The Learning Curve Kelley Brown
[00:00:00] Alisha Searcy: Welcome back to the Learning Curve podcast. I’m your co-host, Alisha Thomas Searcy, and I have a guest co-host with me today. Welcome back, Walter Blanks.
[00:00:09] Walter Blanks: Thank you so much for that warm welcome. Really excited to dive in and talk about all things education today.
[00:00:15] Alisha Searcy: Yes, and I love co-hosting with you. I love your energy and the perspective that you bring, so I’m looking forward to that today.
[00:00:22] Walter Blanks: We always have a great conversation. Looking forward to it as well.
[00:00:25] Alisha Searcy: We do. And just for folks who may not recall, give a quick introduction so people know who you are and where you work and what you’re doing these days.
[00:00:34] Walter Blanks: Yeah, so I am a, uh, national spokesperson for the American Federation for Children, a former school choice beneficiary from Ohio.
[00:00:41] And very, very passionate about education reform. In a very general sense, I believe that the house has honed fire across the board and we need to stand up and make sure that the next generation of leaders are properly educated. And so whatever that looks like, I’m just excited to be a part of that conversation and I’m part of that change.
[00:00:59] Alisha Searcy: I love that. Well, thanks for what you’re doing. And many people would agree that there’s a lot going on and we have a lot of work to do in education. And so with that said, I think let’s start with our articles for the week. Would you like to go first and tell us what you’re reading?
[00:01:14] Walter Blanks: Of course. So this is from Chalkbeat Detroit, and it says it, the title of it is As CTE Programs expand in Michigan, not all students are getting opportunities.
[00:01:24] And so this article is talking about a community high school in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and it opens up as this really cool imagery that I want to share. It says, small drones buzzed all around the small gymnasium at Ypsilanti High School controlled by students competing to get them through an obstacle course fastest.
[00:01:43] So these kids in this school are learning how to build drones, fly drones, and they get all kinds of certification through this. But the problem is, and as we see it in various other educational options, there’s a big barrier, especially for low income and minority families, to be able to have access to some of these really great, innovative models that we’re seeing across the country.
[00:02:06] And so Michigan is working on some legislation that would allow some kind of like mileage. Tax kind of mechanism to allow that pot of access to be opened up to families across the community and across the district. And so when we’re talking about education, right, like it’s not necessarily like kids sitting in roles and desks sitting and listening to a teacher lecture.
[00:02:30] Our society is rapidly evolved and like. If I knew that I could go to a school and get certification on drone flying, I’d be the first one excited about school. And so, and Michigan has also done some really other cool things. They have a, there’s a aviation academy in Grand Rapids that I’ve visited and has been absolutely phenomenal.
[00:02:48] 18-year-old kids are getting their pilots license and flying private jets for Delta straight outta high school. No student loans. Like, just like absolutely incredible things. But one thing that I’ve seen in education, it’s not enough to just pass legislation, right? We actually have to be able to take these high quality options into communities where families may not have the access to drive, you know, across town or 20 miles to the best school.
[00:03:11] And so glad that this conversation is happening in Michigan and they quickly had worked to opening this up to as many students as possible.
[00:03:19] Alisha Searcy: I love that you hit so many important points on the head. Right. At the end of the day, I think those of us who support choice, whether it’s public or private or anything, it’s all about opportunity and access for everybody to have access to those opportunities.
[00:03:33] And so when you have a program and you recognize and not everybody has the access, how critical it is to actually do something about it. Right?
[00:03:42] Walter Blanks: Yeah. That’s super important. I remember growing up, my family, we drove 30 minutes each way to get to the private school for me, and I thought that was like the best thing ever.
[00:03:50] But then as I grew up, I was like, wow. Even in our current position that we were in, we were still. Pretty privileged to be able to drive that far each morning. And so my focus has shifted a little bit as, as in just like, okay, how do we actually ensure that these programs that are being passed, people actually have access to?
[00:04:08] Right. And it’s actually practical for them to be able to have access to it. And so a little bit different, a little bit more difficult to solve than just passing legislation. But I’m glad that a lot of people are talking about it.
[00:04:20] Alisha Searcy: Right? And it starts with having a legislation right in the will, and then you figure out how to make it work so that everybody has access.
[00:04:27] I love that. Well, thanks for that article. Interestingly, we, we have a very important topic, I think today to talk about in terms of Civics in schools. And we’ll talk about our guests in just a moment. But as we talk about opportunities and access, we talk about the status of education in our country. The article that I wanna talk about comes from Education Next, and it’s entitled, should Schools Teach That America Is Good?
[00:04:52] What an important title, what an important conversation to have right now. And we try very hard not to get into politics. So I’m gonna do my very best as I talk about the article because the truth is when we talk about what we want our kids to know, again, we’re talking about access and opportunity. We talk about what this country means, what we want Americans to know and feel and believe about our country, but also to know about our founding documents and what our ideals are.
[00:05:21] And so whether you believe America is good or not good. This article is talking about sort of the decline and how Americans feel about our democracy, about our country, about what needs to be taught. So one of the highlights of this article, the author says, for many Americans, especially young people, this disenchantment and loss of pride may not stem from disdain for America in its ideals, but from frustration that our nation increasingly fails to live up to those ideals.
[00:05:52] And so I appreciated that. And this whole article talks about doing polling across the country, what teachers feel. And they sort of did cross tabs between teachers, voters, democrats, republicans, you know, very interesting data that comes out of this. If you’re gonna teach the founding principles, you should also be able to compare that to when we take certain actions, are they aligned with our founding principles?
[00:06:18] And then let students decide for themselves if what we’re doing or where we are as a country is quote unquote good or bad. And so I think this article. Is really important to start the conversation with educators, with parents, with students about, yes, we absolutely should be teaching about our principles as a country, you know, our constitutional values so that when things aren’t going right, we can question and we can push back and we can fight for those ideals.
