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"How people associate and engage in politics in the 21st century is notably different from similar behaviors in the 20th century. Ryan Salzman examines the political potential of placemaking, an increasingly popular set of behaviors that were unfamiliar to the American public until the last two decades. Placemaking exemplifies a shift that is occurring in the way Americans participate in their political system, and it appears that that participation is increasingly effective in the context of American democracy. Informed by interviews, surveys, and material review, Salzman compares the process of placemaking to traditional political and associational behaviors, providing evidence that placemaking has tremendous political potential. Placemaking is an innovative set of behaviors, largely understood to influence economic and community development. From painting crosswalks to community gardens, Americans are engaging in their communities with real political and civic consequences. This text expands our understanding of placemaking, updating the way we think about civic and political engagement in the 21st century. Pop-Up Civics in 21st Century America: Understanding the Political Potential of Placemaking will be of interest to those who study and research political behavior, civil society, arts and politics, social movements, and urban public policy"--

Civics is the study of the rights and duties that come with being a member of a country. Members of a country are called citizens. Find out more in Civics, one of the titles in the Social Studies Essential Skills series. Social Studies Essential Skills provides insight into key social studies concepts that students must know to develop a greater understanding of content

Political judgement is considered an important goal of civics lessons. When judging moral, political, or literary content, the focus is always on discovering connections between aspects that were originally not related. Existing knowledge about a domain-specific area is the basis for drawing conclusions about other knowledge. In this paper, it is showed how difficult it is to determine the quality of a political judgement in terms of content analysis or from a philosophical perspective. Political judgement is here understood as a competence. Judgement competence is the ability to argue based on justifications, weigh the facts, and decide about political matters in a way that is correct from a factual perspective. ln conclusion, the findings from two political didactics studies on political judgements are presented which reveal that quality is a problem in civics lessons.

In Next Medicine, Walter Bortz shows how the defects of American healthcare threaten the stability of our entire nation. A physician with fifty years of experience and an expert on aging, Bortz argues that the financial interests of biotech and drug companies have eroded the values of the medical profession and placed profit before human wellbeing. Heart disease, for example, is widely treated with drug interventions and invasive surgery--both of which are extravagantly profitable. But daily exercise and a healthy diet can prevent heart disease altogether--for free.

"Covers the three branches of Colorado government, the roles of leaders and citizens in state government, the rights and responsibilities of citizens, and how the decisions of the state government affect local government and interact with federal laws"--

Der verheerende Bürgerkrieg sei eines seiner Motive gewesen, das vorliegende Buch über Bürgerrechte in Liberia zu schreiben, erklärt der Autor. Er gibt einen Überblick über die Geschichte des Landes und arbeitet sodann die verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Bereiche in der Art einer Landeskunde ab. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Fragen des demokratischen Staatsaufbaus und der Rechte und Pflichten der liberianischen Bürger. (GIGA-Sbd)

English Language Arts has historically been tied to the civic purposes of schools, and this qualitative study of a social design-based project (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010) examines the intersection of language and literacy learning and youth civic engagement, a problem space I call "Civics English." In this dissertation, I describe and analyze the experimentation and inquiry process of a Professional Learning Community of English teachers in a diverse middle school as they integrated civic learning and action into their English teaching practices. The dissertation examines this teacher team's development and shifts through various tensions and challenges that arise, analyzing through the lenses of Cultural Historical Activity Theory the ways their Professional Learning Community operated as an English teaching activity system attempting to integrate the cultural activity of civic engagement, leading to the teachers' expansive professional learning (Engeström, 2001) about possibilities and challenges of Civics English. The English teachers implemented various civic action projects, including producing and sharing multimodal civic advocacy essays online, composing and presenting children's storybooks about civics issues, and organizing and conducting a Town Hall with local leaders about civic dimensions of allyship and youth sports. This study looks at how, contextualized by these civics activities, they adapt and innovate customary English Language Arts practices, such as reading novels, writing in authentic genres with blended text types, and developing literacy and discourse. As the teachers encounter various tensions that arise in their attempts at Civics English, I present evidence of how these tensions emerge from the contradictions of two intersecting cultural activity systems, and what adaptations and innovations the teachers develop to overcome these tensions. Integrating civics causes shifts in the teachers' practices of literary study, writing, and classroom discussion, as they orient students' learning towards public audiences, collective action, and discursive models of political and professional discourse. I identify how reading literature creates an imaginative space for civic deliberation. And I demonstrate how the Town Hall civics project shifts various dimensions of literacy and language activity by recontextualizing them. The potentials and the constraints of these shifts are examined through studying the teachers' work, students' language and activity, and the civic event's efficacy as an English teaching focal point.

Intro -- Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Pledging Allegiance -- What Is Civics? -- Rights -- Responsibilities -- Who Is a Citizen? -- Naturalization -- Losing Citizenship -- Civics Is Important! -- Young Citizens -- Glossary -- For More Information -- Index -- Back Cover.

Do state-level exams in civics have a positive impact on young people's civic knowledge? We hypothesize that civics exams have the biggest effect in states where they are a requirement for high school graduation—theincentivehypothesis. We further hypothesize that civics requirements have the biggest effect on young people with less exposure to information about the U.S. political system at home, specifically Latinos and, especially, immigrants—thecompensationhypothesis. We test these hypotheses with the 2006 and 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics test administered to high school students, and with a large national survey of 18–24 year-olds. Across the two datasets, we find modest support for the incentive hypothesis and strong support for the compensation hypothesis.