And I heartily endorse your message.

you know there are right-wing school boards out there who will insist on brainwashing kids with an extraordinarily warped view of American history and civics and founding principles and so on....

Kids learn from kids. So long as we could get good textbooks into the hands of a majority of children, then we, at least, have a chance at saving our democracy, in my opinion.

But I'd bet some states and school districts would be teaching a Nazi version of things.

But yeah, at least we'd be convincing the good kids to get out there and vote....

I wrote to the state for years hoping they would change the curriculum. It needs to begin YOUNG!. I taught my first graders how to vote and why we vote. They LOVED it and we did it throughout the school year for various issues. I had to "sneak teach" a lot of subjects to my students. All decent teachers do these days. They do not get it at home and all we do at school is "teach to the test" and how to take the damned tests (6 year olds can't do standardized tests 3 times a year when they can't even read well yet). The whole system is ridiculous.

I remember back in California a TV street interview of two girls right after they graduated high school. The interviewer asked both bright, confident girls how many senators each state sent to congress. Neither had any idea. In those days these girls would have first been formally taught this in elementary school and then again in junior high and high school. That neither girl ever felt it was something they needed to know was the school district's problem, all right, but not its creation.

Or will work to perfection. But, in my opinion, it is something we should try to instill in our education system.

When did it stop?

When the children stopped learning, I suppose?

The students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas would certainly disagree with your assessment.




Have you ever read the social studies standards from your state?

It had nothing to do with indoctrination, and everything to do with learning how the government works, as well as who stands for what. Until I took that course in High School, I had only a basic understanding of what the government was about. They spoke about it in earlier Social Studies course work, of course, but this was the first in-depth look at the subject.

My father's side are all Republicans. My mother's side are mostly Democrats. Dad's side is far more vocal and, well, authoritarian about their politics. My mother having died when I was a child, of course I lived with my father. So, I was on the way to becoming another Republican. Thing is, I was really only parroting what I heard. Democrats bad because Democrats! Or something like that. By the end of the course, and my first real exposure to what the Democrats actually stood for, I knew on which side of the fence I really belonged.

Like I say, the instructor in no way influenced me, nor do I recall any biases in the course materials. It was simply the exposure. I think every school kid deserves the opportunity to see what the government and politics are about. They can't make informed decisions in the ballot box without it.

And thank you for your OP!