, or at least consider other points of view. So what would make this more successful, for students to consider thinking beyond their immediate value systems?

While school is an important tool for socialization, it seems efforts to teach students about ethics would be best combined within topic areas such as history, politics, economics, etc., to help remove their sense of self from the equation. Meaning that maybe they'd be better challenged thinking about the ethics of presidential decisions, etc., rather than their own. And using sweat shops as the illustration of the divergence of rational self interest and greed seems, albeit relevant, a too severe example for students to relate too. It feels inauthentic.

I'm not sure where I stand on teaching ethics, because I think it can be kind of a slippery slope. Who am I to tell students what is and isn't ethical? A great example of this is the subprime mortgage crisis referenced in the beginning of the reading... who really is to blame, is there an ethical concensus on it?

[editors note: I have opinions on ethics and ethical decisions, and what should be taught to students in terms of what constitutes ethical behavior. I just think it would come off as political]

Civics Education: Westheimer Kahn Response

I found the "What Kind of Citizen" article captivating, likely because it pertains to my current body of work. The organization I work full time for is a volunteer organization and an affiliate of a foundation mentioned in the article, riddled with problems relating to core mission that center around these fundamental ideas of personal responsibility, participation, justice/progressive views, and which of those really prepares people for democratic citizenship. While we do some more cutting edge work in these fields, it's only a small percentage of the overall operation.

For example, I've been actively trying to push my employer to pursue a service learning component to volunteer projects; this article justifies my rationale, in that it shows that equating volunteerism and service as synonymous with citizenship doesn't cause participants to question the status quo or learn more about the issue at hand (p. 243). While I'm talking about my work with adults, given that the DC public school system requires students to do 100 of community service before they graduate (which many of them do through my organization), this is an important issue we face in civics education. I would go as far as to say that the belief that service and "character" are all that are required of people to be good citizens, is actually a plague we have to face as civics educators.

My organization routinely measures our impact in the community in number of schools painted, meals served, parks cleaned... and while, via volunteers, we help other organizations address critical needs, we do our volunteers and the community a disservice by not taking a more participatory or justice-oriented approach to engaging people in service. But I say this from the perspective that I believe we have a huge opportunity to activate people to be better citizens; some of my colleagues might believe in the power of volunteerism simply because it's help being exchanged benevolently.

And what does this all have to do with civics education? In my opinion, my work illustrates the failure of it, the nature of people today to volunteer for warm fuzzies rather than to be "citizens," and (to me) the pervasive nature of the idea of the Personally Responsible Citizen. And it drives me to want to teach a civics related class more than any other topic available to me as a social studies teacher.

Whew, long and rambling!

Civics Education

This week's readings, albeit not surprising, are thought provoking, especially given where we live (in the center of civic engagement). They also get to the heart of some of the issues behind the reasons I want to teach overall.

I found this quote particularly relevant: "while political engagement is up, community engagement is down." People continue to form civic opinions without a basis steeped in reality, or in their physical communities, for their decision making; the increase in news intake in our society has allowed the general public to grow ever increasingly self involved, and at the same time continue to develop opinions on civics and community. In my mind, this is what bridges the gap in participation between political engagement and community engagement--people believe they are participating because they form opinions, but they are lacking an external investment (believing they are part of a community) to drive engagement in that realm.

I'm inspired by this article to encourage empathy and community engagement as reasons behind teaching civics.

The notion of English and Math being the only tested subjects also drives me to be a social studies teacher. I understand the fundamental logic--that these two classes teach the basic skills of reading, writing, and math. But the social studies classroom (in theory) is so rich with Language Arts practice, that it's almost a matter of fiction versus nonfiction (when it comes to reading and writing material). It should be on the same pedestal.

Long, rambling rant, but the article spoke to my inner social studies teacher!

Not really about documentary films...

This week's articles on using film in the classroom was thought provoking and timely, given that in the Marcus & Stoddard piece, teachers attribute PBS as their main source of documentary material, yet this week, Congress voted to eliminate their funding ASAP (since this is my blog, I'll take a second to encourage you to sign the petition). I found the suggested uses of the film in the classroom ideal, both because they reinforce the idea of teaching perspective in the classroom, and because they are incredibly progressive and evocative in subject.

It also surprised me that teachers found documentaries to be objective, and then upon reflection, it didn't; in college I made a historical documentary as part of class, and reflecting back on the experience, I realize we had a definitive agenda when we set out making the film--to push the timeline of African American activism much earlier than Rosa Parks and the sit-in movement.

What really got me thinking from these articles, however, wasn't the concept of using film in the classroom--which I plan on doing in the ways that these authors suggest. It was the Bayard Rustin documentary, and the classroom lessons that could be derived from it. I found the notion that, "Gay people have replaced African Americans as the "barometer for civil rights"" (Hess, p. 197), so evocative, and such a conversation starter. It got me thinking whether or not my students will be mature enough to navigate a discussion about that type of subject matter, and whether or not I am unbiased enough to mediate it. The idea of showing such a film, and broaching such a topic, makes me almost nervous enough to avoid doing so. But then this notion got me thinking even further: at what point do I get to decide what is taught in my classroom?

