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!) First of all, you should not have to change your way of teaching. Obviously these students have been watching too much television and or have been hearing their parents talk about the race issue. Children don't learn by themselves, they see the society and thus they respond. In this case, if I were you , I would educate the students about race, it is necessary that these children be informed about the variety of cultures that exist in the world. Then I would lecture them about the "ignorance" that exist via media about the race issue concerning the election. I would take a stand against it and give evidence of why race should not be a concept of analyzation.