Previously I talked about bringing the “politics” of human rights into the classroom. What there wasn’t room for, was all the ways that genuine political issues belong in the classroom. As teachers, it is our role to prepare students to participate in our democracy. This can’t happen all in one single semester Civics class in High School. Nor is it meant to. Weaved throughout the common core ELA standards for all grades, and the social studies standards at upper grades, we teach students to separate fact from opinion, to compare multiple accounts of the same event, to synthesize information on two sides of an argument. What more critical purpose does this serve than to prepare them to participate fully in our democracy?
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What we must also do is ensure they have a basis on the issues of the day so that when they first participate in the political process- as a voter, as a protestor, as a volunteer, as a donor perhaps- they are choosing sides based on their own beliefs.
There are many issues- gun control, taxes, the social safety net on which it is not the job of teachers to tell students how to think and some, like capital punishment or abortion, that are not age appropriate for an elementary classroom. But it is important that we give students both sides. In my last post I leaned on Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s moving sidewalk analogy, saying that when we don’t act, when we don’t discuss things with our students, they are going to naturally move in the direction they are being carried, whether by greater society, their peers, their communities, or their families. On these issues, we should only hope to pause students on their journey, and give them the facts and skills to choose a direction on their own.
Last year, well before our time with our students was abruptly disrupted, my students and I took on a shared writing activity within our persuasive writing unit. As a class, we took on Gun Control. My fifth graders moved through a gallery walk in our classroom that included information from Everytown Gun Safety and the CDC- mostly statistical charts, I was also working on our data analysis skills. They quietly made notes in their notebooks and left reflections on post-its. I explained the origins of the need for a militia briefly (we weren’t to the Revolution in Social Studies yet), then they shared their own personal experiences, some students talked about their fears of gun violence at school and others talked about family friends who hunted and having joined them occasionally. Nobody screamed or shouted, and everyone took the information seriously
Once we had statistics and anecdotes, we discussed as a class what position we would take on a gun ban. I was only the facilitator, occasionally playing devil’s advocate for other side, until we took a vote and determined as a class that our sample writing would be to keep guns with some controls. They were the ones who suggested that compromise. I knew my students were amazing, but that day, I couldn’t have been more proud. They were respectful, thoughtful, used our academic language to respectfully disagree and build on to one another’s feelings. I was tempted to record them and send it to Congress to offer them a chance to take notes on respectful disagreement. The students also practiced those data analysis skills, asked questions about the information they were being presented, and of course, got practice using transition phrases and citing sources in writing a persuasive piece. I also celebrated their maturity with a few extra minutes of recess, which gave them necessary processing time after such a heavy discussion.
Developing critical thinkers and thoughtful decision makers is one of our most important roles as teachers, and it is so much more aligned with creating “Twenty-First Century Learners” when it is tied to real and genuine issues. That is exactly the place of the teacher, and politics, in our classrooms.
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