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!) The discussion of politics usually leads to a convoluted and sometimes heated debate. In essence one party and its supporters will win and the other will lose. Each party has firm beliefs and has trouble seeing the other's point of view. The United States has a long history of being divided both politically and racially. It is often thought by many that the republican party is representative of the wealthy and mainly white people of this country. This is a tough activity to assign at the high school level. I feel this is the age where young adults begin to find what they believe in and stand for and this may be the reason the simple goal of political awareness went in the wrong direction. I would suggest telling the class that everyone is entitled to their political belief's and that is the beauty of being an American. We are all able to stand for what we believe in within reason and no one should try to enforce their belief's on another. It is important to be knowledgable in political debates such as abortion, healthcare, affirmative action, and foreign policy so that they can make informed decisions and be politically aware.