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[Karnewarrior]

What is a civics class? Sounds abominable

Learning about the current active government in your area.

Good god how horrifying

The most horrifying part is that, in being educated about the government, our children may develop a political consciousness and be motivated to vote in someone liberal.

[MrRoboto75]

What is a civics class? Sounds abominable

Learning about the current active government in your area.

Good god how horrifying

How is it more horrifying than the government itself? Better to see the horror than to ignore it. Gaze into the abyss or you will be forced to repeat it, or something like that.

Gaze into the abyss or you will be forced to burn that bridge when we get there with one stone.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

What is a civics class? Sounds abominable

Learning about the current active government in your area.

Good god how horrifying

The most horrifying part is that, in being educated about the government, our children may develop a political consciousness and be motivated to vote in someone liberal.

I think it's funny (in an absurd and tragic way) how almost everyone assumes that people will agree with them more once they know more. "Liberal mugged by reality," ferex.

[Loud Whispers]

How is it more horrifying than the government itself? Better to see the horror than to ignore it. Gaze into the abyss or you will be forced to repeat it, or something like that.

I have always known Americans to be fiercely protective of liberty, it shocks me to find they are completely ok with mandatory ideological training for their children... Or else the abyss will get them

The most horrifying part is that, in being educated about the government, our children may develop a political consciousness and be motivated to vote in someone liberal.

???
Europe does not have this and its young have a diverse political consciousness. Just sounds like a straightforward way of ensuring the state can manufacture a coherent sense of civic responsibility which can all too easily be made to advantage the state. Where education in governance is concerned, it must always be preferable to have it be sought by the willing, not thrust upon the bored and unwilling. One of the surest ways to get students to not give a shit about learning something is to make learning it mandatory

[Il Palazzo]

???
Europe does not have this

You what, love?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_education_(subject)

[Loud Whispers]

You what, love?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_education_(subject)

Yet further proof of the decline of yurop and bongland

[Il Palazzo]

Where education in reading and writing is concerned, it must always be preferable to have it be sought by the willing, not thrust upon the bored and unwilling. One of the surest ways to get students to not give a shit about learning something is to make learning it mandatory

Abolish them schools altogether! All we know is just another brick in the wall!

[JoshuaFH]

Where education in reading and writing is concerned, it must always be preferable to have it be sought by the willing, not thrust upon the bored and unwilling. One of the surest ways to get students to not give a shit about learning something is to make learning it mandatory

Abolish them schools altogether! All we know is just another brick in the wall!

I actually have a pet theory that the pandemic of depression and dissatisfaction in life throughout America, and perhaps even the rash of shootings throughout the country, is caused by the total lack of agency that is imposed on children. From a young age they're made to go to a building, following instructions, adhere to a schedule, and be judged & scrutinized on memorizing facts and other things that they might not care less about. The idea is to get teach them all the 'essential' knowledges that has been deemed necessary to know by adulthood, but what it also implicitly teaches is to expect their lives to be on rails, that their self-worth determined by marks on tests, and that if someone isn't forcing them to do something then it probably isn't worth doing. What results is generation after generation of adults increasingly frustrated and miserable with life and not knowing why or what to do about it. In other cases, as in ghettos, the children just check out of school entirely and find their self-worth on the streets, which contains a lot of danger but also many things that are more mentally stimulating and inherently worthier of learning than whatever is being taught in schools that seemingly doesn't have any connection to real life at all.

[WealthyRadish]

What is a civics class? Sounds abominable

It is. Ostensibly the courses exist as a last-ditch effort to teach the basics of how the government and political system works to high-schoolers before they're released into the wild, but at least where I went to school it was mostly low-intensity indoctrination. In my class, students were solemnly informed about the great honor and responsibility they have as citizens of the greatest and most democratic country in the world, while being invited to marvel at the Founders' imperishable gift to humanity. The whole thing builds up an implicit understanding that any problem with the political outcomes is due to people not voting or just the natural result of disagreement (i.e. people voting wrong), and the possibility that the system itself could be at fault for the numerous obvious political problems (even those perceptible to high school students) is kept totally remote in both that context and in the general media and political discourse. It boggles my mind that people can continue going through their political rituals while about 3/4 of the country lives in some tapeworm's permanent incumebency that's only occasionally redecided (in a primary) by retirement or redistricting, and give it legitimacy while practically every office at the federal or state level is elected by a procedure that produces heavy distortion and invites corrupt influences. At least gerrymandering is getting some national media coverage, which is some indication that people might start looking at the process more critically.

[ggamer]

The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control, U.N. scientists say

The chance of us actually fixing the global warming problem is rapidly approaching 0%. The more I learn about this issue the more i'm pretty sure that the only remotely possible way to stop that regression would be... well, severely drastic measures that are never going to happen.

