Policy proposals included constructing a riprap facility and providing a relocation site for informal settlers to avoid flooding along the national highway in Tanauan City; strictly implementing the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act and putting up the Materials Recovery Facility in Barangay Tangub in Bacolod City; strictly implementing the approved tricycle fare rates in Tagbilaran City; and developing intervention programs to prevent students in a barangay (village) in Davao City from dropping out of school due to family problems.

Eight teams representing the Pines City National High School (Baguio), Muntinlupa Science High School (NCR), Tinago National High School (Bicol), Davao City National High School (Davao), Tanauan School of Fisheries (Batangas), Regional Science High School of Region IX (Zamboanga), Tagbilaran City Science High School (Bohol), and Luisa Medel National High School (Bacolod) presented their policy proposals before a panel of evaluators.

The evaluators included Dr. Ferdie Pingul, a trustee of the Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy (PCCED) and a faculty member of the University of Asia and the Pacific’s School of Education and Human Development; Mr. Rob Nazal of the Corporate Social Responsibility Unit at Globe; Undersecretary Leon Flores III of the National Youth Commission; Dr. Yolanda Quijano from the Tan Yan Kee Foundation and former Department of Education Undersecretary; and Ms. Zen Dimalanta, former Program Director for E-media, ABS-CBN Foundation.

“I am really amazed at the level of awareness and commitment shown by these high school students,” said PCCED executive director Rey Trillana. “They actually went to their barangay officials, the city council, even their mayors to push for their advocacy.”

Project Citizen has been adapted for the local context and is implemented by the Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy, the Center for Civic Education’s Civitas International Programs partner in the Philippines.

“John Hale is a leader in civic education not only in California and the nation, but he is recognized internationally as an expert and a scholar,” said Frances L. Kidwell, former assistant superintendent of the Trinity County Office of Education. “Through his visionary leadership, John has demonstrated understanding of the global implications of civic education while helping to make civic education accessible to countless students, teachers, and scholars around the world now and into the future.”

The Roy Erickson Civic Education Leadership Award is presented annually to a California educational leader, legislator, or community/organization leader who has made notable contributions toward promoting or implementing civic learning in California schools to prepare students to be engaged and responsible citizens.

“I am humbled to accept this award, which was named after a civic education leader who was a great friend of mine,” said Hale. “I have been incredibly lucky in my career, working daily with inspirational teachers from around the world as well as ‘giants of civic education’ like Chuck Quigley and Margaret Branson. To be able to contribute in a small way to some of the enormous accomplishments of the Center has been an honor.”

Hale has been with the Center for 25 years and has served as the associate director for 17 of those years. He conceptualizes, develops, and administers the Center’s domestic and international programs. Hale is a co-director of the National Campaign to Promote Civic Education and is also a member of the Steering Committee of the California Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools.

“John has played a prominent and instrumental role in the creation and implementation of every program of our Center,” said Charles N. Quigley, the Center’s executive director. “I am not aware of any more dedicated and thoughtful contributor to the goal of developing a truly enlightened citizenry that, to paraphrase Jefferson, can exercise their control of our government with a ‘wholesome discretion.’”

The award is named after Roy Erickson, who died in 2006. Erickson’s professional career was devoted to improving history, social science and civic education. He was active in CCSS and the National Council for the social studies. Erickson served as the social studies specialist for the San Juan Unified School District. He was president of the National Social Studies Supervisors Association in 1986, received the Hilda Taba Award from CCSS in 2000 and was a two-time recipient of the Liberty Bell Award from the Sacramento County Bar Association. He served as the California state coordinator for We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution and was among the first group of teachers who launched the Center’s international education for democracy programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996 and later worked in Croatia, Slovakia, Latvia and Ireland.

CONTACT:

Maria Gallo, Center for Civic Education

(818) 591-9321, gallo@civiced.org

About the Center for Civic Education

The Center for Civic Education (www.civiced.org) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to fostering the development of informed, responsible participation in civic life by citizens committed to values and principles fundamental to American constitutional democracy.

