Education Law

O'Conner on Citizenship Education

I can't help but feel slightly uncomfortable at Justice O'Conner's foray into citizenship education, which is in the blogs again.

We must do a better job of educating young people to become active and informed participants in our democracy.

Absolutely true. But, I feel there is something a little hypocritical about making a statement like that and siding with the majority in Bethel v. Fraser and Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier - cases which have substantially limited students ability to express themselves in practicality, whether or not they are severe limitations in theory. 

Her remedy for this is (1) more civic education:

Civic education has lost ground, and today usually consists of a one-semester course.

(2) Better textbooks and (3) more dynamic instruction. 

The first is problem-based learning, which utilizes primary documents, video clips and news articles to allow students to formulate their own opinions of and test their own arguments for key principles in constitutional and political reasoning. Young people should be encouraged to explore issues like the separation of powers by interacting in their classrooms or in extra-curricular forums through debates, negotiations, mock trials and role-playing. They should be encouraged, to the extent possible, to visit our courts and participate in Teen Court; to visit our state legislatures and Congress; to read newspapers; and to write letters to their elected officials and the editors of their local newspapers. All of these activities will train them to become active citizens.

And in doing all of those activities, students increasingly run the risk of their speech offending school officials and subsequently being disciplined, thanks to Justice O'Conner. It is difficult to have a conversation about real issues that affect these students (not separation of powers?) like drug usage among their peers when the Supreme Court publishes decisions like this.

Plus, the entire operation of the school is a lesson is civics ... in fact, I would contend the school's operation can and does teach students much, much more about civics than even 10 courses and 20 textbooks could ever do. It is one thing to have a course to talk about the beauty of the American government and quite another for the American government to suspend your property right in an education because of expressing your honest feelings on a controversial issue in a school sponsored forum. No civics course in the world could make up for the damage done to that student and all her friends.

So, I can't help but think there is an element of lipservice in O'Conner's civics education push. Yes we should teach our students about our democracy, but we have to realize that we are constantly teaching our students about our democracy every day they attend for 15-20 years. Justice O'Conner, in fact, has already taught our nation's students a lesson in civics ... and I have to say her lessons have been pretty harsh.

Full post as published by Edjurist on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).