“One problem that the students themselves recognized was that a lot of kids were late to school. Tardiness was a big problem. And when they dived down to figure out why, they realized that a lot of the students didn’t have reliable transportation. These were high school students. The kids went to the city council and convinced them to pass a law, and the program is known as kids ride free. And then the next school year, tardiness went down. Kids were not showing up late as much because they can now get to the school with free public transportation. I don’t think any of those students will ever forget the power of local democracy to change their lives, to change the reality of their everyday problems. And so, that’s the sort of thing we need to do in the scholarship world of education policy. It’s known as action civics, teaching students not just by telling them to memorize different aspects of how government works or, you know, in America, we often say, well, students need to be able to recite the declaration of independence. That’s boring. That’s memorization. That doesn’t instill in them the value of democratic engagement. But an action civics project like they did in Washington, DC, certainly would.
” #democracy #voting #learning
