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 actually love your idea for these activities, but I think it needs to be prefaced with activities that provide students with the relationship between political awareness and racial awareness. Also, during the activity in which students are required to watch the political debates, students must be aware that the media is trying to force their own ideas on the ideas of their viewers. A lot of time, the media will lean to one side or another and influence their viewers and students need to be aware of this prior to completing this activity. In addition to the above, learn from experience. Obviously, all students need to be aware of racial issues and be racially aware. They need to understand stereotypes are wrong and they should understand that they should not judge people, but get to know them and see where they REALLY come from. A lot of time, we allow the media and other outside sources to give our students stereotypes and never address them.