Humanities II

"Close Up's High School Program curriculum is designed to inform, inspire, and empower students to become more active citizens. For over forty years, we have been dedicated to this mission. This mission and inspiration comes from a commitment and understanding of the importance that civic education plays in the health of our democracy and in the lives of each student. A National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement study in 2012, found that students who participate in civic learning opportunities are more likely to "persist in college and complete their degrees, obtain skills prized by employers and develop habits of social responsibility and civic participation." The study goes on to say, "Today's education for democracy needs to be informed by deep engagement with the values of liberty, equality…and the willingness to collaborate with people of differing views and backgrounds towards common solutions for the public good.""

"Fake news sites are only the latest trend prompting teachers to join a statewide effort aimed at educating students about how to engage with government."

"hey may be digital natives with instincts that allow them to use the latest app and easily share photos and video on social media platforms, but when it comes to evaluating information they access on the web, those from middle school through college aren't nearly as knowledgeable as some might think. In fact, they can't tell an ad from a news story or hate group propaganda from factual material from a respected news outlet. In fact, the Stanford History Education Group described students' reasoning ability when it comes to Internet information as "bleak." The group's 18-month project, "Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning," looked at "the ability to judge the credibility of information that floods young people's smartphones, tablets and computers.""

""We've been needing to have these conversations for a while, so this is definitely the time," said Michael Boyle, who is developing a media-literacy course at West Chester University as part of a new undergraduate minor in media and culture. "If we're not going to do it now, then why bother?""

"A year ago I made an informal study of the mission statements of the 100 largest school systems in the United States. I was curious to see whether the public purpose of public education - preparing children for citizenship and self-government - is top of mind when those who run those systems ask themselves, "What exactly is our purpose here?" Unsurprisingly, it's not. About 60 percent of those big districts, collectively responsible for more than 11 million children, made no mention whatsoever of civics or citizenship. But it got a lot worse: The words "America" and "American" appeared zero times in the 100 school mission statements. Neither did "patriotic" or "patriotism." However, "global" appears in the statements of 28 districts - usually in phrases like "global society," "global economy" or "global citizens." What are we to make of that? The public mission of education in America's schools (as distinct from the private and personal ends of college and career readiness) seems suddenly relevant. Writing in The Atlantic, Rick Kahlenberg asks whether the election of Donald Trump represents a "Sputnik moment" for civic education, forcing us to confront how badly we have failed "at what the nation's founders saw as education's most basic purpose," namely preparing our children for reflective and capable self-government. "Just as Soviet technological advances triggered investment in science education in the 1950s," Kahlenberg writes, "the 2016 election should spur renewed emphasis on the need for schools to instill in children an appreciation for civic values and not just a skill set for private employment.""

"We have much bigger problems than just the fake news sites circulating on Facebook-this is a concern for news organizations using social media to discover content, as well. To begin to develop a grammar of fake news, I collected six types of false information we've seen this election season."

""The widespread assumption is that Asian Americans came to the United States very disadvantaged, and they wound up advantaged through extraordinary investments in their children's education," says Brown University economist Nathaniel Hilger. But that's not what really happened, he says. Hilger recently used old census records to trace the fortunes of whites, blacks and Asians who were born in California during the early- to mid-20th century. He found that educational gains had little to do with how Asian Americans managed to close the wage gap with whites by the 1970s. Instead, his research suggests that society simply became less racist toward Asians."

"NPR's Kelly McEvers talks to Professor Sam Wineburg about his study that tested over 7,800 teenagers about their ability to differentiate fake from real news and sponsored ads from news articles."

"Teachers are using the tumultuous election to reawaken Americans across the political spectrum to how vital civic knowledge is for making government truly by the people, for the people."

"Students learn civics by playing a videogame from a group founded by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor"

"In late October, Donald Trump released an action plan for what he hopes to accomplish in his first 100 days in office. Below, NPR reporters and editors from the politics team and other coverage areas have annotated Trump's plan. We've added context on several of his proposals, including whether he can really repeal Obamacare and what a hiring freeze on the federal workforce would actually look like."

