Civic Education Project Co-Led by CIRCLE Receives $650,000 Grant
On November 1, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $650,000 to a groundbreaking project led by iCivics which will evaluate and recommend best practices for K-12 civics in the United States. The project, Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education for All Learners, will bring together more than 100 experts and produce a report to be released at a national conference in 2020.
Educating for American Democracy is a collaboration between iCivics, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, as well as CIRCLE and our home institution, Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. CIRCLE Director Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg will co-chair the project’s Pedagogy Task Force. She will also be one of five co-authors of the initiative’s final report, alongside former CIRCLE Director Peter Levine.
“I am honored and excited that CIRCLE’s multidisciplinary expertise can be useful as a core partner in this project. We look forward to contributing to the success of this work so that more students understand the present within the context of the past by connecting civics and history instruction in meaningful ways, and shifting how social studies education is conceptualized in the future,” says Dr. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director of CIRCLE.
“All students have a right to engage in deep learning and reflection, even interrogation, about their civic identity. Connecting civics and history instruction can help students understand both the ideals of the United States while fully grappling with the legacy of slavery and prejudice against various groups all the way to the present.”
