Debate=Democracy
The New York Historical Society helps build awareness of democracy with 12 year olds.
Toga-wrapped 6th graders debate and vote on homework and testing policies as if they were in ancient Greece as part of the democracy project at the New York Historical Society. Why is this a very important exercise for kids? Learning how your views are not the same as your pals is an important doorway to appreciating democracy.
Many young people are not valuing our messy system which is dangerous considering that we need all citizens to be engaged as authoritarianism becomes more prominent in the world. “What really motivated us to do this program was looking at statistics on the percentage of young people that voted in the 2016 election,” said Louise Mirrer, the museum’s president and chief executive. Many said “that democracy really didn’t matter to them very much — they didn’t really care whether they lived in democracy or not. And those numbers seem to be rising.”
“Feelings were running high as everyone lobbied their representatives. The constituents had only a few minutes to make their arguments, and it seemed no one was listening. At one point, someone tried to unseat a delegate.” according to Alina Tugend who wrote about this for the New York Times.
We also asked 1st-5th grade kids to debate homework as part of our work in elementary school and they had similarly mixed opinions but, in the aggregate, they agreed they needed homework, but the homework had to be equitable and not overwhelming. Kids who have lots of help at home to complete homework knew kids who went home and stared at a blank piece of paper. In our case, the principal offered the kids “If you can come up with a better policy, I will implement it.” Unfortunately, the next day was March 12, 2020, and we all know what came next.
At the end of the day, realizing that, for your opinion to matter you first have to form a well considered opinion. That to get clear about what you want your life to be like (or not) is the gateway to appreciating how much our democracy needs all of us to participate. And democracy equals constant debate.