“One unintended effect of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is intended to help fund teaching of science and math to young people, is that it has effectively squeezed out civics education because there is no testing for that anymore and no funding for that,” she said. “And at least half of the states no longer make the teaching of civics and government a requirement for high school graduation. This leaves a huge gap, and we can’t forget that the primary purpose of public schools in America has always been to help produce citizens who have the knowledge and the skills and the values to sustain our republic as a nation, our democratic form of government.”
So says retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor channeling E.D. Hirsch. Speaking at the Games for Change conference in New York City last week, O’Connor discussed an interactive, web-based civics curriculum she is developing for seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students called Our Courts. Yep. Madame Justice is becoming a gamer.
O’Connor noted that two-thirds of Americans can name at least one of the judges on American Idol, but fewer than one in ten can name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
“The better educated our citizens are, the better equipped they will be to preserve the system of government we have. And we have to start with the education of our nation’s young people. Knowledge about our government is not handed down through the gene pool. Every generation has to learn it, and we have some work to do.”
Our Courts is scheduled to launch a site for teachers in September 2008, and in September 2009 for kids. Preview the site at http://www.ourcourts.org.
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O’Connor noted that two-thirds of Americans can name at least one of the judges on American Idol, but fewer than one in ten can name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Well, hopefully that will improve now that O’Connor is off. My thought: why should students bother to learn the the names of Justices who obviously don’t bother to read the Constitution? Bad role models. Students would do better to stick with Simon Cowell. Let’s just say he doesn’t use penumbral reasoning.
We’ve had some pretty bad justices during my lifetime, but I swear my 10 year old could poke holes in O’Conner’s reasoning on the bench.
Welcome back. VC. We’ve missed your curmudgeonly stylings around here. Where’ve you been? Didn’t you promise to post at least three warm and fuzzy comments not too long ago? I think you still owe two more!
Robert