Civic-based approaches to education grant students the chance to take away persuasive, informative, and debate communication skills and apply them to the challenges facing civic life. When elected officials make a speech or comment about our current state of education, they do not encourage students to read Plato, Descartes, or even the Federalist Papers, instead our government is encouraging students to become increasingly experienced in math and computers and other STEM programs, or else foreign countries will steal all of our jobs and advance in front of America when it comes to education. Yet in reality, these foreign countries will steal nothing from the United States if they do not entertain lively and democratic institutions, like American’s …show more content…
In the next phase of the lesson plan, navigation, students connect with individuals in the community who are directly related to the social issue they selected in the exploration phase. For example, if an English course is focused on the notion of African American identity in society, one may select a forum where they are in direct contact with members of the African American community and participate in related activities around their college. Directly involving a student in the community shows that there are a variety of different options for students to get involved. No matter what college course a student enrolls in, it allows the students to fully immerse themselves in the civic interests they have pursued. In regularly updating the instructor of the college course on their involvement, students provide a timeline of progress, while also displaying the connections they make with members of the local community associated with the social …show more content…
Thus, students experience community first-hand and in inspiring ways. Palmer and Standerfer assert, “For many students, the experience of community has been limited to family, friends, and possibly, church this assignment invites them to envision community in broader civic terms” . If instructors embrace a civic-based approach to education, they encourage students to not only be exposed to the different views of their classmates via discussion, but also through participation in the civic assignment. Individuals can begin to make sense of the community they are a part of “in different terms than does traditional liberal education” . However, liberal education is not realistic for many students, as a result of the increasing tuition costs. Students who do in fact receive a liberal education tend to be affluent. Instructors of the affluent concentrate on a language that, focus on the elite and promotes different values that the language and curriculum advances. Thus, the values that arise from liberal education are of a comfortable elite. Yet, by reconstructing college courses to take a civic-based approach to education, students are exposed to cultural pluralism. Nicholas Bowman’s “Promoting Participation in a Diverse Democracy: A Meta-Analysis of College Diversity Experiences and Civic Engagement”