"How To Report First, and Best, What's Happening In Your Community, - a civic journalism workbook. A Pew Center for Civic Journalism Workbook"

"At the Democracy Fund, we believe that creating a stronger future for local news requires us to focus on transforming the relationship between news consumers and news producers. As we develop a new program to support and expand "Engaged Journalism," we have sought to ensure that our new efforts are informed by the successes and struggles of the past - especially the civic journalism movement of the 1990s."

"At least one fifth of all U.S. daily newspapers practiced some form of civic journalism between 1994 and 2001 -- and their editors say it made a positive difference."

"It didn't take long for civic journalism to move from election experiments to deep enterprise work on major issues plaguing communities - race, drugs, education, the economy. Techniques involved listening to how the communities framed their problems and convening conversations about how they might be addressed. Yet major differences emerged between civic journalism and traditional investigative journalism. Unlike traditional investigative journalism, civic journalism's enterprise projects, "didn't have bad guys attached to them," Friedland said. Rather they mined the muddy swamps of tough issues enveloping communities. These projects focused less on measuring the nature of the engagement and instead focused on outcomes. The most systematic and deepest research into civic journalism was undertaken in 2002 by Friedland and PhD student Sandy Nichols. The Pew Center opened its files on 651 civic journalism projects that had applied for funding or for recognition in the Knight-Batten Awards for Excellence in Civic Journalism between 1994 and 2001. For months, Nichols read every project and coded them by engagement strategies, outcomes and story frames. You can read the final report or the executive summary. Among its highlights: At least one fifth of all U.S. daily newspapers - 322 of the nation's 1,500 dailies practiced civic journalism during that time. They hailed from 220 cities in all but three states. But, the authors said, the real number, if you included projects that didn't cross the Pew Center's transom, was much higher Newspaper editors asserted that their civic journalism increased public deliberation, civic problem solving, volunteerism and changed public policy.a  96 percent of the civic journalism projects used an "explanatory" story frame to cover public issues instead of a more traditional "conflict" frame, which often reports two opposing viewpoints. "The clear shift to explanatory frames is perhaps one of civ

"We talk a lot about civic education, usually about how little of it too many students get in school. In this charged election season, the subject has rarely, if ever, been more relevant. But here's a different kind of discussion: how kids are actually being engaged in it. Below are several examples that could be used in any school. All of the authors are working in Illinois, where a law was recently passed requiring high schools to provide a semester-long civics course that includes community action of some kind. It says, "Civics course content shall focus on government institutions, the discussion of current and controversial issues, service learning, and simulations of the democratic process." But what they say can apply across the country."

"Public schools are failing at what the nation's founders saw as education's most basic purpose: preparing young people to be reflective citizens who would value liberty and democracy and resist the appeals of demagogues. In that sense, the Trump phenomenon should be a Sputnik moment for civics education. Just as Soviet technological advances triggered investment in science education in the 1950s, the 2016 election should spur renewed emphasis on the need for schools to instill in children an appreciation for civic values and not just a skill set for private employment. As we outline in a new report for The Century Foundation, entitled "Putting Democracy Back into Public Education," the Founders were deeply concerned with finding ways to ensure that their new democracy, which through the franchise provided ultimate sovereignty to the collective views of average citizens, not fall prey to demagogues. The problem of the demagogue, the Founders believed, was endemic to democracy, and they saw education as the safeguard of America's system of self-governance."

"As McGee notes, Gary's awareness of his own prejudice is a powerful first step, one that people often find difficult to take. No one wants to think of themselves as intolerant. but McGee's point that everyone harbors bias, and the way forward is for us all to confront it in an open and honest way, is crucial. The whole discussion is worth your time. It's a far cry from your average cable news segment, particularly the He Who Smelt It, Dealt It school of race discussion."

"In this 1979 speech Mr. Baldwin talked about being a black writer, about the civil rights movement, and other topics."