Remember in High School...

[SHRED]

...how many kids hated required Civics classes? Remember how they barely paid attention? Then when they got out of school they went into the labor force and got busy with life never taking any time to educate themselves on even the basics of how our government functions.

This "ignorance gap" as I call it has for many been filled in with talkshows and FOX Noise.

We are surrounded by many misled sheep who defend this filled-with-crap "ignorance gap" with passion and gusto.


--my take

[tularetom]

1. Hell, I can't remember if we even had a civics class in high school

So I totally get that a lot of people are unaware of the workings of government.

But yet somehow I can't recall when I didn't know how a bill becomes a law.

Maybe it's from my kids watching Sesame Street back in the 70's.

[MineralMan]

2. I paid attention in those classes.

I learned a great deal in them, too. Even in High School, I was politically active. I did my best to campaign for JFK, although my participation was limited due to my age.

[SHRED]

3. I graduated in 1974

I recall some activism but for the most part kids where I grew up here in SoCal had it pretty easy.

[antiquie]

5. Lots of activism in my part of SoCal.

'68 Whittier grad. Our friends were coming home maimed or not coming home at all.
I was lucky and had an outstanding civics teacher who made government workings exciting to us.

[MineralMan]

6. 1963 for me.

Not too many people in my high school even thought about politics. I did, though. I was always an oddball.

[kimbutgar]

7. I also graduated in 1974

In 8th grade we went to Sacramento after learning about California government. Senior year we had to subscribe to Newsweek and we covered current events. Also we had to volunteer to work on a campaign and write a report. I just don't see this kind of stuff anymore. This was San Francisco in 74.

[legcramp]

4. I don't remember it that way at all

But then I went to High School in the 60's.

The "civics" and government classes is where some of the most engaged and intense debates occurred on our campus. Of course there were always some who didn't seem to care but I remember guys from the "shop wing' and gals from "home ec" arguing and discussing the issues facing our generation.

Maybe it was the times, before internet, video games and incessant playing with I-Toys.

On edit:

Every now and then I have picked up one of my grandkids from school. This requires a check in and sign out at the office.

I don't know what happens in the classrooms but at class change it looks like zombies shuffling along glued to their screens.

Maybe they're doing further research on what they just learned in class.

Or maybe not.

[Downwinder]

8. We finished up with a mock convention.

Nominated Kennedy over Johnson.

[gtar100]

9. If only they could teach it in a way that drives home just how influential civics is

on our daily lives. It's not just about the procedures in government, it's also about the issues that lead people to want legislative action or some sort of governmental role, and on the other side it's about the effect of those actions - or inactions - at the street level, even within our very homes. So many people think it has little effect in their lives but they proclaim that in the very midst of all the structures organized directly and indirectly by our form of government. It matters so much who pulls the strings of government and this lack of interest in civics only reinforces the power currently held by the few wealthy people that care only to manipulate it for their own benefit while messing up the lives of everyone else.

Government isn't the problem, it's who controls government that matters. Right now our democratic form of government is being transformed into a new form of aristocracy and just a few lessons in world history will show us how badly that will end up.

[RebelOne]

10. I only had civics classes in junior high school

or middle school as it is called now. And since I was in my early teens, I hated it. Passed and I don't know how.