by Deborah Wise and Regina Lawrence in the Dallas Morning News
Think back to your grade school days and those many times when you had to memorize a lesson. Even decades removed from the exam, you might still remember the material, even if it never had relevance in your life again. But the ability to recall the quadratic formula, for example, masks a much bigger question: Did memorizing the material lead you to apply it to your life?
That is one of the questions raised by a recent move in Texas, Arizona and several other states to begin requiring students to pass a civics test to graduate. North Dakota has already approved a requirement similar to Arizona’s, and South Carolina, Indiana and Utah have bills in the pipeline.
Few would dispute state Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, sponsor of a bill that would require Texas students to pass a civics test, when he was quoted saying, “When you start having students graduate from high school who don’t know where we got our independence from and that kind of stuff, I think it’s a little frightening. I want kids to know as much as people who become citizens of the United States.”
Concern about students’ levels of civic knowledge has plagued Texas and the nation for a while. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics barely rose between 2006 and 2010 for eighth- and 12th-graders, though they did edge up for fourth-graders.
But beyond civic knowledge, Texans should be concerned about a student’s ability to participate as an active citizen. The most recent Texas Civic Health Index completed by the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life found startlingly low levels of civic engagement among all Texans, including young adults, on everything from voting to discussing issues to communicating with their elected representatives.
An exam that tests a student’s civic knowledge would enable and encourage some of those students to participate more actively in civic life. But research shows that three ingredients are necessary for more students to become active citizens: civic knowledge, civic skills and pro-civic attitudes.