Where did we as a nation take the wrong turn on civic education?
We stopped supporting it. I suppose that some of the civics classes and textbooks got pretty boring, and maybe it wasn’t engaging the students in ways they thought were meaningful. I think the remedy there is to teach in more effective and innovative ways, and to come into the modern generation. Young people today spend an average of 40 hours a week in front of some kind of a screen — whether a computer or a TV screen. We need to use the media that young people use, to get their attention! That’s why the “Our Courts” program was developed out of these conferences at Georgetown. It’s online [www.ourcourts.org], and it’s going to have interactive games posted on it this summer. Very fun and very innovative and exciting for young people. When they have something like that to turn to, they will learn and they will be engaged! And they’ll be happy to be learning. It’s going to work.
