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!) Honestly I think you gave your students too much freedom in this assignment. Watching the news is a great thing but there are way too many news sources with differing opinions and information about hot topics that students have to be careful. I do not think students in high school are quite old enough to sort through the information they are hearing and determine what is true and what is an opinion. I think you should narrow down the information the students get. Make sure the students are reading factual information in order to construct their opinions. Then I think you need to set up your classroom in true debate form and have students ready to defend their argument. I think this would prevent students from going straight to race. In my experience, based on what news program I watch I would definitely form different opinions about race based on what I am watching. Because I know better, I do not automatically form certain opinions. We need to teach our students this idea as well.