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!) Well quite often politics a race go hand in hand. Politicians target certain demographics and ethnicities during election years and political parties have been always seemed to be more beneficial towards one group than the other. As a social studies teacher you could think of some cultural geography. Students (white and black) may not be out right racist but ethnocentric. But cultural relativity could be useful here. Cultural relativity is where one must step back and take an outside look at another groups culture. Instead of comparing and judging one group based on your culture/values/heritage, you try to understand the "why?" that shapes the other group. Also an important thing to realize is that your students picked a side, gathered their information for presentation and stood by their opinion. It is completely normal for things to get out of hand. Some will agree, some will disagree and some will be utterly offended. Keeping things within reason is the key when letting young people debate politics. When anything gets too out of hand then the discussion is scrubbed from conversation and cannot be brought up again. Blind shouting and profanity cannot be tolerated either. If a student gets too heated in a debate dismiss them outside and allow them to calm down and digress. Move on to the next topic of debate and so on and so forth.