S4 E10: Schooled for Democracy

Scene on Radio: Capitalism

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Society & Culture, Audiodoc, Radio, Documentary, Stories

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In most American schools, children *hear about* democracy, but don’t get to *practice* it. What would a more engaged brand of civics education look like?

Story reported by Ben James, with host John Biewen and collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Arielle Jennings, Hilary Moss, and Nikole Hannah-Jones.

The series editor is Loretta Williams. Music by the Summer Street Brass Band, Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: Stephen Buckley, Jelicity Mercado, Bella Goncalves, and Angelica Pareja, eighth-grade students at Pyne Arts Magnet School in Lowell, Massachusetts, with their award at Civics Day in Boston, December 2019.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm not the first person to say this by any means, but the pletch of allegiance is weird.
0:27.9	Oh yeah. It has a crazy history too that involves like a socialist preacher and advertising. I mean,
0:35.4	we could do a whole episode just about that. But I mean, like just the pledge itself, right? Like,
0:40.7	I pledge allegiance. I mean, it's allegiance what we really want to be pledging in a democracy.
0:46.8	I never got the ethics of that, you know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe we should have our children pledge
0:52.7	to make the world a better place, even if that means challenging the country they live in.
0:58.2	Like, that seems like something I could get down with. There you go again. Subversive messages.
1:05.6	But yes, right? Imagine that. This episode is not about the pledge of allegiance, but Ben James,
1:12.4	who reported the episode, sent us that recording. And, you know, that question,
1:17.2	should we teach our children to revere the nation or to get involved and make it better,
1:23.9	does seem related to the story that Ben is about to tell, I think.
1:28.2	Yeah, I think it is. For a lot of us, school may be the first place we hear much about the idea of
1:34.0	citizenship. When you were growing up, Jen, what kind of messages did you hear about school and
1:40.7	what it was about? Why it was important? Well, you know, education was very important in my family,
1:47.2	multiple generations of educated people. But at least before high school,
1:52.5	my teachers were almost operating in like a civil rights tradition, right? I had these
1:57.2	really powerful black women, Miss Lea and Miss Davis. And they just used to teach us black history
2:02.5	and had us reading like Langston Hughes poems and had us singing to be young, gifted in black.
2:09.1	You know, and they'd be playing a piano, you know, I mean, they at least made us feel like we
2:13.9	were part of the struggle. But you know, and things changed after that. But you know, here in Philadelphia,
2:20.0	I work with a lot of teachers and parents and other community members and something called the
2:23.9	Our City, Our Schools Coalition. And what they're up against is really a very different understanding
	...

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