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!) First you have to make sure that you lay out all the rules for the students before the discussions even take place. Have each class make 4-5 rules on what they will or will not say or do when something is brought up that they do not like or vice versa. Students also need to know that there will be consequences for any of the rules that are broken in class during this time. You may also want to examine the topics you are giving them. It may be necessary to remove some of them if they may turn the conversation to race instead of political awareness. Politics is a touchy subject at all ages and many times at this age they don't know all the facts and may not research the person or topic enough to have an informed decision. I would also ask any of your co workers if they have tried this before and how it worked out for them. They may have some tips that you can use or may say that this isn't something that your students can handle. If you choose to try this again, remember what went wrong and what you can do to change it.