[00:06:46] And I think whether you are a Democrat or Republican, if you are an American, you should want to believe in these founding principles and should expect that to come from our country. And so clearly I could get on a, a soapbox about that, but I just thought it was really good. And particularly because of the topic that we’re gonna have today and the guests that we’re gonna have, I think this conversation about Civics, what kids are learning is just super, super important.
[00:07:09] What has been your experience, Walter?
[00:07:11] Walter Blanks: I think you’ve definitely hit the nail on the head with two things, with our founding principles and then the actions that we took. Right. And I mean, this headline by itself creates a lot of curiosity because. Good. Looks different for every single person. If you’re wealthy in America, good might look different than if you were low income, right?
[00:07:31] And so that is really, really important. But I think that when it comes to educating children, like you have to let them decide that you have to let them make that decision. It’s your job as a school and as a teacher to equip them with as much information as possible and then allow them to think critically, wrestle with.
[00:07:49] You know, very high level ideas and then come to their own conclusion. And you can’t do that if you’re only teaching the positive, holistic ideals of our country. Because then you also have to address the realities of our country. Yes. And it has to be fair. And it has to be balanced. And just because you’re discussing or informing students about the dark parts of our history, that doesn’t mean that you’re anti-America.
[00:08:13] That’s just like, that’s just history. Like we’re just telling you what happened. Yes. And if you don’t understand where you come from, you can’t figure out where you’re going.
[00:08:23] Alisha Searcy: I could not agree with you more, and I appreciate you said it so beautifully and eloquently. And I think the most powerful piece, or one of the most powerful things that you said is that we wanna present our students with the facts, with the truth, and let them come to their own conclusions.
[00:08:38] So that’s why this is so important. And I’m really interested because of our guest today, we have Kelley Brown. Who our listeners certainly know, she’s been a co-host with us and she’s been a guest before. She’s a social studies and government teacher at East Hampton High School and has won a number of awards for her work in teaching Civics and having students compete in the We the People Competition.
[00:09:01] And so I’m very interested to hear her thoughts on this as well. So with that said, it’s time for us to take a little break and when we come back we will have Kelley Brown on with us.
[00:09:28] Kelley Brown is a social studies government and Civics teacher at East Hampton High School, Massachusetts, where she taught for the last 20 years her we, the people, the Citizen Constitution class has won the Massachusetts Center for Civic Education’s. We the people state Civics competition numerous times and won the We the People National Competition in 2020.
[00:09:51] She co-designed and produced his history’s mysteries of Free K five inquiry based, click and play open source curriculum. Kelley has contributed to several books about teaching students with diverse needs and trauma. She was a 2006 Disney teacher, the 2010 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year, and the 2016 recipient of the Don Succi Award for Excellence in promoting Civics education from Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies, Kelley holds a BA from Amherst College and an MED from UMass Amherst.
[00:10:26] Kelley, welcome back to the show. So happy to have you.
[00:10:29] Kelley Brown: Thanks, Alisha. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:10:32] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. So I’m gonna turn over to Walter. He is. Got the first few questions.
[00:10:37] Walter Blanks: Kelley, it’s so great to meet you. And just first off, just let me say the work that you’re doing is beyond impactful.
[00:10:44] It’s truly life changing, and so thank you for sticking it in there. And I know across the country teachers can sometimes get a bad rap, and so thank you for your dedication to your students and to the work that you do. Thanks. So you are of course, a superb high school government and Civics teacher whose teams have won both state and national Civics contest.
[00:11:07] Would you briefly share a bit about your background, formative educational experiences, as well as just a couple of the overarching lessons from US history and Civics that you hope students and citizens alike will remember on election day.
[00:11:22] Kelley Brown: I think I took a, I don’t wanna say non-conventional, but my journey to teaching Civics, it wasn’t necessarily a direct line for me.
[00:11:31] I grew up in a small town in western Massachusetts. I was a very devoted athlete and student, and I really wanted to be a math teacher. I loved math and my undergrad, I ended up going to Amherst College and because I think there’s a lot of importance for students and adults to think about the successes and failures and bumps in their lives, I will admit that I started math there and just really struggled to figure out how to navigate for myself and kind of gave up a little bit and ended up with my interest leaning towards political science, Spanish literature, and education, and I started down the path of studying the humanities.
[00:12:16] I took a course there that was in the nineties and I took a course there with David Blight, who many people know is a pretty famous historian, and that was before his days of, of moving to Yale and writing one of his most important books about history and memory. And he was just really inspiring. He was a high school history teacher before he became a professor, and I really enjoyed the discipline of history.
[00:12:44] I really enjoyed the way that he taught history and I think it wasn’t until I became a history teacher that I thought back that that was a pretty formative experience for me. Just having that chance to learn from him helped me to think about the type of teacher that I wanted to be. While I was in college, I worked full time.
[00:13:03] I worked for a youth arts program in a local community. And I think if there’s one common theme throughout my life that I think work and industry is really important, I’ve almost always, even when I was in high school and was in college, I was working a lot and really developed some traits in terms of feeling like working hard, really dedicating myself to the practice of getting better at things, shaped the person that I am.
[00:13:33] I ended up teaching history and government because at the time when I decided I wanted to be a teacher, it seemed the most interesting thing to me, but I’ve never, I never was a lover of history. I never was the kind of kid who was embedded in politics. I just really found history interesting and I think what’s made me a strong teacher is being an incredibly hard worker, trying to be humble in my.
[00:13:59] Approach to everything and thinking about how to help students, how to be, you know, well educated about what I’m talking about, and also how to be a model for my students. And so I think my short lessons for today that hopefully I’ll get into a little bit later in the podcast, if you all lead me in that direction.
[00:14:21] I think as people go out to vote today, one message I always say to my students is that political self-government requires individual self-government. And on a daily basis, I really try to think about waking up in the morning. You know, what am I going to do today that’s industrious? Who am I gonna help today?
[00:14:42] And at the end of the day, I try to reflect on that. You know, did I work as hard as I could? Did I help as many people as I could? And so I like to say that to my students, if we’re gonna engage in political self-government, let’s also think about governing ourselves in our discourse and also in our daily lives.
