Beginning next year, all incoming Northwest Academy high school students will take one of three available civics courses as part of their graduation requirements. For current high schoolers, these classes will be optional.
The course offerings include Logic and Rhetoric, a pre-existing speech and debate class taught by Russell Hanes; Civics: Now and Then, a new current events class that David Schonfeld will lead and America Under the Microscope, an American history class that began this year instructed by Bobby Elliott.
“[I think it’s important] to be an informed and thoughtful citizen in the world,” said Katie Staggers, English/Humanities Department Chair. “I think knowing some basic facts about how our government works is a great bit of knowledge that I believe our Northwest Academy graduates [need].”
Under a bill passed in 2021, the state of Oregon has required at least one semester of civics education for public schools. While Northwest Academy doesn’t fall under this mandate, the school administration agreed with the state that a civics class could be beneficial.
“I firmly believe that it’s important for all people to learn about civics, [and] it’s congruent with what many high schools do,” said Joanne Kim, Head of High School.
This is Kim’s first year as Head of High School, and she has been a champion for the creation of these courses. To Kim, it is unclear why these changes hadn’t been made earlier.
“The rationale for not having a separate class in the past had been that some parts of civics were covered in E/H (English/Humanities) classes,” Hanes said, “but the E/H teachers have sort of said that there wasn’t time [in] the curriculum. The idea was to add in the civics component into some separate offerings.”
Staggers cited the pandemic as part of the reason this change didn’t come sooner.
“When you think about the last three or four years, we were in online learning and coming back from online learning,” Staggers said. “Those [aren’t the] times to make broad changes.”
Originally, these three classes were supposed to be a single required course to be taught by Schonfeld. Kim decided to change it to three course options to give more freedom to the teachers, and to fit the specific interests of different students.
“While you’ll still be learning about the three branches of government, federalism, voting laws and things like that, you’ll be learning about [them from] a different angle,” said Kim. “I like that students get a choice. This also gives teachers a little bit of flexibility to have [their] own spin on it.”
Logic and Rhetoric, taught by Hanes, was created seven years ago, but is changing both speech and debate portions of the course to adapt to the new curriculum requirements. The debate part is in fall, and primarily focuses on learning and practicing debate technique. The spring semester is primarily focused on public speaking.
Now, however, instead of students choosing the topic based only on what they are interested in, they will choose one debate in the five categories laid out in the Oregon State Standards for Civics. The categories are federalism, due process rights, separation of powers, political movements and foreign policy.
“We’re always going to do a topic related to each one of those five every year,” said Hanes. “In the past, we probably would have had three or four, but now it’s explicit. That’s a major change from having rotating floating topics, to having fixed areas that we are going to look at.”
The second change comes on the public speaking side. All of the speeches will be related to politics in some fashion, whether they be campaign speeches or persuasive speeches.
Civics: Now and Then, taught by Schonfeld, will look at civics through a lens of events in the modern day. The unique curriculum will seek to explain current events through a historical perspective.
“We’ll be using current events as a way [of] talking about civics,” said Schonfeld. “[The class] will be changing as the world in which we inhabit continues to change.”
Even though the class will not have a pre-selected set of topics to cover, Schonfeld wants students who take his class to leave with an understanding of how the government works, so that they can participate in democracy thoughtfully. The class will be rooted in discussion-based learning.
“Students will be expected to follow current events, specifically ones that pertain to [the] US and local government,” Schonfeld said. “Using what’s happening in the news, we will dig deep into how government functions. Students should expect to learn about the basics of civics [through] a contemporary lens.”
The third class, America Under the Microscope, taught by Elliott, will delve into the history of America, centering on slavery, indigenous history, immigration and racism. The class will also provide an overview of the function of the US government.
“At its core, the course is aimed at reconsidering the stories we tell about this country and emerging with a deeper sense of how we would like to participate in civic life,” Elliott said. “To me, these are central questions that we should all be wrestling with and I’m hopeful NWA students feel similarly.”
Students will team up with the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer CARE Foundation to raise funds for a cause they choose. This year, students chose to raise funds for non-profit organizations combating domestic violence in the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ community.
“The goal is to give students an opportunity to reexamine American history while also reflecting on their own place [and sense of responsibility] within the United States,” said Elliott.
Photo: “American Flag” by Vít Luštinec, Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
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