In the Zone This Month: March 2009
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Civic Education on the Bench Outside the Principal’s Office
by Doreen Uhas Sauer
“1,000 sheep to invite a wolf or two to dinner.”
Even if one is not a proponent of libertarianism, it is not hard to find truth and humor in the words of libertarian writer James Bovard, author of Attention Deficit Democracy, who once said, “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
For 3 years, in Columbus City Schools, the Annenberg Foundation funded a project that asked about 1,000 sheep to invite a wolf or two to dinner. In the first year, the Annenberg Civic Education Initiative was funded at three sites: three boroughs in New York City, 11 counties in rural Virginia, and Columbus, Ohio.
In years two and three, only Columbus continued to be funded. What made that happen was, in no small part, due to the principals.
High school government teachers and students (“sheep” in the sense of using only the textbook to learn about government, civics, and democracy) were invited to learn by doing. Use the textbook but as a reference. Don’t memorize the definition of a lobbyist, become one. See how a bill really becomes a law, by attending General Assembly hearings or talking with City Council aides, but not by tracing the little flowchart committee boxes in the textbook. Know the opposition. Trace the money. Propose change and build consensus.
Students and teachers are co-learners
Students, working together, would select “public” problems and work to address them through public policy solutions. High school students and teachers, who worked in a new role as co-learners with their students, chose issues that were passionate but winable, and by years two and three, issues were neighborhood-based, countywide, or even statewide concerns. Could a neighborhood carryout with repeated liquor license violations be put on a ballot for possible closure? Was it possible to clarify language in the Ohio Revised Code in order that Franklin County high school students could be trained and paid for being poll workers? How could high school students affect the Ohio Minimum Wage proposals? Whose responsibility was it to put in sidewalks by schools where none had previously existed?
But in the first year of the project, many issues were based on the only “community” the students knew—their school’s policies (or interpretations of policies) on the limits of open lunch, the role of the guidance counselor, closed restrooms, new stage curtains or fixed parking lot security cameras, school lunch selections and costs—issues that could polarize a student body and faculty or directly challenge the role of the principal. Compounding the challenges of solving issues so close to home, is the role of the principal—a person who is manager, leader, booster, expert, and role model—but not a democratically elected leader by sheep and/or wolves voting in a democratic process. The role is complicated and difficult because, though not popularly elected by any voter, it is subject to many constituencies; though not political, politics is embedded in all decisions.
When directly asked by the Annenberg Foundation after the first year how important were the high school principals to the success of the project, I said, “very important.” Each principal of the first 12 high schools (which later expanded to 18 schools) seemed to fall into one of three categories: directly involved, behind-the-scenes supportive, or purposely hands-off. At times, a principal might skillfully work all three roles almost simultaneously.
Each principal knew the civic initiative was about active civic engagement, recognized that teachers would need to assume the role of co-learners (even if not all teachers realized that), and, most important, trusted teachers and students to work through “the politics” of often highly controversial issues.
Reconceptualizing civic education into civic engagement
The greatest role that principals played in reconceptualizing civic education into civic engagement was of nonjudgmental and skillful role player. If students were learning how to build consensus and sometimes polarizing opinion on school-based issues, principals had patience to see that democracy was a process (not two wolves and a sheep discussing dinner). In the second and third years, as many issues flew out the schoolhouse door and tumbled into the larger community—even to the Statehouse door—the role of principal expanded into that of a mentor and facilitator as school populations often worked together across the district.
Civic education became civic engagement in Columbus because of the high level of district support from the superintendent’s office, the teachers’ union, and the often-unrecognized, quietly supportive, and deliberatively hands-off role of the principals who trusted teachers’ instincts and students’ growing awareness of how public policy and politics really works.
No teachers or students sat outside on the bench by the principal»s office waiting to have democracy shut down, and no wolves or sheep were harmed in the making of this civic education initiative.
Doreen Uhas Sauer is former project director for the Columbus Annenberg Civic Education Initiative, Columbus City Schools, and current project director for “History Speaks: Not Just Words on Paper,” a Teaching American History grant partnership in Columbus City Schools with Ohio Historical Society Archives and Ashland University.
