We're living in an era of #TruthDecay: Americans increasingly disagree about basic facts. This can have dire consequences.
Civic education is key to reversing the course. Our new report identifies ways to spark an American civics revival. [thread]
🏫 the state of civic education and media literacy in public schools
✏️the challenges teachers face in promoting kids' civic development
🇺🇸 ways to enhance civic learning opportunities for students.
1️⃣Think outside the textbook.
Hands-on experiences, such as school-based elections and mock trials, could be used more often to engage students and help them learn about democracy.
Many teachers said that pressure to cover other subjects was a barrier to teaching civics. But there are ways to weave civics lessons into other subjects, including language arts and math.
Teachers could use social & emotional learning practices to guide students through discussions of controversial topics in a safe & respectful way. This could help kids learn how to have productive conversations about tough subjects—rather than avoid them.
Overall, teachers need more support to promote students' civic development. But this is especially true for teachers in schools that serve more students of color and low-income students.
🔹how they promote civic development
🔹the barriers they face
🔹what they're observing in their students.
https://t.co/O22eNbL5lj
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Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/
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I\u2019m sorry it\u2019s just insane that Democrats are like, \u201cwe won everything and our opening position on relief is $1.9T\u201d and Republicans are like, \u201cwe lost and our opening position is $600B,\u201d and the media will be like, \u201cDemocrats say they want unity but reject this bipartisan deal.\u201d
— Meredith Shiner (@meredithshiner) January 31, 2021
First, party/policy mandates from elections are far from self-executing in our system. Work on mandates from Dahl to Ellis and Kirk on the history of the mandate to mine on its role in post-Nixon politics, to Peterson Grossback and Stimson all emphasize that this link is... 2/
Created deliberately and isn't always persuasive. Others have to convinced that the election meant a particular thing for it to work in a legislative context. I theorized in the immediate period of after the 2020 election that this was part of why Repubs signed on to ...3/
Trump's demonstrably false fraud nonsense - it derailed an emerging mandate news cycle. Winners of elections get what they get - institutional control - but can't expect much beyond that unless the perception of an election mandate takes hold. And it didn't. 4/
Let's turn to the legislation element of this. There's just an asymmetry in terms of passing a relief bill. Republicans are presumably less motivated to get some kind of deal passed. Democrats are more likely to want to do *something.* 5/
