Education Issues Forum

During the last forum on Civil Resistance, I asked the question, what does it mean to be a citizen in a democracy. Tonight, I have a similar question. How can we be good citizens - how can we defend democracy and our way of life, if we have a population that is not educated.

Margaret Meade said, “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think."

For decades, we’ve been programmed to believe that politicians are corrupt, politics is dirty, that our vote doesn’t matter. It is a self-fulling prophecy. Consequently, a third of eligible voters don’t show up, even in major elections. Many of our citizens don’t understand the purpose and function of the three branches of government, how laws are passed or how those laws might impact them. Starting in the 1980s, testing requirements squeezed out Civics, History, and Government from the classroom, courses that taught important concepts - how government is structured and organized, our historic struggle for social justice, and examples of the catastrophic consequences of corrupt, self-serving governments. As a college freshman, I took a course called the American Experience which encompassed three different classes taught by professors of history, government, and literature. The classes were coordinated so students got an in-depth perspective of cultural, political, and socioeconomic dynamics within specific

It was enlightening, brutally honest, sometimes painfully so, and it had a profound impact on my way of thinking. The University of Texas at Austin, where I took that class, just signed the compact with the Trump administration giving them power to limit what can be taught.

If we don’t provide a comprehensive public education system, which teaches foundational subjects, such as science and math, along with critical thinking, historical analysis, socioeconomics and most certainly, civics, then our children will fill the information vacuum with the internet and social media, where algorithms will most certainly box them into a never-ending loop of misinformation and disinformation. While private education might have its place, we can take our privatized health system as a cautionary tale. When profits are a driver of decision making, results do not always favor the consumer.

I believe public education is foundational to democracy, so I thought it was important to bring together a panel who can talk about education, specifically addressing the state of education in Arizona. They can provide facts, statistics and insight about the attack on public education – a system in which 90% of children in this country rely. But it is up to us to correct the course, to elect officials who support public education, rather than undermine and destroy it. Democracy is participatory, so let’s be the citizens that this country and our children deserve.

Introduction to the Education Issues Forum by Cathy Davis