Monday, August 30, 2010
4th Period: Is Social Studies Important?
Many Americans do not know basic information about their own country. On a recent episode of Jay Leno, random people on the street could not answer questions such as "Who is the Vice President of the United States?" Students often have no understanding of how the government of their own country works. If you click on the title above, you will be taken to an article written by a high school student who points out that many students "know more about who lives in a pineapple under the sea than about who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave". Do you think that Social Studies is important? Why or why not?
3rd, 5th & 6th Period: Is Social Studies Important?
Read this editorial article written by an American high school student about US students' lack of knowledge of their own country. Once you have read the article and thought about what he has to say, think about the question posed to you in this week's title..."Is Social Studies Important?" Compose your response and post it as a comment.
In My Opinion: You don't know Jack about America
Do you know who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is? How about the year the constitution was written? Who said “Give me Liberty or give me Death!”? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you know less about our government than any immigrant who came by legal means. These three questions are pulled right off of the citizenship test that the government issues to immigrants wishing to enter our country. By the way our chief justice is John Roberts jr., the constitution was written in 1787, and Patrick Henry was the speaker of this famous quote. If you didn’t know that it may not be your fault.
The idea that more people know more about who lives in a pineapple under the sea than about who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is scary.
Studies show that millions of natural born American citizens know very little about the US government. On an episode of The Jay Leno Show Jay did a segment called “Jay-Walking” where he asked people if they knew who the vice president was, the speaker of the house, and basic questions about the US government system.
The most stunning revelation of the segment is how little people actually know about their government. Many people didn’t even know we had a speaker of the house, didn’t know who Joe Biden was, and failed miserably on simple questions about their own homeland.
Is it their faults? Most likely, but the teachers they had growing up in school should also be embarrassed. Even in my own Social Studies classes, I have noticed that some high school juniors didn’t know that we had 50 states. Earlier this year a student in my government class asked if Wyoming was really part of the United States. It’s embarrassing.
I blame a large part of that on our entire Social Studies education system. Throughout school we are taught Math, English and Science until we learn it. Social Studies on the other hand, fall short. Students aren’t forced to learn about this subject half as much as the others, but Social Studies is not a “second class subject.” The fact that many students leave high school knowing how to properly balance a chemical equation, or graph trigonometric functions, but don’t have a clue how the Electoral College works is frightening.
From the time we are in elementary school we figure out that citizenship pales in comparison to math or science. Unfortunately there are teachers who sit by and allow this to happen. Just because the class is required it doesn’t mean it should be easy. Many Social Studies teachers actually enable this dislike of the subject to happen by making their classes easy to pass or over simplified, sometimes not even teaching the material. This creates a larger gap between the students and the subject. These useless classes become a detriment to citizens down the road. It is no wonder that more immigrants know who the father of our constitution is than do American citizens (It’s James Madison in case you didn’t know). If the teachers aren’t giving us the tools to our country how can they expect us to run the country one day? If we the students don’t learn our government’s workings, how will we be productive citizens?
— By Charlie Johns
- Posted on May 26, 2010 (www.tweentribune.com)
In My Opinion: You don't know Jack about America
Do you know who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is? How about the year the constitution was written? Who said “Give me Liberty or give me Death!”? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you know less about our government than any immigrant who came by legal means. These three questions are pulled right off of the citizenship test that the government issues to immigrants wishing to enter our country. By the way our chief justice is John Roberts jr., the constitution was written in 1787, and Patrick Henry was the speaker of this famous quote. If you didn’t know that it may not be your fault.
The idea that more people know more about who lives in a pineapple under the sea than about who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is scary.
Studies show that millions of natural born American citizens know very little about the US government. On an episode of The Jay Leno Show Jay did a segment called “Jay-Walking” where he asked people if they knew who the vice president was, the speaker of the house, and basic questions about the US government system.
The most stunning revelation of the segment is how little people actually know about their government. Many people didn’t even know we had a speaker of the house, didn’t know who Joe Biden was, and failed miserably on simple questions about their own homeland.
Is it their faults? Most likely, but the teachers they had growing up in school should also be embarrassed. Even in my own Social Studies classes, I have noticed that some high school juniors didn’t know that we had 50 states. Earlier this year a student in my government class asked if Wyoming was really part of the United States. It’s embarrassing.
I blame a large part of that on our entire Social Studies education system. Throughout school we are taught Math, English and Science until we learn it. Social Studies on the other hand, fall short. Students aren’t forced to learn about this subject half as much as the others, but Social Studies is not a “second class subject.” The fact that many students leave high school knowing how to properly balance a chemical equation, or graph trigonometric functions, but don’t have a clue how the Electoral College works is frightening.
From the time we are in elementary school we figure out that citizenship pales in comparison to math or science. Unfortunately there are teachers who sit by and allow this to happen. Just because the class is required it doesn’t mean it should be easy. Many Social Studies teachers actually enable this dislike of the subject to happen by making their classes easy to pass or over simplified, sometimes not even teaching the material. This creates a larger gap between the students and the subject. These useless classes become a detriment to citizens down the road. It is no wonder that more immigrants know who the father of our constitution is than do American citizens (It’s James Madison in case you didn’t know). If the teachers aren’t giving us the tools to our country how can they expect us to run the country one day? If we the students don’t learn our government’s workings, how will we be productive citizens?
— By Charlie Johns
- Posted on May 26, 2010 (www.tweentribune.com)
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