[00:15:02] Walter Blanks: Yeah, I think that’s such an important aspect of it. And especially in today’s society, we see a lot of discourse and disagreements and, and sometimes it gets really, really nasty. And so even I have to draw back and I consume politics in a very unhealthy way, just ’cause the nature of my job. But I think that’s super important to be able to ground your students and like, what does that actually look like on a day to day basis?
[00:15:25] You may not be debating, you know, very high level ideas, but it’s just like. Did I work hard enough today? Did I interact with the people in my community? And I think all of those are super important when you’re building out, you know, the next generation of leaders. And so to switch gears a little bit, for many years you’ve been a teacher who uses the We the People, which is the citizen and constitution, which curriculum, which is grounded in the founding documents, key US Supreme Court decisions and primary sources drawn from ancient Greece, Rome, English law, and the speeches of MLK, you know, et cetera.
[00:15:58] Tons and tons of sources there. Could you briefly discuss the We the People Program and how it shaped and influenced your teaching and how you use it to guide young people’s understanding about the US Constitution?
[00:16:11] Kelley Brown: Absolutely. You know, we started with formative experiences. I would say the we. The People Program has not only shaped me as a teacher, shaped a large number of students, but also has really shaped me as a person and a learner.
[00:16:24] This is an incredibly important program to me to provide some context, the We The People Program includes an academically rigorous curriculum about the history and principles of our constitutional republic. The center point of the curriculum is a congressional hearing style assessment. Throughout the course, students are asked to work in small teams with really complex questions, and they prepare responses to those questions.
[00:16:53] But then I invite guests into my classroom and students actually get to engage in civil discourse and question and answer periods with these guest judges about really complicated, complex constitutional issues. Just to give you an idea, the Center for Civic Education, which started this program and runs the competitions associated with it, began in 1987 and has reached over 30 million students and 75,000 educators have participated in this program.
[00:17:25] So I started in 2010 using this program, and I think that this program has the key really to preparing young people for self-government. And I just wanna give you, if I can, if you can humor me for a moment. A few of the really important aspects of this. First, it has a rigorous scope and sequence of constitutional history.
[00:17:47] I sat with my students last month and we went through every line word of the constitution. Together, we dig into the government institutions, they really learn about the. The course of our constitutional history, it focuses on inquiry questions. So I said, this is formative for me. Every year we get new questions from the center.
[00:18:09] When I first started teaching Civics, I really didn’t know very much. It’s, you know, it’s embarrassing, but again, owning our faults and our our weaknesses. This class has allowed me to learn so deeply alongside my students. And students are because they have to actually. Present in front of people. They’re actually forced to see what they do and don’t know because it’s obvious.
[00:18:34] And then they have to strategize about how to become a learner, how to actually understand what it is they’re talking about. They have to engage in civil discourse. You know, they’re taught in my class to treat people with whom they disagree as human beings with whom they disagree. We’re dealing with a lot of dehumanization in society right now.
[00:18:54] A lot of seeing our, you know, intellectual enemies as actual enemies. And something I really emphasize with students is figuring out how to weigh multiple arguments, how to hold ideas without necessarily accepting them and working with and talking about things that are uncomfortable. Students understand the importance of institutions in this course.
[00:19:19] So I think sometimes we forget that institutions are our key avenue for creating change, but also for sustaining what we like about our system. And I think having the opportunity to talk with adults about. Contemporary issues about historical issues about philosophy is an amazing cross generational way to have students learn about the Republic.
[00:19:46] And I also like to offer opportunities for students to get involved. Last year we did a cross generational book group with retired members of our community, talking about civil discourse. Students sometimes will volunteer to help on voting day students have many opportunities to work in the community and really engage in civic virtue and civic participation as part of the course.
[00:20:12] And so for me, learning with my students is incredible. But it also provides something very unique that I know works because my students come back. Right now I have 24 students in my course, but I have 11 seniors who took the course last year who are helping to support and mentor my students. Every Thanksgiving, every winter break, my classroom is filled with students who graduated, who are in college.
[00:20:40] My former students zoom in to talk with my students. They love engaging and talking about the Constitution, and to me, that’s the sign that they’re really learning it and understanding and wanting to be a part of our system.
[00:20:55] Walter Blanks: Yeah, and I think that’s absolutely phenomenal. Just being able to reignite that passion for the Constitution in the next generation.
[00:21:04] I actually have a pocket constitution that I keep in my car, and when I’m stuck in traffic, I’ll pull it out and read a little bit from it. Just, you know, keeping that kind of information fresh. And so I have two more questions, but I’m actually gonna skip one of them and come back to it after. Yeah. This one on the topic of just.
[00:21:22] General basic knowledge of Civics and of our constitution. There was a fall Emerson poll, pioneer Emerson Poll from 2023 that showed of a thousand Massachusetts voters revealed that only 52% knew the Senate had a hundred members, while 55% new that a senator’s term is six years. So thinking about that as a Civics teacher, what are some tangible advice and tangible ways that you would suggest to give to Massachusetts citizens about teaching basic Civics, whether it’s to the general public or even just to elected officials as a whole.
[00:22:01] Kelley Brown: It’s a great question and you know, before I say a little more, I just wanna remind folks that, you know, I’m a teacher, I work with students every day. I think about teaching all the time, and I am interested in thinking about these things, but really important questions as a teacher. I think getting students to be engaged and be passionate about things is an avenue to help them want to commit to learning things.
[00:22:29] You know, I think Americans can learn things if they’re passionate about them. I’ve had that opportunity to work with Professor Akhil, Rita Mar several times, and one of the things he often news is about is how well-versed Americans are in things like baseball. They can know the finite knowledge, they can cite statistics, they can know all of the rules and how things operate.
[00:22:52] And yet we have so much of our adult population who is not necessarily knowledgeable about how our government works. The Constitution short, as you mentioned, Walter, I have one in every drawer in my house, pretty much. But, you know, keeping it and reading it and looking at it, it’s a really interesting document.
