I hope my dear hubby won’t mind me posting an excerpt from the email he sent out to his extended family.
Let me add a bit from a Civics teacher’s perspective. I’ve been showing Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to my four classes of ninth graders, as we study the legislative branch. We’ve been seeing it in chunks of 20-30 minutes, so it stretched over the last few days of class, and we had Monday off for an in-service, so today we’re finishing it.
There are so many wonderful moments and aspects to the movie. It’s hard to limit myself here in talking about it, but choosing one thing to say, the timing turned out to be wonderful: as the country seemed to shrug off rule by a “corrupt machine” in a manner that is essentially up-from-the-people, students were soaking in a warm bath of idealistic “America-can-work” messages. And even though it’s an old movie with dated dialogue and long-dead actors, the kids loved it. That the country was at a fever pitch of political awareness, and focused on Congress and issues of corruption, probably had something to do with that.
I generally resist showing full-length movies in class because they take a lot of time for sometimes limited educational content. This is one time that a movie definitely worked — and we’ll spend a good half hour tomorrow talking out what aspects of the plot relate to textbook aspects of Congress.
I appreciate all the work the Democrats put in to making my lesson a success.
I had been very worried that the election would again be stolen or obviously less than wholesome. How do I teach Civics if we don’t have honest elections? Nice to be able to mentally walk away from that line of thinking.
A closing thought: the movie’s star is Jimmy Stewart. He was on a bomber in WWII — not a safe, protected position. I know there are real issues about WWII and the Allies’ use of bombing, etc., but he did something heroic in serving in that way, given his celebrity status. As his flickering shadow now glides back and forth on the screen and these ninth graders (they could be kids of his kids’ kids) soak up this bit of our national mythology, I think he’s still managing something heroic.
If I’m getting carried away here (and I’m sure that I am), I attribute it to having been subjected to high doses of Frank Capracorn for the past few days, operating on too-few hours of sleep, and have just seen an evil shadow lifted from our land. Who would be in their right mind given such influences?
11 Comments
Please don’t tell me that the civics teacher has been teaching his students that the last few elections have been “stolen.” If so, that’s a real shame.
Amen.
Sadly, I’ve never seen it (and I’m 43). You’ve convinced me to add it to the netflix queue. As soon as we finish last season’s Battlestar Galactica and House, anyway.
One of the good teachers! – and thanks for the blurb on that Incredibly Loud book, I’ve been considering picking it up. . .
I debated for a day whether or not to “approve” Mr. Houston’s flame-y comment (above). Finally I decided I would because it does bring up an interesting point.
Of course Steve doesn’t teach that the elections were stolen. He teaches from the same textbook as all the other Civics teachers, and he welcomes debate in the classroom. Nevertheless, he is pondering a dilemma not unlike what biology teachers who are forced to teach alternative “theories” of the origin of humans must face. How do you teach what you believe to be wrong? How do you?
Quick clarification: when Liz posted her comment I hadn’t yet approved Mr. Houston’s. Her amen was not directed at him, needless to say. ;)
My general approach to such issues as “were the 2000 and 2004 elections stolen” is to try to be neutral and present information from two or more perspectives. In talking about election fraud/problems, I make sure to mention that JFK probably won because of Chicago Mayor Daly’s (Democratic) machine, either as a follow up to looking at more recent incidents.
But sometimes that’s not necessary. In describing recent events, I don’t hang party labels on all the actions/incidents that I describe. I just say “one side did such and such.”
All of this comes down to whether or not I’m somehow pointing students towards one or the other political party as better than the other. I do have views on that subject, and I’m sure my affiliations are discernable to the more politically savvy students, but I tell classes that I won’t tell them how I vote. I tell them they can figure that out by thinking about my job, my age, and such — that I’m probably in line with the norm voting patterns for whatever factors seem relevant. I even say they can see how I vote by the bumper strips on my car. They never pursue the matter (when that bell rings at the end oof the day, the idea of lingering to see which car is mine, and what bumper strips are on it loses its appeal). Which is just as well — I want all students to fell that I’m supportive of their views. But I want them to think through what their views are, rather than unthinkingly adopting an affiliation.
It wouldn’t be right to use a public classroom to push a particular ideology.
But then again — here’s no such thing as true neutrality. By not pushing some views, I am, in effect, opposing them.
For instance, I’ve come to wonder about just how much behind the scenes activity is involved in our country’s government. And apart from whatever I may think, this is so much a part of our times, with 9-11 Truth Movement (which I neither completely dismiss nor accept) and election fraud issues, and so on, that I’ve seen it as something students are likely to encounter. In our text book there are whole chapters on Congress, the executive branch, and so on. There is one sentence about the CIA. In this town, and in the books and magazines I read, and even in popular movies and so on, the CIA is ALL OVER as a topic. Why doesn’t my textbook say more about it? Being an aware, educated person in this neck of the woods means being aware of how the CIA (or other similar U.S. agencies) caused or were involved in overthrowing the government of Chile, of Guatemala, of Haiti, and so on. That’s not a matter of opinion, but of recorded fact.
