Question: Don’t Know Much About Civics Either

For the rest of the Lewiston Tribune editorial by Tom Henderson, click here .

Some people don’t even know the difference between Congress and their state legislature. And these are among the people charged with making decisions that affect us all in this experiment in self-government called the United States of America. Worried? You should be. The ranks of the politically illiterate are about to swell. Most of us learned at least the basic facts about representative democracy from the football coach who got stuck teaching junior high school civics. Now, thanks to the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools are focusing on reading and math and squeezing out such “nonessentials” as art, music and civics. None of those subjects should be considered frills, least of all civics — Tom Henderson /Lewiston Tribune.

Question: In terms of importance, how would you rate high school/grade school civics?