[00:23:12] So I think starting with, people can read it, but also I think representative government can create some complacency, especially if we’re not doing a great job of teaching it to the younger generations. You know, I, I think maybe I can talk a little later if we want to about y maybe we don’t have as much civic education, but, you know, I’m Generation X.
[00:23:37] I grew up in a time where Civics wasn’t really emphasized and so did I take a Civics class? Probably. Do I remember it? Nope. I don’t, and I think part of that is because people aren’t necessarily seeing the why. Right? Why are people more interested in civic education right now? Or why are more adults seeking?
[00:23:56] Why do we see more civic organizations creating adult education? It’s because people are feeling an urgency with it, because they’re struggling to understand what’s happening and how it’s happening in the government today. Whether they like it or don’t like it. Things are changing very quickly. People are seeing things that they do and don’t like, and they don’t necessarily understand it.
[00:24:15] So I think everyone can learn about our government. Our government is complex, but simple enough for people to understand. But I think people have to have a reason to do so. And when we haven’t necessarily emphasized it in our education system, and people aren’t as involved in community organizations or in religious participation, et cetera.
[00:24:40] People maybe aren’t seeing the need necessarily to know as much. I do think education is incredibly important. I think if we look back to the founding and the framing, you know, John Adams said in thoughts on government that no expense should be spared in order for us to have civic education. But I think they also realized that there would be times where citizenry would be ignorant to what was happening, and that they wanted to create these, almost like preparing for the fact that we needed these structures in place to protect against moments where either people were ignorant, right?
[00:25:18] They couldn’t discern between their needs and their wants, or ignorant to what was actually happening, or when people would potentially abuse their power. And so, you know, Madison says, you know, enlightened statesman won’t always be at the helm. And so we need to have these auxiliary precautions in place.
[00:25:37] So in a very circum locus way, I guess what I’m saying is I think if people want to learn about our government, they’ll learn about our government. I think when people feel there’s an urgency to learn about our government, they’re gonna learn about our government. But having representative government allows people the liberty to be ignorant to what’s happening.
[00:25:55] And unfortunately, I think until they feel an urgency to do so, people aren’t necessarily jumping at the opportunity to do so. And part of that is because, I don’t know, I, I always hope that I’ve instilled enough of a love and excitement about these constitutional issues into my students that they’ll never get to that point where they become uninterested in wanting to know what’s happening and to think about and dig deeper into things.
[00:26:26] But I think part of it is motivation.
[00:26:29] Walter Blanks: Yeah, and I wanna stick here just for a little bit because it’s such an important, important topic. And I’m, you know, very similar to you took a Civics course, very in depth Civics course I’m a millennial and didn’t pay attention, right? Didn’t think I was gonna be in any kind of place of governmental work or involved in policy shaping in any kind of form.
[00:26:50] And so I remember when I graduated from college, I moved to DC and was really involved in the political process. And during that time, right, like we had a president where like politics, for at least from my perspective, became more entertaining, right? Something that I could like, kind of gravitate to and like understand things a little bit more.
[00:27:14] But there’s some humor, there’s some drama, you know, whatever the case may be. I think before that point it was kind of just like that complacency, which is what you said, right? Like politics continued as politics has always been. And it was, you know, a lot of people were ultimately checked out, but I found myself like really excited.
[00:27:32] Like, how does this work? What’s going on here? Why is, why is the president doing this? Why is this cabinet doing? And you know, all of these different things. And so from your perspective as a teacher in the classroom, it seems to me that there’s more of an emphasis on ELA, math, science, you know, all of these other different things and Civics often gets kind of pushed to the side.
[00:27:53] How can you as a teacher, kind of like come alongside students more and like spark that interest and curiosity in new ways?
[00:28:01] Kelley Brown: I think it really is in understanding the ideas behind what our government is about, what the intended. You know, purpose was of creating this republic and then also having students actually wrestle with the ideas of our government and what we’re thinking about.
[00:28:21] And so one of the things I just wanna say about that, I just left my class. I just finished teaching my We the People class, and today we’re looking at a question that evolves around presidential powers, you know, what kinds of limits are on presidential powers, because it’s one of the questions we’re actually looking at.
[00:28:40] And we’re looking at a case called Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer, which many people are probably familiar with that dealt with the issues of President Truman seizing the steel industry during the Korean War. But what we were doing in my class is we were taking a look, a close look at the wording and the majority opinion, but also in the concurrence by Justice Jackson, where Justice Jackson just.
[00:29:03] Brings out some really interesting thoughts about presidential powers, and so I just wanna use this to illustrate an example of what I’m talking about. So in this particular opinion, justice Jackson says The executive wants us to acknowledge that the president has emergency powers. But the framers knew that emergencies existed.
[00:29:26] They knew that emergencies would demand immediate action, yet they chose not to put emergency powers into the hands of the executive or anyone, but particularly the executive in the institution, potentially because they knew that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies. And so taking a minute to just sit with students for a second and think about what does that mean?
[00:29:54] What are emergency powers? Why might we want to have prerogative powers or emergency powers in one official in our government? And despite knowing that there’s emergencies, why would the framers choose to cut that out? And he, you know, lays out some constitutional evidence for knowing, you know, in, in Article one, section nine, you know, they make an emergency exception for the rid of habeas corpus.
[00:30:19] So it’s not something they’re ignorant to yet. They believe most likely that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies. And so at first my students look at that and they’re like, I don’t, I don’t know what that means. And so we begin to unfold this idea that presidential powers need to be lodged somewhere.
[00:30:37] So then we start talking about, we’ve just been going over current Supreme Court cases, and so there’s the tariff case that’s dealing with the I EPA law and whether or not the president’s powers are being used appropriately under that law. There’s the issue currently moving up through the court, dealing with the issue of the National Guard and issues that could be really controversial to talk with students about.
