KNOWLEDGE
MODULE 1
Knowledge
Knowledge is the foundation of learning. Before you begin this module, take the pre-test, based on questions developed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). See what areas of strength and weakness you have with regard to civic knowledge. This tool is designed solely for self-assessment so there is no need to submit your results in your Civics Journal. You may want to reflect on your results after you have taken and scored the test.
It's time to take the test!
How did you do?
Civic knowledge is very complex and there is more that can be known by any individual. The intent of this module is to help you enhance what you already know and provide you with links to learn more about civics and citizenship.
Patrick and Vontz (2001) outline seven aspects of civic knowledge:
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
In order to help you through the complexity
of this knowledge area, each of these seven knowledge areas will be briefly
explored with articles and links. Much of the material is drawn from We
the People: The Citizen and the Constitution (1995), published by the U.S.
Center for Civic Education. You might think about purchasing this book, or even
a classroom set for your students, as it is a great resource for teachers. Visit
the Center for Civic Education
and check under publications. [Sections of the text reproduced with permission.
We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, High School Level.
Copyright 1995. Center for Civic Education. Calabasas, California.]
Before you continue with the Knowledge Module, consider some key questions:
What do you understand each of these seven knowledge domains to mean?
How have you experienced each in your life?
How often do you teach students about these areas of civic knowledge? Which do you emphasize and/or omit?
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Respond to these questions in your Civics Journal #1! |
Representative Democracy
What does it mean to live in a representative democracy? Perhaps more than any other idea, this is most fundamental to life in the United States. This republican form of government, as described by James Madison, would allow for laws to be made and administered by representatives elected by the people, therefore deriving its authority from the people. While universal suffrage was not achieved until much later in the history of the United States, representative democracy rests on the assumption that a large number of people should participate in voting for these elected officials.
Visit the Oklahoma University archive of the original Federalist Papers. Specifically, read James Madison's Paper #39, The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles, which argues in favor of a republican, or representative, democracy.
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Respond to Federalist #39 in your Civics Journal #2: |
What are the most compelling points he makes about representative democracy?
If James Madison could see the United States today, how would he react to the ways in which the principles of republicanism have been enacted?
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
Constitutionalism
Federalism is the basis of the United States government. What is federalism? Federalism is the sharing of power, that ultimately rests with the people, between the state and federal government. How is power divided between the federal and state government? Read about this question by clicking on it.
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Respond to this question in your Civic Journal #3 based on new information you have learned. |
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
Rights
As you learned in the previous section, power ultimately rests with the people. The notion of popular sovereignty, or government of, by, and for the people, was a significant break from previous forms of government, such as monarchies where the royal family and parliament were sovereign. Popular sovereignty is maintained through legally stipulated claims, or rights. In the following unit, you will explore the many dimensions of rights in the sub-sections that follow.
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Be sure to respond to the focus question for each chapter in your Civics Journal #4. |
What were the Constitutional issues that led to the Civil War?
What Amendments to the Constitution were added to protect the rights of African-Americans?
How did the Fourteenth Amendment expand constitutional protections of rights?
How did the Civil Rights Movement use the Constitution to achieve its goals?
How has the right to vote expanded since the adoption of the Constitution?
To what extent can
the law correct injustice and other problems in American society?
Know that you have completed the unit on rights, take a few minutes to jot down some ideas about how you could teach this content to your students. Certainly you would want to use the reading excerpt from We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution (1995) which can be purchased in its entirety from the Center for Civic Education. Some questions that you might consider in developing your teaching about rights:
How can students see the relevance of this information to their lives?
What do students already know about rights?
To what degree do students understand the balance of rights and social responsibilities implicit in much of the discussion about rights?
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
Citizenship
As noted in the last question, rights come with responsibilities. Being informed, participating in one's community, obeying the law, and participating in political action are among those responsibilities incumbent on all citizens. Too often when students learn about rights, they focus solely on the entitlements that rights bring, ignoring the social responsibility inherent in the exercise of rights.
Take some time to explore two chapters from the We the People book and be sure to respond to each question with new ideas you learned from the reading.
What does it mean to be a citizen?
How do we use our citizenship?
Think about how you can teach students about the idea of balance among rights and responsibilities. Maybe you could have students examine their classroom and develop a T-chart of rights and responsibilities. Students might note that they have a right to be treated with dignity and respect as a person in class, but that right comes with an obligation to treat others in a like manner. Perhaps by visualizing the contrast of rights and responsibilities, students will have a clearer sense of how these work hand in hand and, more broadly, how the individual fits within the society.
