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!) Although I think it is important for our students and people of society in general to be aware of what is going on around them, I'm not sure that I would open up these topics for discussion in class. However, I have never liked any type of confrontation at all, so I didn't like debates. Maybe have students write the persuasive essay so you know they are participating and keeping up with the news, but not have them discuss their topics in class. They are high school students, but some I'm sure are still very immature.                 Rating The suggested solution is respectful of the individual (student) Yes The suggested solution is relevant to the case No The suggested solution is reasonable (easy) for the teacher to implement Yes The suggested solution is likely to solve the problem/issue Yes The suggested solution is original No Comments: The suggested solution stifles free and open conversation. Even though there was a lot of disagreement, it could have been used as a teachable moment and a chance to allow the students to practice conflict resolution. Simply avoiding the conversation won't do any good, and certainly won't prepare them for the real world. There will always be issues around race and it is good for the students to know others points of view, whether they agree with them or not. Rated On: October 17, 2014 8:03 pm Rated By: uZyvaP