[00:31:01] And my frame of reference is, let’s look at how the court has talked about presidential powers in Youngstown sheet and Tube. They basically say, does Congress grant the president this power, or is there an enumerated power that gives the president this power or. Is there some other inherent power that may be associated with it?
[00:31:24] And so giving students, I think an opportunity to think about something interesting like would emergency powers Kindle emergencies? And then grounding it in some Supreme Court thinking, right? People who are experts and have expertise in these areas, looking at their logic and then taking that and applying it to something that they’re currently looking at and seeing in the newsfeed coming at them every single day.
[00:31:52] Is an awesome experience for students because it’s letting them think about ideas. It’s giving them, you know, talking about the why of this. It’s letting somebody else who knows more than they do about the law, set a framework for them, but then giving them a place of knowledge to speak from wherever they lay.
[00:32:11] It’s never my job to tell them what to think. It’s always my job to really help them think about how to think. And so this literally happened, you know, an hour ago where we were having this discussion and it really empowers students to feel like not only do they know. Something that’s happening. They have a framework to talk about it, but in a way it also helps to make them more disciplined thinkers.
[00:32:36] And so to me, that’s how students buy in. And I, I think the other piece that I just wanna mention and I can expand on later if it’s helpful, is another angle of Civics that I start my course with every year is we walk in and I say, you may be expecting me to talk about the three branches of government today, but instead I’m gonna talk about human happiness.
[00:33:00] And I really love to ground my course in, I feel like a forgotten framework for Civics, which is the whole concept of the pursuit of happiness and the belief among that founding generation that was pretty ubiquitous, that virtue and living a life of virtue, both individual and civic. Was actually the key to human happiness and that the purpose of government was actually to create the conditions that were most conducive to allow people to pursue that happiness, which is a challenging journey to live a virtuous life and an everyday journey to sort of reach that Aristotelian eudaimonia.
[00:33:40] And so those examples, I think, illustrate two things. One is really giving students some discipline and knowledge to speak from a place of knowledge. And the other is to let them think about some basic things. Why knowing about your country and participating in your government is actually also gonna help you become a happier human.
[00:34:01] And that the founding generation was thinking about that. How do we make the condition so that people can pursue a life that they can feel contented in? So those are two ways that I really try to inspire my students.
[00:34:16] Alisha Searcy: I could listen to you talk all day. I also wanna come to Massachusetts and sit in a few of your classes any day.
[00:34:24] And I know that our producer is listening. I feel like we need to have one of your students come on with you one day. ’cause I would love to hear their perspective, especially in what’s happening today. Right. We were talking prior to you joining us, Walt and I, about an article in Education Next, and it was talking about a poll that was done about how essentially Civics should be taught and if it should be taught in ways that makes America look good or bad.
[00:34:55] I’m paraphrasing, but that’s essentially what it was. And so anyway, as I’m thinking about that conversation, that article, this poll. Thinking about what you’re saying, and one of the points that we talked about was just how important it is for us to teach students the facts, the history, right? Let them read the documents and then have their own opinions, right?
[00:35:13] About current events. Yes. And so just so important to hear how you talk about this. And then I will also say that you and Walt make me feel really bad. I clearly need to get a couple of constitutions to sit around my house when necessary, but let me get onto my questions. So in 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as Nap Civics assessment, was administered to a nationally representative sample of eighth grade students.
[00:35:41] The assessment measured students’ knowledge and skills and democratic citizenship government and American constitutional democracy. The average civic score for eighth grade students was two points lower compared to 2018. While the average 2022 score was not significantly different compared to 1998. And so in your view, and I think you’ve talked about this a little bit, but I, I want you to talk more about why do you think our country continues to struggle to teach a subject that’s so vitally important to the survival of our democracy?
[00:36:15] Especially as you think about what’s happening now. You mentioned a few minutes ago the questioning around presidential powers. We have all of these questions around the National Guard, you know, the 22nd Amendment and you know, the third term, all of these things. Why do you think we’re struggling so much to teach Civics?
[00:36:34] It’s so important for the survival of our democracy.
[00:36:38] Kelley Brown: That’s definitely a challenging question. I, I would look at it a couple of ways. I think when it comes to maybe the shared experience that Walter and I were having, which is, you know, Civics may be happening in classrooms, but our students actually learning it and wanting to understand it.
[00:36:57] When I think of teaching in general, not just Civics, you know, there’s teaching, there’s doing, and what I mean by doing is more of like students completing things. And then I think there’s something else called learning. And as a teacher, this is a challenge that I’m always, you know, putting on myself, which is how do I really know that students are learning and, and better yet, how do they know that they’re actually learning?
[00:37:21] It’s one of the things why I love the Be the People program, because it has this component that allows them to get like substantive, immediate feedback and they can really. Start to think about, I had a student today who was just trying to figure out like how does the court system work? Like, well, how does something end up in a state court versus a federal court into the Supreme Court?
[00:37:40] And until they begin to really think about asking those questions and really thinking like, I have to know what I don’t know. I don’t think they’re actually learning. And so part of this may be a larger educational issue, which is how are we actually helping students recognize when they’re just completing something because somebody’s asked them to complete it, versus they’re actually learning about something.
[00:38:07] How do we peak their interest in it? Like I said, there’s something magical about the We the People program that I wish I could replicate in every experience that I had in every single classroom, but that really lighting that fire in students in the different ways that I was talking about. But I also think there’s this.
[00:38:27] How has Civics evolved in our country over time? When the country started civic education was paramount, as I said, Adam says in thoughts on government in 1776, even before we’re writing our Constitution, that no amount of money should be spared for the importance of civic education. You know, Republican motherhood.
[00:38:47] This whole concept of women becoming educated as the purveyors of, you know, teaching the republic to their children. It was so incredibly important and obvious to the founding generation because what they were doing was so incredibly different from what was happening in Europe. Even different from what they had read about in the ancient, you know, writings about republics and democracies.