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
Civil Society
Alexis de Touqueville visited the United States in the 1830's when it was just a fledgling republic. He commented on the associationism of Americans, their tendency to join public organizations.
Read an excerpt from Alexis de Touqueville about the United States in the 1830's:
"But the scene is now changed, and gradually the two ranks
mingle; the divisions which once severed mankind are lowered, property is divided,
power is held in common, the light of intelligence spreads, and the capacities
of all classes are equally cultivated; the State becomes democratic, and the
empire of democracy is slowly and peaceably introduced into the institutions
and the manners of the nation. I can conceive a society in which all men would
profess an equal attachment and
respect for the laws of which they are the common authors; in which the authority
of the State would be respected as necessary, though not as divine; and the
loyalty of the subject to its chief magistrate would not be a passion, but a
quiet and rational persuasion. Every individual being in the possession of rights
which he is sure to retain, a kind of manly reliance and reciprocal courtesy
would arise between all classes, alike removed from pride and meanness. The
people, well acquainted with its true interests, would allow that in order to
profit by the advantages of society it is necessary to satisfy its demands.
In this state of things the voluntary association of the citizens might supply
the individual exertions of the nobles, and the community would be alike protected
from anarchy and from oppression."
Alexis de Toqueville on U.S. political parties:
"In the absence of great parties, the United States abound
with lesser controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute
shades of difference upon questions of very little moment. The pains which are
taken to create parties are
inconceivable, and at the present day it is no easy task. In the United States
there is no religious animosity, because all
religion is respected, and no sect is predominant; there is no jealousy of rank,
because the people is everything, and none can contest its authority; lastly,
there is no public indigence to supply the means of agitation, because the physical
position of the country opens so wide a field to industry that man is able to
accomplish the most surprising undertakings with his own native resources. Nevertheless,
ambitious men are interbsted in the creation of parties, since it is difficult
to eject a person from authority upon the mere ground that his place is coveted
by others. The skill of the actors in the political world lies
therefore in the art of creating parties. A political aspirant in the United
States begins by discriminating his own interest, and by calculating upon those
interests which may be collected around and amalgamated with it; he then contrives
to discover some doctrine or some principle which may suit the purposes of this
new association, and which he adopts in order to bring forward his party and
to secure his popularity; just as the imprimatur of a King was in former days
incorporated with the volume which it authorized, but to which it nowise belonged.
When these preliminaries are terminated, the new party is ushered into the political
world."
How does de Toqueville's analysis of civil society in the U.S. compare to the stituation today?
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Explore more of Alexis de Toqueville's writing at Etext Archive |
Declining Civil Society?
Robert D. Putnam (2001) recently wrote that Americans are "bowling alone," rather than in leagues, a trend away from public associationism that may threaten democratic life. To learn more about contemporary research regarding civil society, explore the Bowling Alone website. Here you will find links to civic organizations committed to reinvigorating social life in the United States.
Take a moment to listen to Robert Putnam as he is interviewed on National Public Radio about his work (requires RealOne™ Media Player, download here).
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After visiting the Bowling Alone website respond in your Civic Journal #5 to the following questions: |
What evidence does Putnam report about the decline of civil society that most surprised you?
What evidence do you have to illustrate or contradict Putnam's findings?
What does Putnam mean by social capital and why is it important to a democratic society?
Community Service
One solution that has already been tried to improve social capital in schools is through service learning initiatives. Listen to this report on service learning aired by National Public Radio.
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After listening to the excerpt about Citizens in the Classroom, respond in your Civics Journal #6: |
What impact does community service/service learning seem to be having on the students interviewed?
What is a potential downside to service learning initiatives?
The thrust of service learning seems to be aimed at creating "civic habits" where students learn to become involved in their communities by acting directly in them. Do you think that approach works?
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
Market Economy
The U.S. Constitution has long been viewed as an economic document. By limiting the power of government in the economy, insuring the ownership of private property, legitimizing commerce, and insuring intellectual property (i.e., copyright power), the Constitution clearly allows for a market economy.
Charles Beard (1913) wrote An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, a controversial book that argued the Framers of the Constitution were economically motivated, rather than by the idealism of representative democracy.
Read two brief excerpts of Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States:
"Suppose, on the other hand, that substantially all of the merchants, money lenders, security holders, manufacturers, shippers, capitalists, and financiers and their professional associates are to be found on one side in support of the Constitution and that substantially all or the major portion of the opposition came from the non-slaveholding farmers and the debtors--would it not be pretty conclusively demonstrated that our fundamental law was not the product of an abstraction known as "the whole people," but of a group of economic interests which must have expected beneficial results from its adoption? Obviously all the facts here desired cannot be discovered, but the data presented in the following chapters bear out the latter hypothesis, and thus a reasonable presumption in favor of the theory is created."