About the California Council for the Social Studies

The California Council for the Social Studies (www.ccss.org) is a nonprofit professional organization serving both public and private school educators, and is the leading voice for quality social studies education in California. CCSS promotes and supports social studies education through service, advocacy and leadership development.

Elementary, middle, and high school students can learn the constitutional powers and limitations of the executive branch with our selection of classroom-proven lessons from our We the People: The Citizen & the Constitution student texts.

If you enjoy these lessons, please consider making a donation to support the Center’s work by visting http://new.civiced.org/about/give/donate.

Human Rights Education: A Contribution to Building Peaceful Communities in Schools Based on Democracy and Partnership is available for free download.

The first publication, Human Rights Education: A Contribution to Building Peaceful Communities in Schools Based on Democracy and Partnership, is the second edition of the policy brief series Education and Democracy, which aims to report key findings from research, policy, and programs on human rights education.

The second publication is Online Bulletin 9: Human Rights Education. This edition was produced in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights and the Division of Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights of the Council of Europe. It presents a general panorama of human rights education, using a variety of approaches with rich content, which includes international agreements, international and regional institutions with databases of educational resources, experiences of horizontal cooperation and policies, programs and initiatives within and beyond the Americas, and publications, professional development opportunities and interviews to key experts on the field.

Links:

• Human Rights Education (pdf)
• Online Bulletin 9: Human Rights Education (pdf)

Wyoming We the People Students from Cheyenne Central High School

Matt Strannigan, Wyoming state coordinator for We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution said the funds will be combined with other monies donated to the program by Wyoming citizens in the past year to fund the 2013 Grand Teton Summer Institute. The institute will be conducted at the Teton Science Schools—Jackson Campus, the week of August 2-7 and will host some of the top scholars on the U.S. Constitution from across the country. It is a “boot camp” on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights for Wyoming teachers.

“The donation from the Ellbogen Foundation is consistent with their strong support of quality educational programs and outstanding teacher preparation, including National Board Certification. The We the People program attracts the very best civic educators from across the state/nation and the generosity and leadership by the board of directors at the Ellbogen Foundation provides us the opportunity to continue our growth and civic education training,” said Strannigan.

Strannigan stated the goal of the program is to “develop students as responsible, participating members of the community. It teaches research, writing, and critical thinking with a culminating performance assessment that measures real understanding of concepts inherent to the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

The We the People program is the most extensive education program in the country on the Constitution and Bill of Rights and the principles and values they embody. Independent research shows that high school students who participated in the We the People program scored significantly higher on a test of political knowledge than their peers. We the People classes scored 30 percent higher than matched comparison government classes on a comprehensive test that measured understanding of core values and principles of democracy, constitutional limits on governmental institutions, and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship

Implemented nationwide in upper elementary, middle, and high schools, We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution has reached more than 30 million students and 90,000 teachers since its inception in 1987. The program is currently funded by the Wyoming State Legislature and through donations from Wyoming citizens. It is directed through the Center for Civic Education and the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

For more information about the program, contact the Center for Civic Education at 818-591-9321 or visit www.civiced.org. For additional information about the We the People program in Wyoming, contact state coordinator Matt Strannigan.

The hearings have gained in popularity over the years and are now seen as a great opportunity to infuse a performance-based assessment that integrates many of the English-Language Arts standards found in the Common Core with the social studies standards.

By offering the simulated congressional hearings in all schools, elementary students in the Howard County Public Schools will have the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge in an authentic and engaging manner that they will remember for years to come.

Simulated congressional hearings, a hallmark of the We the People program, are being adopted in all Howard County elementary schools.

"I know my Bill of Rights," said this We the People student.

In this inspiring video, We the People students from teacher Michael Gordon’s class at Munster High School in Indiana describe the difference their study of the Constitution has made in their lives.

One student said that We the People “creates the leaders who will help uphold…our Founders’ ideals in the future.”

