These central parts of being an American – otherwise known as civics – are essential for students to know before they enter the “real world.” These American values are many times not taught extensively in schools.
The Massachusetts’s Department of Higher Education has declared that the state universities and community colleges in the Commonwealth must develop mandatory civics courses for all students starting this fall.
“I think it’s a real positive change for education in the state,” Andrew DesRochers, a sophomore majoring in business management at UMass Amherst says. “Being informed citizens is definitely not a strong suit for our generation – look at how hard it is to get us out to the polls.”
Massachusetts – which boasts some of the nation’s greatest private universities, like Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology – is the first state in the nation to make the move.
The philosophy behind the move is that students shouldn’t just be trained to be smart professionals, but also competent American people, according to a press release from the Department of Higher Education.
Civics are “essential if students are to meet their future responsibilities as citizens,” says Richard Freeland, higher education commissioner for the state of Massachusetts. “It is a commitment that I believe should be met with urgency.”
This new focus on civics could make up for the dearth of civics knowledge students have across the nation in their classrooms before they enroll in college.
A quick look at the statistics shows that students in the U.S. aren’t getting high marks when it comes to civics, starting even before they attend college.
Only 24% of high school seniors were at least “proficient” in civics knowledge and skills in 2010, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This is a slight decrease in proficiency from four years prior when the test was last administered.
Civic education “helps students understand the complexities of applying learning to existing complex problems that are out there,” says Charlotte Mandell, UMass Lowell’s vice provost for undergraduate education, who works to implement civic learning into classrooms.
She adds that professors will gear civics courses toward students’ academic interests. Art students might receive academic credit for working as curators of a public exhibit, for example, while engineering students could participate in civic engagement by going into a food pantry and suggesting ways to improve the way it is organized.
These additions might require some legwork: Mandell acknowledges that it might take “a bit of administrative know-how” for faculty members to connect with community groups to bring into the classroom.
“It’s a step in the right direction towards keeping future generations educated about the way our country is run,” James Lefebvre, a sophomore UMass Amherst student majoring in mechanical engineering, says of the new requirement. “A democracy will fail if its citizens don’t know how it works.”
Both he and DesRochers say they were not yet made aware of the new policy or how it could affect them.
Some schools in Massachusetts signaled that civics education is already a central part of their vision.
“UMass Amherst has long been supportive of community engagement and service learning activities,” read a statement from the provost’s office at UMass Amherst.
UMass Lowell says in a release that one of the way students are educated in civics is through learning from professors at the university’s Center for Public Opinion, which conducts polls on social and political issues. Additionally, students there logged more than 120,000 hours of community service.
But higher education leaders in Massachusetts hope that their new emphasis on social studies, specifically in a classroom setting, will take their focus on civics one step further.
Chances are, each school’s programs will be different, in the hopes of accommodating a whole range of student interests and abilities. But the goal is to make American history, government traditions and basic legal procedures a mainstay in public university classrooms across the state.