Fourth Graders Educating for Democracy

By focusing solely on memorizing facts about government and by romanticizing individual behavior of our historical heroes, many schools are missing a crucial opportunity to empower students to act on the issues they care about and to work together to bring about change.

So what’s the effective way to educate for democracy? Students should see a link between motivation and action. Experiencing this link, students naturally want to learn about the facts and the processes which help their cause. The result is knowledge that sticks because it’s acquired by doing and imprinted by caring. Also, organizing as a group for moral support as well as for strength in numbers is a critical, and revolution-making, aspect of activism for kids to discover. Our heroes are incredibly important role models and that is why we learn about them. They also were in many cases connected to movements and organizations. The lesson is that there is power in each of us connecting to people who give us ideas and support for our beliefs.

It makes sense that at LREI we don’t want to miss the opportunity presented by this election year to engage students’ critical thinking. Educating students to be active and engaged in democracy is integral to progressive education. One example comes from fourth grade where students are right now learning how our electoral process works. They are asking (and pursuing): How do we learn more information about the candidates and their positions? How do we have respectful dialogue around passionate topics? Why is this such a historic election? What does that mean to all of us? Essential questions for fourth graders and for all of us.

We looking forward to the fourth graders’ learning and leadership during for the lower school this election year!

Fourth graders made campaign posters to gain understanding of multiple perspectives and to gain insight about how messages are conveyed to the public.