Civics education and Virginia's school standards

Henry Borger:

The June 18 editorial "Students of history" outlined steps that should be taken to correct the distressing ignorance of U.S. students about civics. I am sure most education professionals will endorse those recommendations, such as civic-oriented activities, because they follow modern theories of education. Unfortunately, these actions would introduce gross inefficiencies and time-wasting activities into the curriculum. Modern education theories are the main reason students complain of too much work but show themselves to be poorly educated in most subjects.

I took a one-year high school course in civics 60 years ago that was taught by our football-basketball-baseball coach, whose main interest was athletics, not civics. We never took any field trips or did any community service. Yet we learned civics. How? We went through the textbook. It wasn't sexy or exciting -- real learning seldom is -- but it worked. To really improve students' knowledge, schools need only buy good textbooks and tell the teachers to teach the book. It's that easy.

Posted by jimz at June 25, 2011 4:24 AM
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