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 think that there is anything wrong with the assignments you are giving your students in this class. I love the way that you are teaching your students about current events and how they affect each and every person. It seems that this class would have the potential to generate many spirited debates about social issues in America today. I think that what you are forcing these students to do is to think critically and to begin forming their own personal opinions on current issues that are often hard to talk about. I definitely would have provided these students with guidelines and a rubric for this presentation. I would ensure that they would avoid making this activity a race war within the classroom. I would urge them to focus on the facts and that the strongest debates are backed up by statistics and the truth. During the presentations, there is bound to be one student who is going to attempt to make this a race war. This assignment needs to be an activity where the students remained focused on abortion, healthcare, foreign policy, affirmative action, and not race. I would state and remind students that this activity is not going to be a race war or the roles that certain races play on these issues. This way students are able to feel comfortable sharing their opinion about these issues without being called a racist.