[00:39:10] They really are engaging in this experiment and they understand that you need to have that civic participation. And I think about that, or I think about when Alexis de Tocqueville comes to America in the 1830s and observes these sort of vibrant communities that are like. Solving their own problems. And he’s fascinated by, you know, voluntary associations and what he calls, you know, self-interest, rightly understood, which is that people understand that like working hard and being virtuous and being a part of their community is actually going to benefit everyone and themselves.
[00:39:45] And that that buzz of the democratic spirit that was here in America was so obvious to Tocqueville because he’s coming from France where they had had this, you know, horrendously failed revolution, but also just a place where. People didn’t do for themselves. And you know, over time, civic education, you know, partially maybe in the sixties when we end up with kind of a postmodernist view that I think tosses out some traditional narratives.
[00:40:15] And I think Civics got pushed to the side. I’m not sure appropriately. But instead of getting altered, I think some of those courses get pushed to the side because they were lumped into the fear of these grand narratives or that somehow Civics was, you know, imperialism in some way, which I just think.
[00:40:32] Was sad. And it’s how I think by the time I went to high school in the 19, you know, eighties and nineties, that we really didn’t have a commitment to civic education that had existed for so long in this country. So I think if we’re the adults that are teaching students and we don’t necessarily have that passion in grounding for it, how do we help them have that?
[00:40:58] And then you have policy issues, right? You have no child left behind, which pushes the emphasis on science and math and testing. And even though some of that policy has waned, the effects of it haven’t waned. And so we still have these structures built into our states that are putting pressure on schools and teachers to teach, not teach Civics.
[00:41:21] And then, uh, maybe to end is sort of that chilling effect that we get from people being afraid to talk about contemporary issues. Partially, I think because they don’t have the knowledge, the background knowledge to do so. You know, the only reason I feel so comfortable with it is because I’m spending all my time reading Supreme Court decisions, reading ancient philosophy.
[00:41:44] I start every day by reading ancient philosophy because it grounds me for the day. And I try so hard to be knowledgeable about what I’m talking about. But that’s scary for people. If they’re afraid they’re gonna lose their job or they’re afraid that they’re gonna say something that’s going to get them canceled.
[00:42:00] And so therefore it people, you know, I think there was a study 2023, there is a statistic in the American Teacher Survey that said 65% of teachers said they had decided on their own without direct direction from their district to limit discussions about political and social issues because they were afraid.
[00:42:19] Wow. Like that’s a big number of people who just are nervous. And so then we miss out on that potential connection.
[00:42:28] Alisha Searcy: Excellent, excellent points. I wish I could like take that clip and maybe we will. I think so many people need to hear everything you just said about how we got here. And you raise another good point.
[00:42:39] I wanna ask you about this. You know, when you talk about tough topics from slavery and the colonial and founding eras, the abolitionist movement in Civil War, Jim Crow Segregation, the Civil Rights era, and even more recent, when we talk about things like the murder of George Floyd race has been a central and very thorny reality of US history.
[00:43:02] How would you like to see Civics classes teach young people about the original sin of slavery and our country’s failure, frankly, to uphold its civic ideal when it comes to race and educating for equality under the rule of law?
[00:43:17] Kelley Brown: Yeah, that’s a great question. I have a few things I think to say about that.
[00:43:23] I wanna start with, I think one of. Problems that I have seen, and I’m not saying all teachers or all of us look at it this way, but I think we tended to look at past humans and human nature in an unrealistic manner when we’re teaching history. And so we expect when like someone accomplishes something important that somehow their wholly good.
[00:43:45] And it really just isn’t the way that things are in my mind. The study of history is not about judging the past, but learning about the context of the people and the events and trying to understand why they did what they did. The founding documents changed the world for the better, and they allowed slavery to continue.
[00:44:06] You know, the framers weren’t monolithic. They disagreed about enslavement, and the vast majority of that generation accepted that enslavement was immoral and inhumane, and yet it continued. Some of them were enslavers themselves, some of them were not. But I think it’s important to note that this moment was complex.
[00:44:29] And I think looking at the primary sources from the particular time period to see, even if you just look at the convention, right, which certainly I, you know, I think could they have done more at the convention to address the issue of slavery? I think they could have. It wasn’t why they were there. But certainly the Northwest Ordinance, which gets created at the same moment is addressing some issues of slavery.
[00:44:53] I really like students to actually take a look at some of the documents from the time period to begin with. So when we talk about the framers themselves and some of the founders, people who had power at the moment, I think the narrative needs to be complicated. And because it also points out human contradiction.
[00:45:12] You look at someone like George Mason who is speaking about the abomination of slavery that owns 300 people. You know, you think about Virginia arguing and bringing up, you know, the possibility within their own legislature to end slavery. Yet clearly there is this commitment to keeping it going. Like there’s, there’s a lot of hypocrisy that I think can be unpacked, but is important to look at, to understand the context because if we don’t, and we just judge people and say they’re bad, we’re good.
[00:45:42] I think we actually fail ourselves to be introspective and we engage in like a presentism that I think is inappropriate. But I also think it’s important to look at other people during the time period and think about the fact that by submitting themselves to rule of law and a higher law, and using the principles in the Constitution, which they knew were contradictory, that they are not, it’s not like they’re ignorant to the fact that people are going to say.
[00:46:08] Well, this is gonna cause questions about enslavement. They knew that they talked about it, right? They removed the section from the Declaration of Independence that deals with the slave trade because they understand the hypocrisy that is sort of being created by this. But what it does is it offers avenues towards self-government and participation and activism and action by people immediately.
[00:46:34] The ideas of this do, if you look at somebody like Elizabeth Freeman. Mabe from Massachusetts, right? She takes the words of the Massachusetts Constitution that talk about people being born equal, and she uses that along with quote Walker to sue in Massachusetts to end slavery in Massachusetts. Here you have enslaved people using their power and the words that are being created by this generation in order to end slavery in Massachusetts.
[00:47:03] You look at some of the letters of women of the time period. You know, you look at the exchange between Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, and the ways in which they’re talking about the power of these ideas. And then you move forward and you read Frederick Douglas, or you read other documents where people are essentially saying the ideas of this.
