Post by KeepAustinWeird on Dec 13, 2023 17:21:28 GMT -6
Texas guts ‘woke civics’. Now kids can’t engage in a key democratic process.
Many states have restricted how schools can teach race and gender, but only Texas has banned student interaction with elected officials.
Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.
WASHINGTON, DC - FEB. 05 Andrea Harris Smith at Turtle Park in Washington, D.C. Sunday February 5, 2023. She spends quite a bit of time at the park with her children and also by herself. he's the granddaughter of the two researchers who devised the "doll test" that led the supreme court to the 1954 Brown v Board of Education supreme court decision to desegregate public schools. (Photo by Jared Soares)
Being the only one leaves a mark: a Black mother on the long shadow of school segregation
Read more
Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.
Zamora-Garcia’s 2017 project to add student advisers to the city council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.
Since Texas lawmakers in 2021 passed a ban on lessons teaching that any one group is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive”, a little-noticed provision of that legislation has triggered a massive fallout for civics education across the state.
WASHINGTON, DC - FEB. 05 Andrea Harris Smith at Turtle Park in Washington, D.C. Sunday February 5, 2023. She spends quite a bit of time at the park with her children and also by herself. he's the granddaughter of the two researchers who devised the "doll test" that led the supreme court to the 1954 Brown v Board of Education supreme court decision to desegregate public schools. (Photo by Jared Soares)
Being the only one leaves a mark: a Black mother on the long shadow of school segregation
Read more
Tucked into page 8 is a stipulation outlawing all assignments involving “direct communication” between students and their federal, state or local officials – short-circuiting the training young Texans receive to participate in democracy itself.
Zamora-Garcia’s 2017 project to add student advisers to the city council, and others like it involving research and meetings with elected representatives, would stand in direct violation.
Since 2021, 18 states have passed laws restricting teachings on race and gender. But Texas is the only one nationwide to suppress students’ interactions with elected officials in class projects, according to researchers at the free expression advocacy group Pen America.
Practically overnight, a growing movement to engage Texas students in real-world civics lessons evaporated. Teachers canceled time-honored assignments, districts reversed expansion plans with a celebrated civics education provider and a bill promoting student civics projects that received bipartisan support in 2019 was suddenly dead in the water.
“By the time we got to 2021, civics was the latest weapon in the culture wars,” state representative James Talarico, sponsor of that now defunct bill, said.
Texas does require high schoolers to take a semester of government and a semester of economics, and is one of 38 states nationwide that mandates at least a semester of civics. But students told the 74 the courses typically rely on book learning and memorization, without hands-on lessons in civic participation.
“Students are now banned from advocating for something like a stop sign in front of their school,” Talarico said.
Practically overnight, a growing movement to engage Texas students in real-world civics lessons evaporated. Teachers canceled time-honored assignments, districts reversed expansion plans with a celebrated civics education provider and a bill promoting student civics projects that received bipartisan support in 2019 was suddenly dead in the water.
“By the time we got to 2021, civics was the latest weapon in the culture wars,” state representative James Talarico, sponsor of that now defunct bill, said.
Texas does require high schoolers to take a semester of government and a semester of economics, and is one of 38 states nationwide that mandates at least a semester of civics. But students told the 74 the courses typically rely on book learning and memorization, without hands-on lessons in civic participation.
“Students are now banned from advocating for something like a stop sign in front of their school,” Talarico said.