Watch these students from Munster, Indiana explain what We the People means to them.

We at the Center—especially us old-timers who have known Hugh Friedman and Dave Fish since the late 1960s—are deeply saddened by their passing. I will try to set forth some highlights of their support that come to mind upon reflecting on the Center and its history.

David Fish

Hugh Friedman

In the early 1960s, a number of events and developments took place that drew the attention of the legal profession, among others, to the need to develop among our citizenry a greater understanding of our system of constitutional government, the need to develop a higher level of public debate about issues regarding the system, and the need to foster among youth and adults alike a reasoned commitment to the fundamental values and principles of the system. Awareness of these needs was precipitated by such events as the deplorably low level of public debate about the decisions of the Warren Court, research that showed that the average person could not identify the Bill of Rights when presented in contemporary terms and did not support some of its most essential elements, and findings that American prisoners of war in the Korean conflict were easily indoctrinated by their captors because they had insufficient grounding in their own system of government to immunize them against the instillation of communist ideology.

About 1962, Justice William Brennan convened a meeting at a conference center just outside Washington, D.C. It was attended by leading members of the legal profession from throughout the country, including representatives from schools of law, the bar, and the bench. At this point I feel I am drifting into more detail than necessary, but I wanted to set the context that resulted in Hugh, Tac Craven, and others associated with the Center from its early stages becoming leading members of a statewide and eventually nationwide effort to address the problems noted above.

The Center had its origins as an interdisciplinary committee on civic education at UCLA. Members of the committee included participants in the Brennan meeting. Some of these members also served on a state advisory committee on the Bill of Rights that was appointed by the State Board of Education to promote due attention to the Constitution and Bill of Rights in public schools. I was hired by the UCLA committee to develop an experimental curriculum on due process of law that eventually included attention to constitutionalism and the rule of law, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and the equal protection of the laws. Under the auspices of the state advisory committee, our UCLA committee supported the implementation of this curriculum under the supervision of the curricular coordinators in ten of the most populated school districts in the state. These included Dave in San Diego, Margaret Branson in Oakland, Roy Erickson in Sacramento, and others.

Dave Fish did an excellent job of supervising the implementation of the programs throughout the San Diego school system, as did the other coordinators.

In 1969 the State Bar of California and a number of its local affiliates decided to develop a comprehensive statewide civic education program that all bar associations could support. Hugh Friedman was active in the San Diego and state bar and was part of a state bar committee that surveyed existing civic education programs in California. They liked the program we had developed at UCLA and asked me to develop a proposal for a statewide program they could support. The result was the Law in a Free Society program based on the concepts of authority, privacy, justice, responsibility, diversity, freedom, property, and participation that is now entitled Foundations of Democracy.

When the State Bar established an advisory committee for the Law in a Free Society project, it included such coordinators as Margaret and Dave, as well as Hugh, who were working together on the program in San Diego and Tac, who was working with Roy Erickson in Sacramento.

The initial funding for the Law in a Free Society program consisted of contributions of $25,000 each from the State Bar and the San Diego County Bar where both Hugh and Stan Legro were active participants and supporters. The State Bar then assisted in obtaining federal funding for the statewide implementation of the program that was accomplished in the ten school systems noted above and in which Dave, Margaret, Roy, and the other coordinators played pivotal roles.

Hugh played a significant role in the development of the curricular materials. I could easily yellow-highlight the sections of the materials on responsibility and due process that he contributed.

Over the years Dave contributed to many aspects of the Center’s work, including lending his expertise in governmental relations in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and providing a financial legacy. Hugh served as president of the board for quite a few years until Tac took over. After that he continued to be a steady and consistently reliable friend and supporter of the Center and helped in numerous ways both regarding the substance and quality of our curricular programs, providing access to his and his wife Lynn’s many important contacts in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and obtaining funding from both the public and financial sectors, some of which continues to this day.

