Meet the Educators Fighting to Restore a Sense of Civic Duty in School Kids

The following is an excerpt from The Death of "Why?": The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy by Andrea Batista Schlesinger. Copyright 2009 Andrea Batista Schlesinger. Reprinted with permission by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Nancy Gannon is not an ideologue, an America hater, or an activist determined to recruit revolutionaries to her cause. She's just a high school principal.

She's a principal in one of the toughest places to be a principal: the New York City public school system. Yet, despite the enormous challenges of educating children in a city where only slightly more than half of all ninth graders graduate high school, Nancy's mission goes beyond securing as many diplomas as possible. She told me she wants to help prepare citizens who are equipped with "voice, power, and responsibility."

This is probably why the very first schoolwide activity Gannon oversaw as principal at the School for Democracy and Leadership was the registering of eligible students to vote, instilling in them the value of this most fundamental responsibility of American citizenship.

The Crown Heights-based school was motivated by "change" even before it became the motif of the 2008 presidential campaign. Although the focus of the teachers and staff at SDL is to prepare their students for college, they are also, in Gannon's words, "incredibly steeped in activism. We encourage the students to pick something in the world or the community they want to change and then act on it together."

Like the children of Hampton, Virginia, participating in Project Citizen as part of their civics curriculum, the students of SDL are encouraged to put their citizenship into action on a local level. They are required to complete a "change project" of their own choosing each year. These change projects have included writing a proposal for a school library where there was none, working with junior high school students on a project to teach safe-sex education, and building more community through joint poetry readings among the schools that share SDL's campus.

In Gannon's mind, these small efforts at SDL are both preparation for and a microcosm of effective citizenship in our democracy. "To be a good citizen means that you have to be always thinking about your responsibility in the world," Gannon told me. "I think that every school, whatever they call it, should be talking about each of our responsibility to maintain and build responsible community, to look out for those who do not have power and who don't have voice. Those are the reasons I love my country, because I believe that in its best moment that's what it strives to be."

In a time in which the apathy of young people is lamented far and wide, and in which the disaffection of young people in poor, urban communities is apparent, efforts such as SDL's to both educate and engage its student body in strengthening their communities would seem likely to earn universal praise. But, although the word civics inspires wistfulness for a bygone era, there is some controversy today about how schools should express that commitment to preparing effective citizens. Not everyone wants to encourage students to question how democracy is functioning -- in their schools, in their communities, or in their country -- and to figure out how to make it work better. Some believe that such an exercise is inherently unpatriotic. And because the people making that argument have power -- and a megaphone -- it is important to understand their resistance.

Social Justice in the Schools

On the editorial page of the New York Daily News, and in the journal of the Manhattan Institute, the think tank for which he works, Sol Stern put the School for Democracy and Leadership, along with two other small New York City schools, on his "dishonor roll." Why?