Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Politically or Racially-Aware I believe in democracy. As a high school social sciences teacher, I strongly believe in democratic education and political awareness. I want my students to be aware of what is going on around them locally, nationally, and internationally. I require my students to keep up with news. Everything they learn from newspapers, magazines, and television becomes substance to use in my lessons. Before the presidential elections, I asked my students to watch all the debates, try to see the different perspectives, and how those perspectives may lead to different courses of action and to different implications for people. As part of this effort, I gave students a "persuasive writing" assignment. I gave them a list of topics from the debates, such as abortion, healthcare, affirmative action, and foreign policy. Students were to take a position on one of these issues and write a persuasive essay. When it was time for students to share their writings in class, things got out of hand. Every single topic we discussed along with the essays turned into a discussion of race. My Black and White students took opposite perspectives on every issue and during the discussions, they were not civil. I felt like my efforts for democratic education were not producing anything good. Should I change my activities? How come the political awareness I wanted develop in my students actually turned out to be racial awareness? Some guidance please! Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) I do not believe that you should change your assignment. It is an important for students to know what is going on in the world around them and to be active participates in it as well. One way to help lower the hostile feelings is to make students write their topic from the other side. I make my AP students practice this because it forces them to approach the topic from a side of facts and not emotions. It also makes them think critically about the topic and gives them a chance to form counterarguments against their own original thinking. If you change the assignment it can help students to become more critical thinkers and hopefully a bit more sympathetic to the other side, but it will also hopefully lower the racial feelings controversial topics can bring up.