We at the Center feel a great personal loss at the passing of our dear friends and colleagues. We are very proud of the positive impact of the programs of the Center on millions of students and their teachers throughout the world. We feel that this impact is as much a part of Hugh’s and Dave’s legacy as it is of anyone who has contributed to its creation.

Links:

• Obituary for David Fish (Legacy.com)
• Obituary for Hugh Friedman (San Diego Union Tribune)

As I have been reflecting on the history of my own and the Center’s relationship with Bill Lucas I have come to realize that although he, like Hugh Friedman and Dave Fish, are no longer with us, in many ways their productive contributions to many of us personally and to the Center continue to guide our paths and support our efforts.

Bill Lucas

My relationship with Bill goes back to when I began teaching in the Los Angeles city schools in 1957 or shortly thereafter. I first taught at Marquez Elementary School in the relatively affluent and upscale community of Pacific Palisades. It was in the western region of LAUSD, which extended from the West Hollywood area to the Pacific. I attended a meeting of new teachers in the region that was addressed by various administrators, curriculum supervisors, and the like. A tall, strikingly handsome, articulate, and humorous young man addressed the group. My memory of his title is fuzzy, but I think he was the supervising consultant of physical education for the region. It was Bill Lucas. He had the charm of an outdoorsman, which he was. He later told me that he had “ridden the fence” on a ranch in the San Diego area when he was younger. It was easy to imagine him sitting by a campfire in the evenings while out in the wilderness.

I didn’t see Bill often during the last of my seven and a half years of teaching. Before that year, I had taken a sabbatical to get an advanced degree at UCLA, which was when I was hired to work for the Committee on Civic Education and to develop and field test an experimental unit on due process of law for upper elementary grades. That program and its successors were very successful and they led to the development of our Center and its current programs.

At the end of my sabbatical I was obligated to return to teaching for at least one year. Bill Lucas was then principal of the 42nd Street School located in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles. He hired me to teach the fifth grade. It was quite a change from teaching in Pacific Palisades! It was, and remains today, almost 98% African American. At that time most were middle class but some were from less privileged circumstances. My first class contained thirty-eight African American students and one white student. Since I was a man I was assigned, as usual, most of the problem students at the grade level. Although there were only a handful of them, they were a handful. Be prepared for a brief story about Jerry that Bill loved to tell.

I was struck by the difference in the teachers’ governance of their classes and the ways they controlled their students particularly in the hallways and on the playground. It was very different from what I had experienced in Pacific Palisades. Many of the teachers seemed quite authoritarian to me. When it was time for recess or the lunch period, a bell rang and students lined up at the doors to the classrooms and were escorted to assigned play areas or eating area and then play areas. Students were to stay in their areas, not stray from them or mingle with students from other classes, and play the games assigned. There were two adult supervisors of the playground and far more friction and fighting than I had ever observed at Marquez School. Once the students succeeded in locking the supervisors in the bathroom and went a bit wild on the playground.

To make a long story short, Bill agreed to let me set up a student council of representatives of the fourth through sixth grades (I think it was limited to them). We discussed the problems of playground rules, control, and discipline and how the students would like to see things run. (I told them of the relative freedom of the students at Marquez, etc.) They developed a set of rules that included (1) the right to make their own way to the playground and lunch area from their classrooms, (2) the right to play in any area and games on the playground they wished to, and (3) the right to associate on the playground with their friends and associates from other classes. They also discussed and understood the obligations they would have to assume to make the new system work. The representatives presented the proposed program to their classmates and teachers who accepted it and it was put into place.

There was a radical improvement of student behavior on the playground attested to by the supervisors. Friction was greatly reduced and fights were few. Bill had supported the change from the beginning and gained the support of the other teachers for the trial. Knowing some of them, I think he really went out on the limb for me.

