Across the country, teachers have been seizing on this election as an opportunity to bring civics to life in their classrooms. Rhode Island Public Radio’s Elisabeth Harrison checked in with Rhode Island teachers to find out how they’re approaching a contentious political season.
In many ways, this has been a difficult campaign for everyone with perhaps more than its fair share of personal attacks and heated rhetoric. Parents and politicians alike have lamented the idea that kids are hearing a lot of it. Democrat Hillary Clinton even aired a campaign spot where children watch Republican Donald Trump on TV.
“They’d be carried out on a stretcher folks,” Trump tells a crowd, as children in the add look on. Their eyes widen as Trump continues: “You can tell them to go [bleep] themselves.”
In Newport, civics teacher Lee Russell knows all too well just how much children are absorbing this election.
“I have an eight-year-old, so she’s in 3rd grade, and she already has an idea about Donald Trump,” Russell said. “I really don’t know how it came into her mind. So I’m not sure if it’s happening in the school or on the school bus.”
Russell says it’s not all bad that kids are aware of the election. For 6th graders in his classroom, the controversy and the outsize personalities this year have made it easier to engage in discussions of democracy and the founding of the nation, all part of the civics curriculum at Thompson Middle School.
Walking down the school’s hallway, Russell says it’s almost like Donald Trump speaks the language of junior high.
“Some of the funny names that are coming out of it, I think kids have latched onto. Lying Hillary and crooked Ted and low energy,” Russell said. “I mean those things are just put in such simple terms that kids get it.”
But there are many issues in this election that are far from simple, like terrorism and job loss. Russell says he tries to push his students to go beyond the headline-grabbing phrases and look at the candidate platforms. Do they discuss solutions that could work?
Providence high school civics teacher Maya Chavez also sees the election as an opportunity.
“They asked me if I wanted to teach something besides civics this year and I was like no, its an election year! Why would I want to teach something else?” said Chavez. “It’s perfect because kids are seeing stuff on Facebook, and they’re coming in and saying my friend said this, and that’s wrong, right Miss?”
Chavez teaches 9th grade at Alvarez High School, where students look at the difference between the country’s two dominant political parties. This year the candidates gave her plenty of contrasting views to work with.
“We look at what do they have to say about immigration reform, what do they have to say about the Syrian refuge crisis, about gun control, health care,” explained Chavez, who adds that her students have plenty to say when it comes to these controversial issues.
In the classroom, Chavez introduces tools to analyze and deconstruct the candidates’ positions.
“They’ll look at a campaign video,” said Chavez. “Identify what’s the candidate’s argument, what’s the evidence to support it, identify whether it’s strong evidence or weak evidence. Is the candidate making a claim based on the weather outside, or based on additional research?”
Chavez believes it’s empowering to give students the vocabulary and the space to discuss controversial issues, especially during an election like this one, where some of the candidates’ comments may upset or offend students.
To do that successfully, you to have set ground rules early on, for those moments when students disagree.
“You can’t be inappropriate,” civics teacher Dawn Casey-Rowe tells her students at Davies Career and Technical High School in Lincoln.
“So here’s what you can do, you can disagree with somebody, you can not love their opinion, but you need to be able to discuss it with facts and bring the evidence to the table.”
Casey-Rowe saw two distinct camps develop in her classroom this year – three if you include supporters for Senator Bernie Sanders before he dropped out of the race.
“And they actually started to congregate in sections of the room. And I would say, ‘hey, how does my Trump camp feel about that? How does the Clinton camp like to respond?’ And we’d have those conversations.”
At times, Casey-Rowe says it got heated. Her students have personal experience with many of the issues brought up by this campaign.
“I’ll see it in the jobs issue, in issues about welfare reform, the war. These are real issues for these kids,” said Casey-Rowe. “When I’ve got kids that are nervous that a parent is going to be deported, these are real, real issues that come to their hearts.”
Like her colleagues in Newport and Providence, Casey-Rowe spends time teaching media analysis, and how to evaluate information for credibility. She even asked students to count the number of times each candidate was mentioned in a broadcast one evening. And she wants her students to realize they’re not stuck on the sidelines of this debate. In the era of social media, they have power.
“I’ll have some seniors who can vote, but aside from that, most of them can’t,” noted Casey-Rowe. “But if you look at their social media reach, look at them on Instagram, on Snapchat, if you look at them on Twitter and Facebook, students with monetized YouTube channels, for example. They have that grassroots power within them.”
Casey-Rowe tells her students they have a voice, if they chose to use it, and a chance to influence a larger conversation that will continue even after the election.