A discussion of this sort would surely bring up responses that are offensive, even if innocent, and a way initially to mitigate those would be to center the discussion around this one quote, and use public opinion data to avoid talking about ourselves. But this would surely still offend some people based on subject alone.

At what point do we allow ourselves to make choices on what we will and will not include in our classrooms: in discussions, in materials, in curriculum? Do I ever get that power? And when we get to these discussions, do I have the power to empower the viewpoint that I believe is right, if it's not written into a handed down curriculum (when it comes to homosexuals, discrimination, etc)?

I think some of these questions are resolved in presenting a variety of perspectives, but at some point, there is a right and a wrong.

History and Identity: Teaching for the Common Good 1&3

"Establishing who we are also means establishing who we aren't." (p.30)

I'll apologize in advance for this being rather rambly! As an aspiring history educator, I found these chapters moderately insightful, though connected to what we've been taught throughout the program. Chapter three's Identification Stance had some thought provoking points--particularly this quote. But the notion of teaching history through concepts of identity ties directly to the idea of making content relevant for students, which is hardly an earth shattering idea. The authors introduce a few interesting complications when discussing this idea of using the identity to teach history: that it can alienate students from a variety of perspectives, and the discipline, because it makes history less objective (which is a requirement of it being taken seriously, scholarly). They resolve this, too, through a familiar concept--a more multicultural understanding of American history and what it means to be American. What this selection did for me professionally was reinforce these previously taught ideas, and get me started thinking about how to hook kids in the classroom by having them self identify their "communities."

I guess I found this quote interesting because it is relevant in so many ways. When we teach a national identity, properly, we also teach the ills of the formation of America as a country and bust some myths of greatness and freedom (Native Americans, slavery, the treatment of most marginalized populations). When we learn about ourselves through family history, we are able to identify with some communities, and we also learn those which we aren't a part of. When we teach students to identify with something--be it a community, or a country, or their familial roots--we have to draw distinctions that may be alienating, or divisive, or cause us to make decisions about what a community, or an identity, is or isn't.

Pesonally, this passage made me reflect on my understanding of my family history as well. I have always understood it as simple; my mother comes from a fresh off the boat Italian heritage, and my dad comes from a Pennsylvania farming background, with roots in Great Britain. This year, however, my mother discovered that my father is a descendant of a man named Herman Husband, who was a representative and "rebel" in MD and NC right before the Revolutionary War.

This means I am unofficially a Daughter of the American Revolution, which complicates my understanding of my family heritage and where I--and my parents--came from. My father's side was blue collar--he didn't go to college. None of his family really know their heritage besides the name "Poole" is English in roots. Aren't DARs rich people? I thought of myself as the descendant of recent immigrants, until now. It took my mother, with skills, time and means, to locate this information online through genealogical records. My father, who still doesn't know how to use Internet, would have never discovered this.

This new discovery muddled my understanding of who I was, and served as an additional illustration of how important identity, even at the most personal level, is wrapped up in history (and vice versa).

Week One Response, Symcox 4-6 & Conclusion

Week One Response, Symcox 4-6 & Conclusion

Chapters 4, 5, 6, and the conclusion of Linda Symcox's Whose History? is littered with names and acronyms of organizations who participated in, and ultimately dismantled, the nineties quest for what should be taught in schools through the social studies discipline. I found it incredibly easy to get bogged down in Symcox's history of history standards, with it reading like a textbook.

But what I did pull from the final pages of Symcox's discourse was an interesting complication in the standards debate that, ironically, stemmed from a conservative viewpoint in the text.

I'll disclose fully that I'm a bleeding heart liberal, so to find truth in even a couple of words of conservative rhetoric--even about something such as social studies standards--is rare. But on page 123, Paul Gagnon lambastes the world history standards set forth because the document "offers no help to teachers... than any massive world history text would do. The document fails to set priorities."

I side with the argument Symcox puts forth--that a conservative agenda unfairly crushed a set of well-written standards that set out to overhaul the white-male dominant presidential synthesis curriculum, and do justice to those traditionally underserved by social studies education. But this comment by Gagnon is relevant. The conservatives involved in this conflict may have had an agenda, but they set out to define social studies education (even if incredibly limited in scope). The NCHS standards, however, failed to really offer a definition of what should be taught, because it lacked priorities. Perhaps this is a misreading of Symcox on my part.

I came to this conclusion as someone who will eventually be faced with making choices about what to teach, and what to exclude. And while I already plan to complicate a traditional history with the types of information that the NCHS standards include, I know I'll face classes who lack fundamental knowledge and skills, and my time will be diverted to remediation. As an educator in training, anticipating these realities, I believe standards should seek to prioritize curriculum by daring to answer WHY we teach social studies. How can I answer that for my students, if I can't answer the question myself? (sidenote: I do have a personal answer to this question, but I'm not arrogant enough to think it's the best one)