For our February Newsletter it seemed, with President’s Day and all the focus on the next election, this would be a good time to talk about Civics Education. I expect it will not be a surprise to the teachers of Civics, U.S. Government and other similar courses that mastery in these courses is highly correlated with mastery in many other, even seemingly unrelated courses.
We are education data experts and can see these relationships, but we don’t claim to be education experts that can explain why Civics and related courses seem to have such a big impact on student success. Perhaps it’s the complexity of the system. The effort and discipline required to understand the complexity of our civil society would likely help students understand similarly complex subjects including Chemistry? Maybe understanding Civics helps a student see how they fit in our society, how they can make society stronger and how it can help them; maybe it helps motivate a student to excel across the board?
One thing I do believe is, as the nation’s founders believed, an educated populace is essential to a well functioning democracy. I am thankful for the role we get to play in providing that education.
I look forward to the thoughts of educators regarding the reasons Civics seems to have such a big impact.