[00:47:23] Are what we need in order to expand and make our republic more inclusive. Lincoln, right? And the Gettysburg Address, all of these people are tying back to the ideas of this document, and I think the bias and the faults of the people who are interpreting it in the beginning, you shouldn’t blame that on the document itself.
[00:47:45] So I think those principles are so incredibly important, and I think they knew they would be important, and I think other people knew they were important because they started using them immediately in order to accomplish this change that was happening. All that being said, it’s really important to teach history.
[00:48:06] Honestly. It’s really important to help students and adults see that mistakes feels like a soft word to use, right? Like that there are. Things that happen in America that are tragic, that are harmful to people and that students need to know about that, adults need to know about those things. The founding generation didn’t necessarily have the ability to anticipate that the cotton gin would be invented.
[00:48:33] You know, they thought that slavery was actually declining and now that isn’t an excuse because the people that are living in that moment are dealing with the problems of slavery and the horridness of slavery. But I think an honest sorting through of the ways in which the ideas of the American Revolution have been used to potentially oppressed people, but also have been used to free people.
[00:48:59] It’s incredibly important. And I think, you know, if you look at historiography over time, we sort of swing, you know, from this grand narrative that then gets criticized in the sixties and seventies and we end up in sort of postmodernism, which I think pulls us away from and makes us. Lose track of some of those very important moments where America has attempted to and has done better at living up to those expectations that were established and the principles that were established in this country.
[00:49:30] So I, I think there has to be balance. And absolutely students need to look at the ways in which humans, in the context of their time are dealing with situations and where people are wronging each other, but also how as a country we’re dealing with that and trying to, you know, create a more perfect union.
[00:49:52] They didn’t say create a perfect union. They said create a more perfect union. And they knew. That that would mean that some of the things that they did would be seen as hypocrisy. So that question could be the whole podcast, and I’m not sure dealing with it quickly does justice to how I feel about it.
[00:50:11] But I think students need to be exposed to the wrongs of history. But we don’t need to live only in the wrongs of American history because then it’s hard to see the avenues in which people have figured out ways to make us a more perfect union. And I think looking at that both institutionally and then also in terms of the ways in which people have pushed the institutions to do better, all of that needs to be explored by students.
[00:50:39] Alisha Searcy: Yeah, very interesting. Well, I’ll have one more question around that, so perhaps you can share the rest of what you’re thinking on some of these current events. Many parents, teachers, and policymakers across the country are deeply concerned that schools might be using Civics and social studies classes to advocate for partisan political agendas of different kinds, or steering students toward political activism, well before they have the basic civic knowledge to fully understand their emerging roles as citizens.
[00:51:09] So how do you address these wider issues or complex current events with your students in classes? And are these ongoing national news events helpful or are they a distraction in teaching students US History and Civics?
[00:51:23] Kelley Brown: As I mentioned earlier, you know, I don’t really find it all that challenging. I find that my students and I work to have my students have a solid understanding of the law and the Constitution, and I think they’re interested in, I really build a culture in my classroom where students are interested in thinking about arguments and reasoning associated with.
[00:51:45] Complex topics, so I don’t actually, I don’t find it challenging, but I do hold myself to as high of a standard as I possibly can to before I open an idea or a current event to students to really help. First, myself, know, some constitutional and legal grounding behind multiple perspectives on something, and then also have really thought through in how I want to help students unfold these different ideas.
[00:52:15] So I try not to be careless about it and to choose carefully about how I help students think about things. I also think working with primary sources and emphasizing civil conversations is incredibly important. We start day one talking about virtue behavior. You know, what are the behaviors we wanna see in citizens?
[00:52:36] How do we hold people with whom we disagree is simply as people with whom we disagree and not as our enemies. I have a, this isn’t a quote from Aristotle, but it’s an idea that often gets associated with him that I have on my wall, which says, you know, it’s, it’s the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting it.
[00:52:57] And so I think that is incredibly important. I don’t know whether teachers are using the classroom for their own partisan agenda. I really don’t know. I’m not in enough classrooms and I, I am not on social media at all enough to know if that’s occurring. I’m not questioning that it is. Maybe it is happening.
[00:53:20] All I know is that I commit myself not to be that person. We all have opinions about things, but it becomes, you know, a bias when we can’t put our opinions aside in order to be able to help students think about. Things from multiple perspectives. I really seek to find knowledge and people with expertise that I trust.
[00:53:43] So it’s a very rare day where I’m just strolling through the random media when I want to learn about Supreme Court cases. You know, I’m, I’m reading SCOTUS blog and I’m listening to Advisory Opinions. When, you know, I want to look at a particular issue, I may go to a, a news site, something like All sides or ground news, something that’s gonna pull in multiple articles on the same thing.
[00:54:09] I will go to the Daily Punch if I want to know what’s happening on the Hill every day. And so for me, I think this is potentially an issue. I just don’t know enough about it beyond knowing that. I think it’s really important that students can speak from a place of knowledge about current events. I say, don’t ever be caught out doing something passionately that if somebody asks you why you’re there, that you don’t actually have an answer.
[00:54:39] And so for me, the way I try to be productive in this moment in time is to be self-disciplined myself and to help my students become disciplined learners and to really focus on the behaviors that I think are important in my own classroom and to kind of live in the world that the more I know, the more I realize I don’t know very much.
[00:55:02] And so I just have to constantly be trying to learn more, to read more, to hear more, so that I can do the best work with my students possible.
[00:55:11] Alisha Searcy: I love that and appreciate that very much. Kelley, I’m gonna get to our last question. This has been such a great conversation and we learned so much listening to you and feeling your passion for this work.
[00:55:22] In closing, you’ve previously spoken very eloquently about the urgent need for a better understanding of the central importance of civic virtue in our country. Can you share with us some of your civic heroes and heroes from US History and what students and the public alike need to know about how learning from great figures from history can make us better citizens?