But we only teach students about how a bill becomes a law, what the founding fathers had in mind when framing the Constitution, and so on.
I think the founding fathers were amazing, brilliant, admirable people, and it’s important to know how a bill becomes a law — and these are the basis for our democratic system, right? — but if I only teach according to the limited view of our government presented in the text book, students will not see that our government has sometimes denied the opportunity for other countries developing their own versions of democracy.
But I’m teaching 9th graders. How much cynicsm should they have to absorb? Some of them can handle it, but many don’t have the intellectual ability to apply it only as needed — they slather it on every situation like ready-whip, enjoying the act of applying it, with little regard for the task of digestion that then must follow.
I don’t have answers for all of these issues. I feel my way through, day to day, on a case by case basis.
One of the things that makes my job great is I get to help kids as they wrestle with these issues on the same basis.
My comment was meant to be “flame-y” at all. I am simply a concerned parent (and now a grandparent) who has lost a lot of faith in the public educational system in this country. Too much of what is passed as “education” is nothing but propaganda that verifies the belief system of the instructor.
My whole point is simply this. If the last two elections were stolen why could not the same method have worked this time as well? Are elections only deemed to be stolen when your own side loses? The same voting machines were, for the most part used, around the country and nothing much changed in the whole process. Should we accuse the Democrats of stealing the elections in Virginia and Montana? They were close, but I imagine them to have been won by the Democrats fairly and squarely.
If you give me the courtesy of printing this reply, please don’t accuse me of flaming your site. That is not, and was not, my intention. You seem very quick to jump to that conclusion.
Thanks for that.
It’s great to see that this election is making a difference in future generations.
Sam, I’ll glady withdraw “flame-y.” :) However, I don’t wish to get into a debate about politics. I hoped your comment might spark a discussion about the difficulty of teaching a loaded subject; that’s all.
Sam, I agree about the problem of teachers teaching according to their own views–and teaching that those views are facts. I even have a problem if a teacher presents their own views and clearly states that they are opinions. Problem is, everybody used to agree about what constituted ‘the facts’ and now we see a lot of that was wrong.
But I think people are even able to agree about that.
Seems like the disagreement arises over whether to assign significance to an accepted, agreed upon fact. Like we know that killing is wrong, but if done in self-defense, its ‘okay’. But one person’s claim of self-defense is, to another, a reaction based, perhaps, on prejudice or some other version of faulty thinking. But replace ’self-defense’ with ‘temporary insanity’ and whoever argued to excuse the killer in the first instance may very well reject the excuse in the second, and likewise with whoever challenged self-defense being more accepting of temporary insanity. So some of my students parents are ready to excuse the portions of the U.S. government that are connected with CIA-type activities, seeing the larger Cold War context and so on, while others reject any justification.
Or it can be a matter of degrees. Some see the use of spies and covert actions against other states as inevitable, and go on to then excuse our government’s past actions as merely the next (ineviitable) step given that spies and so on are always going to be a part of any state’s array of information gathering/influence exerting apparatus.
(sorry–I think I’m in ‘lecturing teacher’ mode here. From what you say about gandkids, I have no place telling you how things are or are not. So please take this not as me telling you how you should understand things, but instead as an explication of how I see things.)
What you said about the election, I have to agree with. I was somewhat at a loss for the lack of irregularities this time, given what I see as widespread, maliciously conceived acts last time. I still don’t know how to reconcile things–but I will point out that there were still some of the same glitches this time as in the past. I mean, in particular, the problems with electronic machines. I’ve heard about a count in Florida that is oddly ‘off’–and problems in Texas (your neck of the woods? I’m guessing that bases on your nom de plum) and Indiana. And all the cases that I’ve heard about involved Democrats losing votes and/or Repbulicans gaining them.
I have heard that some Democratic poll watchers were possibly going to far in offering assistance to voters (possibly presenting themselves as official poll workers, and helping people to actually fll out the ballot)
But I don’t have a clear explanation for why the degree of manipulation that I’ve come to believe occured in the 2004 election, didn’t seem to occur this time.
Maybe the degree to which this election was being monitored scared off the ‘cheat’ squaf.
One final thing–my ealier comment was posted before I’ve had chance to proof it. Same for this one–but this time I’m posting knowing such is the case. Sorry for the typos and odd construction, etc. but if I wait and try to make if perfect I’ll never post it.