But Mr. Levine says the school climate for effectively teaching civics depends on whether the curriculum has room for discussion of current events. Finding that space in elementary and middle schools has become more challenging since the implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which emphasizes school accountability for mathematics, reading, and science, but not for social studies, he said. The problem with civics education now, Mr. Levine contends, is that it isn’t usually taught in an interactive way. “What we’re interested in is kids’ developing reasoned opinions,” he said.
I could not have said it better. We are too often forced to teach about what dead people did 200 years ago than what is directly impacting students and their parents today. I take a sizable chunk of each period to discuss current events, but it takes a toll on the students' scores on the district-administered final, which focuses much more on events which happened in the first 100 years of our nation's history.
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