Civic Curiosity
I’ve been curious about civics for a while now. I like asking random people I meet if they had a civics course. I have talked to strangers in a bar, other teachers, an Uber driver. I am fascinated about how people learn to be citizens both inside and outside a classroom and how civics is taught.
Civics seems like a dusty old word relegated to the bin of history, along with Shop and Home Economics. I am also aware of a deep anxiety around our upcoming election that sometimes reaches our schools. I feel it and I think others do as well. Where does this anxiety come from? Perhaps some of our current anxiety might be assuaged by being curious about what we mean by civics and what our students need. How do we move through it? What happens when we are curious about civics as a way to teach how to citizen?
I used to tell the students in my civic class that citizenship is both a noun and a verb. You have to learn how to citizen - with social media, in person, through volunteering or art. Our essential question for the class was what it meant to be a good citizen. The answer seems easy - a good citizen follows rules, votes, and is involved in their community. But a good citizen is also curious about why things are the way they are and who gets to decide, and they are curious about what it takes to imagine a different reality.
Civics, like politics, is also personal. I think how we envision civics (if we even think about it at all) has a lot to do with how we learned citizenship. If we took a civics course, did it teach us to follow or to question? When you think about your school community, what lessons are being taught about how to citizen? Most schools have spaces and customs to learn rules and norms. Where do students learn how to question, critique and work for a cause they are passionate about or something bigger than themselves? Civic spaces are becoming more and more rare in both society and schools, and that increases civic anxiety because students do not have intellectual spaces to test out their civic assumptions, which means schools also play a role in teaching students how to citizen. Civics offers us a way to move beyond politics to focusing on what students need to be able to think and do.
I would argue all schools are citizenship schools by default and that the lessons we teach are both implicit and explicit. We teach how to citizen in everything we do, yet we rarely frame it as civics. Civics can and should be about learning the processes and history of how change happens, but also the specific set of skills in developing voice and working to make change happen. Students should know how to research a topic deeply, listen to opposing views, form a well informed stance and communicate their thoughts in a creative, engaging way to influence others. Civics is both an intellectual and experiential exercise.
This is also very personal to me. Last spring as I finished the L + D fellowship cohort and reflected on what I wanted to bring home. I said I wanted my “immigrant eyes” back. What I actually meant is that I wanted to be curious about the awesomely deep and complicated idea that is American Democracy. I wanted to feel like I could be inspired to teach my students about citizenship without indoctrination or being cynical. I wanted my students to develop a new kind of intellectual curiosity - a civic intelligence.
I’ve argued previously for safe spaces in schools where students can develop civic intelligence. These are spaces specifically for learning and practicing citizenship. It is the conscious creation of a lab where democracy can be experimented on, tested, examined and experienced.
When I first was developing my civics class in 2008, I had two students that had studied the Pine Ridge Reservation in History class. They began researching and came upon the TED talk of Aaron Huey, a talented photographer that had embedded himself in the reservation over many years. Through researching his images, students created a powerful podcast talking about westward expansion from the perspective of the Oglala Sioux. Their learning did not stop there. After seeing the conditions of the people of Pine Ridge, they found a volunteer organization that provided both a learning and service experience in South Dakota. With my help, we organized a service learning trip which the two students co-led. The school ended up running this program for five years every spring break. From one topic in History class, we created a powerful conversation around developing and giving voice, lived histories and connection with humans in a meaningful way beyond a text. This is the power of curiosity around civics.
Civic intelligence goes beside, but also beyond, service learning and global travel. It gets messy sometimes, and there are not clear answers to every issue or debate, but the skills needed to be more curious than certain through civics is important for every single student to develop their civic intelligence.
The stakes are high. I feel a special responsibility to do this right as I teach students that will have an incredible amount of power and privilege. I want them to be smart about civics and to know how to citizen for themselves and others. Teaching civics is both an art and science because while it covers answers like laws, history, context and procedures, a good civics course strives to teach students to question.
When students, and communities, move from a place of curiosity, I think it helps quell some of the anxiety we feel. There is an amazing organization called Citizen University that aims to strengthen the civic culture of American society, and one of their programs called for gathering around a topic on Saturdays. Students in my civics class would hold these events and present a speech on a topic open to community members. One of the most engaging presentations was around the question of what students thought was missing in their civic education. After the presentation, we would talk, and students would learn to explain their points and have their assumptions questioned by community members. We always tempered the discussion with a focus on the essential question of what it means to be a good citizen.
I would argue a good citizen is always curious and a great school is always curious how they can teach citizenship better, deeper and more explicitly.
So this election season, I wonder if we can identify where the spaces are in our schools and communities where our students learn to be curious about their civic selves and if they don’t exist, then we should be honest about that and find ways to bring them into the school curriculum and pedagogy.. I don’t mean just how a bill becomes a law but also how students make sense of themselves as part of a civic imaginary. How do we teach civics now? If we don’t, why not? What would a new, curious vision around civic intelligence look like? Can we be curious enough to ask our communities what they need in order to citizen powerfully?
