{"id":3686,"date":"2015-11-19T09:15:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T16:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/?p=3686"},"modified":"2015-11-19T09:15:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T16:15:58","slug":"refugees-politics-and-and-civics-not-as-boring-as-it-sounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/19\/refugees-politics-and-and-civics-not-as-boring-as-it-sounds\/","title":{"rendered":"Refugees, Politics and And Civics (Not as Boring as It Sounds)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"united-states-constitution\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This post was supposed<\/em> to be about the budget cuts that have allegedly wiped out Civics education, supposed<\/em> to wonder how Americans could\u00a0know their rights – and those of others – if they’d never even been given baseline knowledge.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I was going to say:<\/p>\n

American schools used to require a class called “civics.” \u00a0Every kid\u00a0learned about elections and government and bicameral legislatures\u00a0and the Constitution. \u00a0Separation of powers. \u00a0Federalism. \u00a0States rights. \u00a0And the Constitution. \u00a0The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…) and — wait for it — the Constitution.<\/em><\/p>\n

Education has always been, at its best, a tool\u00a0to advance a civil society. \u00a0And Civics made it work. \u00a0We all thought it was dumb and boring and they gave us a terrible teacher who couldn’t be fired but we did learn the basics – enough to know, for example, that you can’t set religious limits on immigration or anything else in the United States of America!<\/em><\/p>\n

OK all that’s true. \u00a0BUT\u00a0it\u00a0turns out that we DO have Civics education, just not much.\u00a0It just doesn’t work. According to US News and World Report:<\/a><\/p>\n

At present, more than 90 percent<\/a> of U.S. high school grads get a semester in civics and at least a year of U.S. history. But something is clearly not sticking. A\u00a0Xavier University study<\/a> showed that while 97.5 percent of those applying for citizenship pass the test, only two out of three Americans can do the same.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The test they’re talking about is the 100 question exam immigrants to the US have to pass\u00a0to become US citizens. \u00a0Their passing rate is 97.5% \u00a0Among the rest of us, it’s only 66%! \u00a0Since basic citizenship knowledge is what sustains our social contract, losing 1\/3 of our citizens is kind of awful. \u00a0Here’s more from US News:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to overstate just how poor is the average American student\u2019s grasp of civics and history \u2014 or how badly we need to breathe life into civics in our schools. The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress showed about one-third of American eighth-graders scored at or about proficiency in reading, math and science. But those are robust numbers compared to civics and history, where 22 percent scored at that level.<\/strong> But we needn\u2019t worry about those embarrassing scores any more. In 2013, the National Assessment of Education Progress, perhaps believing ignorance is bliss, announced that the civics and history tests,\u00a0historically given in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades, would only be administered from now on\u00a0in the 8th grade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"sandra_day_oconner1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2009, Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded iCivics <\/a>to promote the need for better Civics training.\u00a0 There are other groups too. \u00a0But we sure aren’t making any progress. \u00a0Todays immigration battle demonstrates\u00a0the level of ignorance of, and reluctance to learn the basic tenets of a democratic government; it’s deeply troubling.<\/p>\n

Try to watch the current “dangerous refugee and besides they’re Muslim<\/em>” battle going on now and disagree!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was supposed to be about the budget cuts that have allegedly wiped out Civics education, supposed to wonder how Americans could\u00a0know their rights – and those of others – if they’d never even been given baseline knowledge. Here’s what I was going to say: American schools used to require a class called “civics.” … Continue reading Refugees, Politics and And Civics (Not as Boring as It Sounds)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,27,1917,9,98,1],"tags":[3582,962,3578,3579,2431,3583,3580,220,1381,3421,2168,3581,3569],"class_list":["post-3686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baby-boom","category-current-affairs","category-nablopomo","category-politics","category-religion","category-uncategorized","tag-christian","tag-citizenship","tag-civics","tag-civics-education","tag-constitution","tag-first-ammendment","tag-icivics","tag-jewish","tag-muslim","tag-nablopomo","tag-refugees","tag-sandra-day-oconnor","tag-syrian-refugees"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-Xs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3686"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3694,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686\/revisions\/3694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}