Replies

A suggestion: The Founding Fathers arrived at the idea of the separation of powers from the experience of seeing what it was like when all the power was invested in one branch of government under the absolutist kings of the 17th-18th centuries. Maybe reviewing the abuses of earlier one-branch systems would help students appreciate where the Founding Fathers were coming from on that.

That would definitely be a start, but, IMO not enough since the kiddos don't have any ties to history. The connection we all have with history is lost on them because they have grown up with instant gratification, and have no memory of what it really means to lose freedom. Parental discipline and getting grounded isn't a strong enough incentive to learn about history.

I just have this nagging feeling that we can teach it but they won't receive it because of the degree to which the society as a whole has withered.

I honestly feel that more intervention needs to be done at a basic level. Not just teach kids about government and history of the founding fathers in high school, but initiate civic duty from Kinderarten on, even if it is just a mock election to start. Shoot, I remember having mock elections every time there was a real election, when I was little. Then again, I am also a product of the grand experiment ~open clasrooms~ that was abandoned because teachers had too much difficulty managing a class without walls. (My teachers did just fine, and in fact were quite good at it.)

*sigh* I ramble.

We got civic duty education - but we were homeschooled... a candidate for State Rep called our house last night and I talked to him for a while, seems someone told him there are three Republican conservatives who vote in primaries living there (should be four but my sister doesn't bother to get an absentee ballot. Slacker). He knew all our hot-button topics and it was very interesting for me - I haven't got political sales calls before.

Heh, he's got my vote. I think I've heard certain politicians are focusing on homeschooled kids when they need campaign work done, because we're motivated and a little better educated than the average.

Then again, I am also a product of the grand experiment ~open clasrooms~ that was abandoned because teachers had too much difficulty managing a class without walls.

My Dad used to teach in an open-walled classroom. The kids were hard to manage, though I'm not sure the walls were the only reason :)

Regarding giving kids a sense of history (history was one of my majors so I think about this sometimes), I'm in favor of a multimedia approach to teaching history that would include viewing historical films (I have this really useful book by George MacDonald Fraser called The Hollywood History of the World that catalogs historical films for each era of history), as well as good fictional films that tie into history (stuff like the Indiana Jones movies that have historically-interesting settings--I thought that Young Indiana Jones TV series that was on for a while could've been a good educational tool for teaching the WWI era, if it was better written), field trips to historical sites, wargame simulations for teaching wars like WWII, etc. as well as textbook study. To me history is most exciting when it seems 3-dimensional (kind of like I like to study Tolkien's history through his maps because it helps me visualize the stories). Also tying it to the Bible made ancient history seem more relevant to me. Likewise tying it to modern historical events also helped get me interested in modern American history--the debate between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson suddenly became interesting to me when I realized how it related to modern political debate. That was how I got interested in history, anyway.