Sandy's Book

Teaching Democracy as a Way of Life

As we grow older, things change, and not always for the better. I've noticed, for instance, that my memory for people's names is not what it used to be. And then there is a decline in energy. But I have also noticed, among many in my age cohort, an interesting phenomenon: with a decline in energy there can be an increase in quiet tenacity. We don't quit.

Which brings me to my wife, Lois, and her good friend and former boss, Sandy Dean. Last year they recreated their work relationship and used it to produce a book, entitled Beyond Civics: The Education Democracy Needs. 

One of my favorite historians is Yale professor Timothy Snyder, who likes to suggest that we think of democracy as a verb, rather than a noun. And that is the key to the argument in Beyond Civics. It's not enough produce children who know the capitals of every state. It's not enough to have them read the Bill of Rights, or lecture to them about the Ten Commandments. Children need to learn how to be good citizens. 

I wonder if Thomas Jefferson realized the amount of work that he was creating for common folk when he decided that all men are created equal and governments should derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

It was a lot easier in the days of kings, when there was a strong man who, at least theoretically, ran everything. All the citizen (or subject) needed to do was follow orders. And that's the way it still is in some modern countries.

Being a good citizen in a democracy is a lot of work. And to do it right you need to learn some skills that aren't in great demand in authoritarian societies. These happen to be the skills that were at the center of the program in the independent school that Sandy ran for nearly a quarter of a century: seeking facts, thinking logically, and listening carefully to different views. 

The kids learned by doing. My wife taught an elective called Let's Go Lobbying. Students selected topics they were interested in and researched them carefully, both by reading and by hearing from grownups who were involved in the issue. They then thought about what their ask should be, what their supporting arguments should be, and how to respond to criticisms of their proposal. Then they went to the offices of members of Congress, state legislators, and City Council members to make their ask. Their teachers stayed in the background; the children had the floor.

Most of the people the students met with were surprised that middle schoolers could be that well prepared and that articulate. Some were pleased. Others seemed to feel threatened, and a few were quite patronizing. The kids learned from them all. 

A normal civics class in the United States does not look like this.

The school applied this basic approach across the curriculum, from science class to art class.

Writing the book was not easy. I watched Sandy and Lois over the course of the last year, wrestling with a large amount of material, giving it form and concision, and finding new ideas about what they were doing decades ago, incorporating current research results and reaching out to experts.

It did require new thinking. Some existing conclusions did require modification. And so, as they worked, they themselves were changed by the process - the same process they taught at school: finding facts, thinking critically, and engaging with multiple perspectives.

One of the most important changes had to do with the topic of democracy. I don't think many people, in the 1980s, thought American democracy was in peril. We knew it had problems, but we didn't think it was going to die. 

Today, the situation is different. And for that reason, the way we teach our children about our democracy is critically important. Jefferson gave us a heavy burden when he rested government on our shoulders, and none of us can afford to be a summer soldier or a sunshine patriot.

As John Lewis put it in his final message to us: "Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself." 

Buying a new civics textbook won't do it. But reading this book can show you the way to redesign your classroom and your school so that everybody in the building enacts democracy, in small ways, every day.

(Beyond Civics is available on Amazon. To see the page, click here.)

See also Rebecca Rhynhart for Mayor.