Nation-building at home: Civics 101

Even today, supporters struggle with the tension between teaching students how the levers of power work and encouraging students to pull those levers.

"Once you tell them that they have rights, and [how to] assume positions of power, they want to do that for real," says Gerrit Koepping, who teaches government at Lake Oswego High School in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Mr. Koepping and his colleagues got more than they bargained for two years ago, when students took what they learned in their elective Political Action Seminar into the real world – and irked the city council by seeking to extend the town's 10:15 p.m. curfew for 14- through 17-year-olds. Students challenged it as unconstitutional because it didn't allow exceptions for those attending protests, making political speeches, or attending religious services. It was also inconvenient for students who had late-shift jobs.

Students met with the city council and the city attorney but failed to win a change. The American Civil Liberties Union then filed suit on their behalf. The suit was dropped after the city changed the curfew to midnight.

"It certainly pushed our comfort level," says Bruce Plato, the Lake Oswego principal. "If we let students say, 'We're going to see the mayor,' " he says, then teachers and administrators have to decide where in the process that happens. "We don't just go get in people's faces because we don't like something."

The question of when to raise one's voice is at the center of another, unusual approach to civics education run by Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO), a Massachusetts-based teacher training organization. Unlike many civics lessons taught in government or American history classes, FHAO teaches participatory democracy through study of the Holocaust.

"For a democracy to survive…requires the active engagement and participation of its citizens," says Martin Sleeper, the group's associate executive director. "So we look with kids at the decisions that…were made in history, still have to be made today, [and at] connections that are made between the past and today."

The idea, Mr. Sleeper says, is to educate students to know not only how to raise their voices, but when. The curriculum focuses on bystanders in the Holocaust and teaches students how to be "upstanders," who speak up in the face of prejudice or oppression.

"It's not only a program in civic education, but in moral education," Sleeper says.

That's a line not all teachers feel comfortable crossing.

"It gets dicey when it comes to values," says Mary Crittenden, who teaches eighth-grade history and language arts at West Sylvan Middle School in Beaverton, Ore.

There are days, however, when controversy will inevitably find its way into the classroom.

Karl Atkins, who teaches freshman social studies at Scappoose High School in Columbia County, a conservative outpost north of Portland, taught a unit on immigration "the same year we passed a restrictive anti-immigration measure, and in my class [was] the son of the guy who got it on the ballot."

Mr. Atkins tries to translate political hot buttons into learning opportunities. Ultimately, he says, students need to understand a picture bigger than any single political issue.

"As kids, they're just trying to sort out a really confusing world. They see a lot of yelling on TV," says Atkins. His job, he says, is to "get rid of the yelling and talk about what's happening underneath."

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