I got that question from a student in late November. I told him that Obama is running for president, his response was "Who else is running?" So, I obliged by giving a two-sentence summary of every D & R candidate I could think of. I think it was 10-12 total. They marveled that I could know all that off the top of my head. The only two that any recognized were Hillary and Fred. Sad but true.

I have a zillion stories like this. Grabbing them and keeping them is tough. I'm taking a semester off this for spring, and though the money is an issue, I'm secretly relieved that I don't have to deal with some of the insipidness.

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

Do they still teach civics in junior high? High school?

Yes, but the problem is that so little is taught in elementary school that they have to start from the very scratch. There's also a complaint from some that social studies course of all stripes are too frequently taught by coaches, who tend to read the book a great deal.

pgs

Pam Strickland

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." ~Kurt Vonnegut

I seem to remember having American History in the 4th grade, and as I recall it covered a lot of this.

(I think it was the first F I ever got, after being the straight-A poster nerd up until then. I've hated history ever since.)

This is nothing new. I graduated high school in 1995. Cell phones were still big clunky beige plastic things. There were no iPods, and I was just getting used to the idea of the Internet. I was also a bit of a nerd. But, there were other distractions. Talking on the phone to my boyfriend comes to mind.

Are the tech toys the problem, or is this just the business of being a teenager? Raging hormones, the attention or lack thereof of the opposite sex, making friends, fitting in, finding out who you are, these are all more interesting and urgent to a teenager than the quadratic formula. Heck, they're still more interesting to me than the quadratic formula.

I think there's sort of an inherent problem getting kids interested in abstract ideas anyway. Of course a kid is going to want to know the layout of her own town, but why should she care what's on a continent she thinks she'll never visit anyway?

(In case it isn't obvious, I'm not endorsing the don't-care philosophy...I just think it's hard for kids to see *why* they should care until they've had some life experience.

A lot of these classes rely a tremendous amount on rote memorization, as well, which is hard for kids to do particularly when they don't see a clear application, I suspect...)