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!) You do not need to change the idea or plan of your lesson, possibly just the implementation of your lesson. Your lesson idea is a good one, unfortunately, it sounds like your students are a bit immature in their thinking and the expression of their ideas. Based on the topics you chose, with the exception of affirmative action, I am not sure how the topic of race would come up. The only thing I would suggest is to have a disclaimer conversation at the before discussion begins about having mature and intellectual discussions, creating dialogue and not arguing. No derogatory remarks will be tolerated. Disagreement is allowed and encouraged, but we need to disagree with tact. If students are not able to handle these guidelines, then simply tell them you will not have these types of class activities until they are able to prove they are mature enough to handle them. Continue with the positional papers, just do not allow class discussion. Even with some of the racial angst in your class, it may be a good opportunity to discuss with students why some conversations become so racially charged. Is it really about race, or do your past experiences cause you do to see the world in different ways? In what ways could race shape past experiences? Is race the only thing that shapes past experiences? Maybe something productive could come out of the conversation. Again, it mostly depends on the maturity of your students and creating clear and firm guidelines for your class.