By Gilbert T. Sewall, NRO
Mata Musing:
As a companion piece to my earlier posting, Grooming America's Youth With Anti-Americanism, posted yesterday, comes this timely piece from Mr. Sewall on public education's trend to use "alternative textbooks" on civics.
In case too many of you are too young to remember, or never had an honest to God Civics class in your background, this is the curriculum designed to teach students the workings of our Government. It includes everything from how bills become law to understanding the three branches of power.
Considering the choice for Civics textbooks has been dwindling... certainly not a victim of "outsourcing"... and examing the most popular option and it's endorsers which include the ACLU, it appears as if the next generation of leaders will most likely graduate a marble short of reality... clueless to anything but a step by step education on how to sidestep the system.
Or perhaps the disappearance of the "dry" subject of Civics in our classrooms explains the uneducated outcry by sour grapes losers for abolishment of the electoral college.
Excerpts:
What educators term "street law" is an increasingly popular high-school alternative to traditional civics. It is a concept endorsed by the American Bar Association's public-education program, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National Education Association.
Venal publishers cater to any bankable curriculum trend. As a result, an alternative "government" textbook, Street Law: A Practical Guide to the Law, is now in its sixth edition.
The 680-page volume, published by Glencoe, the high-school division of McGraw-Hill, is sold to school districts across the country. One of Glencoe's bigger sellers in social studies, it is the most prominent and successful textbook of its kind.
This success comes at a time when established civics textbooks are going out of print at an alarming rate. In state after state, world-cultures curricula that tend to be multicultural in outlook are replacing civics requirements. Junior high-school teachers today can choose from three standard civics textbooks on the market, down from a dozen or so ten years ago. Claiming to be a step forward, Street Law replaces conventional civics with a bleak world of torts, liability, rights, entitlements, discrimination, and self-expressive lifestyles. Such content, publishers say, applies directly to teenagers' lives. But the operative culture that wafts up from the text is dreary and atomized, litigious and drained of civic appeal.
In Street Law, the nation's political principles almost disappear. Tomorrow's American, as the book sees it, needs to know how to navigate courts and public bureaucracies, to protest, and to avoid victimization. The "skills" that Street Law promotes seem designed to appeal to hard-pressed urban school administrators where students' lives are likely to be entwined with the criminal-justice system and public services.
Street Law contains much practical information. It explains how to deal with landlord violations and register complaints to government authorities. It explains abortion law and asks loaded questions about abortion rights and then some. ("Assume that a private organization wants to distribute condoms at a high school...") It tells you what to do if you're arrested. It includes toll-free numbers for credit-card companies.
Venal publishers cater to any bankable curriculum trend. As a result, an alternative "government" textbook, Street Law: A Practical Guide to the Law, is now in its sixth edition.
The 680-page volume, published by Glencoe, the high-school division of McGraw-Hill, is sold to school districts across the country. One of Glencoe's bigger sellers in social studies, it is the most prominent and successful textbook of its kind.
This success comes at a time when established civics textbooks are going out of print at an alarming rate. In state after state, world-cultures curricula that tend to be multicultural in outlook are replacing civics requirements. Junior high-school teachers today can choose from three standard civics textbooks on the market, down from a dozen or so ten years ago. Claiming to be a step forward, Street Law replaces conventional civics with a bleak world of torts, liability, rights, entitlements, discrimination, and self-expressive lifestyles. Such content, publishers say, applies directly to teenagers' lives. But the operative culture that wafts up from the text is dreary and atomized, litigious and drained of civic appeal.
In Street Law, the nation's political principles almost disappear. Tomorrow's American, as the book sees it, needs to know how to navigate courts and public bureaucracies, to protest, and to avoid victimization. The "skills" that Street Law promotes seem designed to appeal to hard-pressed urban school administrators where students' lives are likely to be entwined with the criminal-justice system and public services.
Street Law contains much practical information. It explains how to deal with landlord violations and register complaints to government authorities. It explains abortion law and asks loaded questions about abortion rights and then some. ("Assume that a private organization wants to distribute condoms at a high school...") It tells you what to do if you're arrested. It includes toll-free numbers for credit-card companies.
(snip) See full text at link above
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