Cantu, Chapter 9

This chapter in Cantu discusses one of the roles held by teachers in the United States- forming good, democratic citizens. I find this a little funny and propagandistic, but on the whole I do think that educating students on the formation and daily execution of our government is important because the more informed they become, the more they stand to make a difference in the years to come. In order to create democratic citizens, we teach students to follow laws. We discuss why we needed to break from Great Britain and what ideals we hold dear as Americans. Students learn about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the functions of the three branches of government. We teach them to vote, to abide by societal norms, and to be proud of our nation. I think that there are many ways to instill any of these values on a daily basis.

Current events are a great way to link students right into the main issues of the day. Students can learn about bias by watching different news stations, and they can remain updated on global issues as well. Current events allow students to understand how our country deals with problems, stirs up nationalism, and helps them remain informed on candidates running for any position in the government. I believe that the CNN Student News offers a great display of current events spoken in terms that students can understand and relate to. By helping students decipher the news, they will hopefully become more inclined to go out on their own and gather more information on the world on their own because now they can more easily understand it.

Other than current events, I think that getting students involved in the classroom discussions of American government is a great way to help them see exactly how our government works. When I was novice teaching, I had an interactive project for each branch of government to help enhance understanding- for the Executive branch, students played a matching game on the board that reviewed all of the 'hats' of the President. For the Legislative branch, the students were split into the House and Senate and they all created and voted on the passage of bills so that they could live the journey of passing something into law. Finally, we had our own classroom trial based on a real court case to help students act out the goings-on in a court room to help teach the Judicial branch.

The BIG QUESTION for this chapter seems to be how do you deal with issues that arise from talking about the government in class- will students from differing political parties go home to mom and dad and complain about any biases accidentally portrayed by anyone in the classroom? How do we teach such debate-worthy topics objectively?