[00:55:44] Kelley Brown: It’s hard for me to I, I like to talk a little bit about civic virtue, maybe to close, and then I will gladly talk about some figures that I think we have a lot to learn from. As I mentioned earlier. I think civic virtue might be the most important thing for us to be teaching right now, aside from really, I think also understanding how our constitution and our institutions work, because I think it is a forgotten aspect.
[00:56:16] It was so incredibly important to the founding generation, not just the framers, and not just those who had power, but that entire generation who knew that they were experimenting something that could so easily be lost. And so. Thinking about the philosophy, kind of the ancient and classical philosophy, that living a virtuous life is actually the key to eudaimonia or to happiness, and thinking about the fact that when we do behave in a virtuous manner, things like, you know, self-control, temperance, generosity, moderation, truth.
[00:56:54] Courage, justice, civil discourse, all of these virtues, we actually do personally feel better when we help other people. We feel better when we help our community. We feel better. And having students understand that that idea was central to our country and it was central to that founding generation.
[00:57:15] Understanding that when you read the poems of Phyllis Wheatley, when she writes about virtue, when you read the founding documents, when you read the ancient, you know, when you read Cicero and the things that the founding generation could quote from memory, they’re talking about this simple idea that if we can live with self-control and, and we can be industrious, that we can actually find a contentment in our lives.
[00:57:43] And if we can do that for our communities, we can have successful communities. And so. I think there are, you know, heroes who demonstrated that at the founding. I think there are people that demonstrate it in their lives throughout American history. It may feel trite to say George Washington, but I think George Washington worked so hard to demonstrate that virtue and to also demonstrate that he understood that virtue was something you worked towards continually in your life.
[00:58:12] And you know, I think Lafayette is somebody who I’ve been introduced to over the last few years, who I also think is a really interesting character to look at and understand in his commitment to virtue. But also, you know, you can look at someone like Frederick Douglas who worked so hard to hold. America to the virtues that were set forth.
[00:58:36] Or you can look at athletes, you know, you look at somebody like Wilma Rudolph or you know, people who demonstrate for us, truly, utterly somebody who demonstrates to us the power of self-discipline and the power of virtue in terms of what can be accomplished through that process. But I think more so when I think about heroes, when I think about people, I think about what can I learn from this person?
[00:59:05] What can I learn about what they chose to do, what they didn’t choose to do? And how has that helped our country? How does that help make our communities stronger? I love to teach about people as examples of virtue and also examples of how people struggle with civic virtue. And like I said, whether that’s, you know, Madison or we’re looking at Katherine Johnson’s, you know, people who have these important stories to tell in American history, but also, you know, social history can be interesting studying people that have exerted that virtue and have shown that virtue.
[00:59:43] I wrote down a quote before I came today, just it’s a quote from the Revolution, and it’s a woman from Connecticut who just happened to have a diary that she saved and that survived, and she’s talking about the fact that they’re in the middle of the revolution and she says. The last thought on my mind after putting my dear husband in our country into God’s care for the Night was to charge my mind to rise, even before daylight, that I might be able to carry out all of my work.
[01:00:15] And this idea that the sacrifice and the individual, I think self-control, that participation in the Republic requires every single day of all of us to some extent. And that doesn’t mean that people have to give up everything they love in order to be part of, or to, you know, be a good citizen. But I think if we approach our republic, as you know, our first responsibility is to take care of ourselves and our family than our communities.
[01:00:44] And then to participate in things like voting and other sort of civic responsibilities. That to me, it is inspiring and to read about people who are continually doing that in their own way. It is what I find inspiring. I realize that was a little circum locus to answer that question, and I apologize about that, but I, yeah-
[01:01:07] Alisha Searcy: It’s your interview with the way you wanna answer the question, and it was beautiful.
[01:01:11] Well said. So thank you so much, Kelley. This has been, as always a great interview. We learned so much when you come on, and it’s really inspiring. I’m blown away at just how much you immerse yourself in this work, not just for your students, but I think it’s the way you approach life. So it’s very, very inspiring and we’re excited and honored to have you on again.
[01:01:33] Kelley Brown: Thanks, Alisha. It was awesome to be here and I hope if you can take anything from it, it’s that I absolutely love what I do and I continue to try to hold myself to a high, the highest standard I can to do right by myself and my family and my country.
[01:01:47] Alisha Searcy: So that is clear, and please let us know when your first former student runs for president.
[01:01:53] Kelley Brown: Okay, I’ll do that.
[01:02:12] Alisha Searcy: Wow. Well as always, Kelley is so inspiring and I really appreciate hearing her perspective, especially right now, someone in the classroom and just surrounded by all that’s happening in this country and just so focus on what she knows is so important for students to know a great interview.
[01:02:30] Walter Blanks: Yeah, I absolutely love this.
[01:02:31] I’m ready to get involved and, and learn more and just be a difference maker because there’s a lot of disconnect in our society and I’m just hoping to play a, a big role in that.
[01:02:41] Alisha Searcy: Yes. And clearly there’s a lot that all of us can do and I think she reminds us of that today. Well, before we go, I wanna make sure that we do the tweet of the week, which also comes from Education Week.
[01:02:51] And it says Novels versus excerpts, what to Know about a big Reading Debate. And so these are a set of articles about how teachers in classrooms are teaching reading and literature, whether it’s through novels or excerpts. So make sure you check out those articles in that story and Education Week. Walt, it was wonderful to have you again this week.
[01:03:13] Thank you for joining me to Co-host.
[01:03:16] Walter Blanks: Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to the next one.
[01:03:19] Alisha Searcy: We are too. Look forward to it. And before we go, we gotta make sure that we, uh, tell you who’s on next week. We have Sir Hugh str, who’s the professor of International Relations at the University of St. Andrew Scotland and author of the First World War. So make sure you join us. In the meantime, everybody, have a great week. And again, thanks Walt for joining us.
[01:03:40] Walter Blanks: Thank you.
[01:03:41] Alisha Searcy: Hey, this is Alisha. Thank you for listening to the Learning Curve. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we invite you to donate at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.
