Page 190 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

162 Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students
choices and their associated consequences are especially desirable as financial literacy learning opportunities.
How will you help students draw upon their own life experiences to understand economic principles? How will you deal with the fact that students in your class have different family economic situations?
Political Science: Civics and Government
Besides teaching content and skills, American schools traditionally have been expected to socialize each new generation, and the children of immigrants in particular, in American values and political traditions. These socialization goals are addressed not only through course content but through school rules, learning communities estab- lished within classrooms, patriotic pageants and holiday celebrations, mock votes and other election-related activities, student governments, current events discussions and special units, or events related to topics such as conflict resolution, law education, or celebrating diversity.
Within the academic curriculum, social studies bears special citizen education respon- sibilities. Along with knowledge and skills, this includes developing civic values (e.g., democracy, justice, equality before the law) and dispositions to action (e.g., voting and other forms of political participation). Social studies was conceived as a pan-disciplinary subject rather than merely a placeholder for courses in separate disciplines, primarily as a way to ensure that citizen education goals received sufficient attention.
Educating students for citizenship is challenging because it requires addressing some enduring dilemmas, most notably the challenge of socializing students to adopt American political values while simultaneously respecting cultural diversity, and the challenge of fostering dispositions toward active political participation without foisting your own partisan political views on your captive audience of students. Unfortunately, most textbooks and many teachers shy away from these challenges, seeking to avoid controversy. Consequently, scholars who study civic education in the schools fre- quently lament that there is not enough of it, and that what there is overemphasizes transmission of academic knowledge and traditional values at the expense of opportu- nities for students to discuss and debate social or civic policy issues, work on service learning projects, or obtain other opportunities for active political participation or experiential learning. They emphasize that partisanship can be avoided by focusing civic education around the core democratic values rooted in our Declaration of Inde- pendence, Constitution, and political traditions, and by engaging students in civic ser- vice or improvement projects that people of all political persuasions can support.
A federal law that took effect in 2005 requires teachers to teach about the U.S. Constitution, and many states require instruction relating to core democratic values. The latter guidelines usually feature the following 12 values: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, justice, the common good, equality, truth, diversity, popular sovereignty, patriotism, the rule of law, and individual rights. These core values can be defined at varying levels of sophistication for students at different grade levels. For example, justice can be defined for younger children as taking turns and being fair to others, but explained to older children in terms of treating people fairly in the eyes of the law without favoring
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