RATIONALE:
CIVICS EDUCATION ACROSS
THE NEW YORK STATE LEARNING STANDARD AREAS
Civics education develops from specific content, concepts, and skills fundamental to all New York State Learning Standards. The integration of civics education throughout your local school district’s prekindergarten – grade 12 curricular and instructional programs is one way to foster a standards-based teaching and learning community. Such integration represents the essence of a standards-based education – an approach that gives context to content, and infuses meaning and value into teaching and learning. Learning communities that explore the meaning of legal systems, and the rights and responsibilities available through them, engage students in discourse and enhance their awareness of multiple perspectives.
Reading, writing, listening, speaking, and thinking are important processes in helping students to
- comprehend the law and legal systems;
- understand such information presented through a variety of media; and
- utilize strong intellectual skills for analysis and evaluation.
By studying the purposes of governments around the world, students gain perspectives on
- the function of government in their own country;
- how governments embrace competition, trade, and a global economy; and
- the effects of a country’s legal system on its culture – for example, in such practices as human rights, transportation, technological growth, and voting.
An economic dimension to civics helps students to
- understand the money supply, production, copyright laws, tariffs, imports and exports, investments, and commerce;
- critically analyze the intersections of legal systems and budgets, taxes, and population densities;
- consider ethical issues, such as the physical and social sciences of energy conservation, recycling, and overall production and consumption; and
- ask essential questions and generate solutions to determine how the practices of the United States reflect its ideals and values.
Civics education connects students to the issues that affect their daily lives – and the lives of all people – in multiple areas, such as the following:
- the arts;
- economies;
- employment opportunities;
- engineering;
- health;
- infrastructures;
- mathematics;
- languages;
- media;
- political systems;
- publications;
- science;
- sports/recreational activities; and
- technology.
References
Advancing the Civic Mission of Schools: What Schools, District, and State and Federal Leaders Can Do. Washington, DC: Academy for Educational Development (for the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools), 2004.
National Standards for Civics and Government. Calabasas, CA: Center for Civic Education, 1994.
Social Studies Resource Guide with Core Curriculum. Albany, NY: State Education Department, 1999.
“No member of this state shall be disfranchised, or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof…”
(The Constitution of the State of New York, Article I, Sec. I)