How do you teach about bad faith in politics?

I'm curious about the lessons I never got in social studies, and it was a question I brought years later to my teacher when I worked in the community on a project with him. I wanted to know why civics lessons didn't get into questions like why issues and solutions get recycled each election cycle.. was it because they were never solved? Or did the things break again?

Or why do "campaign promises" have a connotation for being hollow? That as soon as parties get into power they don't follow through on their promises?

The response I got was anything like that would be seen as too partisan and controversial, and so we teach about politics the way it's supposed to work, and not the way it doesn't work.

But one of the ways it doesn't work is when all parties or politicians behave the same self-interested way when they are in power. That middle bit of the Venn diagram feels pretty crucial. It doesn't partisan, it feels human.

What do others think about that? Does it make sense we focus on teaching civics as a mandatory high school course only as a normative, and if people want to know more they take elective college courses?

I feel like we're missing something.

Submitted March 21, 2021 at 07:09AM by civicsfactor https://ift.tt/3c6ZGvO