Election 2016 challenges civics teachers

Essential question

Why is civics education important for a democracy?

The 2016 presidential race has made teaching high school civics more difficult, particularly in light of some of the comments students have heard candidates make along the campaign trail.

Bruce Fox, a 12th grade government teacher at North East High School in Maryland, created a unit called ‘Scandals, Lies and Incivility’ to help students analyze the messages and rhetoric.

Fox’s students look at comments on social media and speeches candidates have given in order to analyze whether or not they are accurate. Students then rank the stories based on whether or not that they would reflect negatively on the candidate if he or she were president.

For instance, students examined comments Donald Trump made about women’s physical appearances, including statements about Sen. Ted Cruz’s wife. They also debated whether or not Hillary Clinton should release transcripts of the speeches she made at investment firm Goldman Sachs.

Student Sean Lynch said he thought Clinton should release her transcripts and says he follows the candidates on Twitter.

“I don’t feel like it’s a good source of information, but it is where a lot of candidates can slip up. Like Donald Trump, for instance, he does say a lot of not-so-smart things on Twitter that you wouldn’t think someone running for president would say,” Lynch said.

 Key terms

civics — the study of the rights and duties of citizenship