[Doomblade187]

The world has just over a decade to get climate change under control, U.N. scientists say

The chance of us actually fixing the global warming problem is rapidly approaching 0%. The more I learn about this issue the more i'm pretty sure that the only remotely possible way to stop that regression would be... well, severely drastic measures that are never going to happen.

Aye. The lost profits alone make it unlikely.

[Zangi]

Nah, there is the real possibility of severely drastic measures happening.  It'll just be directed toward someone other then themselves.
Of course, it'll most likely make things much worse before it gets better.  Bonus points for corporations'people' profiting off that.

[wobbly]

I'd say the chances of something dramatically changing in a bad way are increasing. It's pretty obvious we need to do something now and unlikely it'll actual happen. Besides everything else a climate denialist is in the white house. Here in Australia our Environment minister gave the "I know better then the experts speech". Even if the rest of the world was going to do there bit it wont work if the worlds biggest economic power just ignores it. So more people are going to decide they can't just wait for the world to grow up and another bunch of people will lose their livelihoods as natural disasters increase. So more extremism of all sorts seems likely.

[Starver]

Ostensibly [Civics classes] exist as a last-ditch effort to teach the basics of how the government and political system works to high-schoolers before they're released into the wild, but at least where I went to school it was mostly low-intensity indoctrination.

I find the concept uncomfortable, as seemingly practiced.

An interesting take, though I don't know if this was during a Civics/equivalent class or for some reason during a different subject (maths, plausibly?) but a friend of mine's kid (so the tale came through the friend, who may be possibly an unreliable narrator with an agenda) who was part of a group asked by a teacher shortly before the 2015 UK elections who their parents would be voting for. I already have a problem with that. The children may not know, they may know wrong, the parent(s) may not want anyone to know, the child may not want anyone to know what they know...

No problems in this case. The answer in this case was readily "UKIP" , to the apparent shock (and maybe derision) of the others in the class and teacher. As reported, the question was then asked why the vote for UKIP? And seemingly not as a general follow-up given to everyone, but specifically to this apparent bombshell revelation.

I'm no fan of UKIP*, but no-one should be asked why a vote for UKIP in such a manner. Even though I know my friend's whole family enough to know that they'd definitely favour the situation that they question "why not UKIP?" might be dominant.

Still, I don't lay the blame at the school or the national curriculum or the government of the day. I mean, it's not like we have a system where our schoolkids are expected to stand for the flag every morning and idolise some a nationalistic ideal by reciting an oath. If you have to perform such rituals (or be mocked, even threatened, for deciding not doing so) then could you even trust those who do to properly feel that sense of community? I bet in any such land there are plenty more fakers or blind hypocrites than there are the more obvious refuseniks against such a system of nationalistic dictatorship. Whatever my friend may think, I'm glad that our democratic system isn't so stacked towards officially prescribed thoughts.
 

I never had a Civics class, myself, decades ago as it would have been had it were, but I'd like to think that it should be run like my RE classes. Thanks to some choice or other of teachers, Religious Education, for me, was more like what I think now is termed "Comparative Religions". Covering (bits of) many things from Babylonian and Egyptian practices through up into the obvious Abrahamic ones and also touching upon the many remaining from the Indian sub-continent. Not much detail from the various amerindian/worldwide-aboriginal sides of things, barely anything in the direction of Shinto and I think the likes of Confucianism was omitted. But we only had three to five years of one class a week.

Given a grounding in the various systems, it provided context for how (in my context agnostically-atheistically) I interacted with the background Anglican/CofE aspects of life. Being in the Scouting movement, compulsory recital of The Lord's Prayer**, attendance of saints' days parades, November 11th and (increasingly optional/avoidable) carol services were probably my only involvement with the non-secular world other than the far more intermittent weddings/baptisms/funerals, but I definitely feel I could hold my own.

And better than anyone indoctrinated into something like a Seventh-day-adventist-and-every-third-Thursday-in-the-church-hall-there's-a-jumble-sale-and-jam'N'pickle-stall creed.


So equip similarly for the civic side of things?



* Personally, I am of the opinion that if Britain loses any of its mythical 'sovereignty', actual world credibility and/or the use of the pound sterling to a regional or global shakeup within the next quarter of the century that it will be establishable that UKIP is a major reason. By their avowed attempts to save all three they may actually provoke their loss, through a myriad of new itches that need scratching and the disturbing of uneasy checks and balances.
** It's just words as far as I'm concerned. I chose to say them, like many of my peers, and it made us neither better nor worse than we might otherwise be, for all that.

[sluissa]

Civics for me was a very... plain class. Teachers here can and do get fired for pushing politics on kids, so the class stuck mostly to the strict facts of how government works. Constitution, three branches, process of making a law, that sort of stuff. I do specifically remember the only time parties even came up was at the question of a kid and the teacher was very careful to basically just state how parties work as blocs of people who tend to work together and that there were two major parties and an assortment of minor parties. Refused to answer what party he belonged to. It was a very easy class as well. Tought by one of the football coaches.