Of course, just having developed the curriculum on due process at UCLA which included essential elements of a rule of law and an emphasis on other democratic values and procedures, I did my best to govern my classroom in light of these ideas. One day I was sick and an apparently authoritarian substitute took my place. Jerry was in my class and was a very poor student and one of the top behavior problems in the school. Although I was able to keep a lid on him most of the time, I was convinced he was almost never paying attention and learning very little. The day I returned to school Bill summoned me into his office. He was in stitches. He said that about noon of the day I was absent Jerry had come to his office as leader of a delegation of a few other students and complained, “Mr Lucas. This substitute is unfair. She had been post-factoing us all day!” I was pleased but astounded.

Neither Bill nor I ever forgot that story. In fact, Bill was a great teller of humorous stories, some of which are among my favorites today. He had style.

When the State Bar supported the development of the Center and its programs, I worked together with the former president to develop a board for the program. Bill Lucas was one of my first recommendations. By that time he was an Associate Superintendent and director of government relations for LAUSD, an office that had been relatively ineffective before that time. According to key administrators, Bill “put that office on the map.” He was highly effective in Washington, D.C., and in Sacramento.

I was an elementary school teacher, recently out of the classroom, and developing curricular and professional development programs for the Committee on Civic Education at UCLA and the Law in a Free Society project of the State Bar. We had grants from the Ford and Danforth foundations and the federal government. It became apparent that we needed to develop more expertise in dealing with Congress and federal agencies dealing with education as well as their counterparts in Sacramento. Bill took this wet-behind-the-ears colleague under his wing. He led me through the halls and offices in the House and Senate. By example he taught me how to lobby. His knowledge, personal charm, and humor made him an outstanding model and mentor.

One of the most important introductions he made for me was with a young man who was chief of staff to Congressman Gus Hawkins of California. One of the relatively few African Americans in Congress at that time, Hawkins was well-respected and chair of the full House authorizations committee on labor and education. Bill told me that his chief of staff was one of the “straightest shooters,” most reliable, and ethical staff members on the Hill. When Gus Hawkins retired, we hired his chief of staff, Mark Molli. We haven’t regretted it. Whenever I think of Mark I think of Bill and thank him for this gift and all of the others he has given. They are gifts that continue to give.

Finally, Bill and his wonderful wife Pat joined Netty, me, and others on a trip to Bosnia to see the national final Project Citizen competition there, visit classrooms, and meet with educational leaders from throughout the country who invited them to visit their communities and schools. After the formal program, Bill and Pat traveled throughout the country by bus and stopped in the war-torn communities to which they had been invited. The schools in one community in south-western Bosnia had been particularly damaged. In talking with students Bill and Pat learned that all of the school’s sports equipment had been destroyed and the students particularly missed their basketball court with its hoop and balls. Bill and Pat sent them the equipment from California and, as I just learned from Bill’s sister, continued to communicate with people there and others with whom they had met.

After retiring from the board due to health problems, Bill was always available to us.

We at the Center miss Bill and revere his memory and his continued presence in our hearts and minds.

Link:

• William Lucas’s obituary (Legacy.com)

Participants engage during the National Academy for Civics and Government.

Political and Constitutional Theory for Citizens: The National Academy for Civics and Government is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and will be held July 6–27, 2013.

The Institute is principally designed for full-time high school, middle school, and elementary school teachers, including homeschooling parents, but other K–12 school personnel, such as librarians and administrators, are also eligible to apply.

Will Harris, the academic director for the Institute for the past twelve years, is a scholar and leader who conducts an intellectually rigorous immersion into political and constitutional theory and makes it enjoyable.

Will’s lectures are fascinating, compelling, and systematic,” said participant Jon Lauderbaugh, “his lectures create worlds and meaning. Will’s lectures will resonate with me the rest of my life.”

Participant Hollie Barenz said, “I have learned so much…not just about education—the structure of the Constitution—but about myself: how I think, how I process information.”

More information about the National Academy is available on the Center’s website. If you have any questions about the application, please direct them to John Hale.

Although the Center will not be able to provide financial sponsorship for non-U.S. participants, it welcomes serious applicants from any country who are highly proficient in the English language and motivated to dedicate three weeks of their time to focus on intensive study. For more information about international participation and how international educators can apply, please contact Alissa Irion.