The Core Knowledge Foundation has partnered with the Civics Renewal Network (CRN), an alliance of more than thirty nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations working to provide free online resources to educators for classroom instruction in civics.
According to their website, CRN is “committed to strengthening civic life in the U.S. by increasing the quality of civics education in our nation’s schools and by improving accessibility to high-quality, no-cost learning materials. On the Civics Renewal Network site, teachers can find the best resources of these organizations, searchable by subject, grade, resource type, standards, and teaching strategy.”
Free downloadable resources made available by the Core Knowledge Foundation on CRN’s website include a number of American history units in the Core Knowledge History and GeographyTM (CKHG) series. These resources feature The Pathway to Citizenship, an array of specific topics, questions, and activities that focus on the rights and duties of citizenship, including key historical events, ideas, documents, laws, and the structure of American government.
In a recent article in the online journal Democracy, Core Knowledge founder E. D. Hirsch, Jr. notes that the “democratic responsibilities” of our nation’s schools “must include teaching the national public culture to all, and encouraging loyalty to the national community and to its best ideals. That will require American schools to teach a lot more history and civics, including the basic Enlightenment principles of the nation.”
The Core Knowledge Foundation aims to support the teaching of “a lot more history and civics” by making our CKHG American history resources freely available, not only through our own website but also through partnering with the Civics Renewal Network. We encourage you to visit CRN’s website and explore the free civics curriculum resources offered by their partner organizations.
Do you offer any guidance on presenting this program/approach to the staff? I believe that teaching civics is a fundamental mission of public schools. Teachers must be actively engaged in the curriculum choices for our building. What feedback have you received from schools that have used your material? What are the costs associated with your program? I am trying to gather information so that I may lead my own school in implementing civics and character development courses in an after school program. Thank you for any information and thank you for the thoughtful presentation of your materials.
Do you believe that by using this program within a school the students, as well as the teachers, become more effective in shared leadership? I believe that a deeper appreciation for our system of governance should contribute to a higher level of shared leadership within a building. Has anyone had any successes with this approach?