More than ever, civic learning is needed to ensure each and every person across this country has the necessary tools to engage as members of our self-governing society. However, schools are also a growing part of the culture wars. According to a 2022 National Education Association Survey, nearly half of schools reported challenges teaching about race and racism and practices related to LGBTQ students in the classroom. As we've discussed before on the show, book bans, funding cuts, and teacher shortages are also making teaching anything — let alone civics — more difficult.
At this critical juncture, Civic Learning Week unites students, educators, policymakers, and private sector leaders to energize the movement for civic education across the nation. This week's episode includes two experts who talk about the theory and practice of strengthening civics education in these polarizing times.
Emma Humphries is Chief Education Officer and Deputy Director of Field Building for iCivics, the non-profit founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to reinvigorate civics through free, interactive learning resources. Emma serves as iCivics’ pedagogical expert, ensures its resources evolve to a place of greater equity and deeper learning for all students, and advocates for more and better civic education across the country.
Ashley Berner is Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Associate Professor of Education. She served previously as the Deputy Director of the CUNY Institute for Education Policy and as an administrator at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book is Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School.
Civic Learning Week
iCivics poling on bipartisan support for civic education
Diffusing the History Wars: Finding Common Ground in Teaching America's National Story
Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again
Will AI destroy democracy?
The 2019 version of Democracy in America
What neoliberalism left behind
Demagogues are more common than you think
What does the Mueller report mean for democracy?
School segregation then and now
What Serial taught Sarah Koenig about criminal justice — recorded live at Penn State
Is it time to revive civility?
E.J. Dionne on empathy and democracy
No Jargon: Who controls the states?
The ongoing struggle for civil rights
Immigration, refugees, and the politics of displacement
A playbook for organizing in turbulent times
Jonathan Haidt on the psychology of democracy
Future Hindsight: Ian Bremmer on the failure of globalism
Brexit and the UK’s identity crisis
Brazil’s tenuous relationship with democracy
Yellow vests and the “grand debate” in France
Viktor Orbán’s “velvet repression” in Hungary
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