"The leaders who supported the Constitution in the ratifying
convention represented the same economic groups as the members of the Philadelphia
Convention; and in a large number of instances they were also directly and personally
interested in the outcome of their efforts. In the ratification, it became manifest
that the line of cleavage for and against the Constitution was between substantial
personality interests on the one hand and the small farming and debtor interests
on the other. The Constitution was not created by 'the whole people' as the
jurists have said; neither was it created by 'the states' as Southern nullifiers
long contended; but it was the work of a consolidated group whose interests
knew no state boundaries and were truly national in their scope."
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Respond to this excerpt in your Civics Journal #7: |
Knowing that Beard's interpretation was controversial in its time, do you think it is still so today? Why or why not? Explain.
Here's a great lesson that you can do with your students to demonstrate how the U.S. Constitution is an economic document while comparing it to the constitution of the People's Republic of China developed by the National Council on Economic Education.
Contemporary Connections of Economic Orientation
The principle of "one dollar = one vote" is a way that consumers in a market economy "vote" for goods and services. Through purchasing one product over another, consumers are in a real sense "voting" for a product, determining the economic winners and losers in the economy.
How have you "voted" today? What products have you "voted against" recently?
3. Rights
4. Citizenship
Public issues
Issues come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There are monumental issues, such as those related to war and peace, and local issues, such as zoning restrictions and variances. Issues can affect vast amounts of people in many different countries, or can be of concern to just one community, or even, simply a neighborhood or village. While issues are diverse in how they manifest, one cannot be socially aware and not witness the breadth of issues with which societies are continually faced.
What issues are of great significance today? Indeed there are many. Research groups like the Gallup Organization attempt to keep their hand on the pulse of the nation by periodically identifying public opinion on issues of the day. Some of the pressing issues when this website was created were terrorism, war, nuclear proliferation, economic recession, education policy, and corporate scandals. But if one looks back in time, perhaps a decade ago, the most pressing issues were quite different: gays in the military, HIV/AIDS, deforestation, and savings and loan scandals. One way that you can get develop your own sense about what other people are saying about issues is by visiting the National Issues Forum. This virtual community allows you to read and post your views on issues of the day.
Students might enjoy doing research on the National Issues Forum, conducting their own surveys of what people are saying about particular issues that interest them. You might ask students to speculate:
Why are these issues "hot" now? How has this issue gained public attention?
How would you categorize the views of those responding to this issue, beyond a simple for/against?
What sampling problems, or bias, is built into cyber communities like the National Issues Forum? How might that affect the viewpoints that you read?
One of the challenges of living in a complex society is sustaining interest on issues that merit public attention but often get crowded out by more recent or pressing concerns. Campaign finance reform, for example, was a significant issue after the 2000 election until September, 2001. But with the tragic events of 9-11-01, attention shifted away from campaign finance reform and towards terrorism.
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Civic Journal #8 in Module 1 Knowledge requires a bit of research on your part. |
A. Choose an issue that interests you.
B. Write briefly about why you are interested in this particular issue.
C. Identify a news outlet, such as CNN, ABC News, NBC News, New York Times, or CBS News.
D. Search your issue and find reports about the issue during the past decade.
E. Respond...
How has the issue taken shape over the past decade? What events seemed to most affect public perception of this issue? To what extent is the issue of significance now? What types of public policies have been created to address this issue?
F. Once you have completed this issue research, go to the British Broadcasting Company, or BBC, and search the issue in an international context. What differences are there in other places in the world with respect to your issue? How do you account for those differences?
Knowledge Review
Now that you have thought about each of the seven principal elements of democratic knowledge, review what you have learned by looking at some historical documents. The University of Oklahoma College of Law provides a comprehensive set of historical documents that you can peruse and use with your students in helping young people understand the origins of democratic thought.
In your Civics Journal #9...
(1) Identify the key principal of democratic knowledge and a related historical document;
(2) Explain how this document illustrates this core democratic idea;
(3) Envision a group of students with whom you work (or will work) and brainstorm ideas that you could use to teach them about the connection between this core idea and the document.
Florida Model State Standards Committee
The Florida Model State Standards Committee has been charged with developing standards for K-12 civic education. Take some time to read and explore these draft standards and, if you would like, provide the Florida Law Related Education Association with feedback via email at staff@flrea.org. In your feedback, be sure to refer to particular standards, suggesting what you believe should be added, omitted, edited, or changed.