By Kyle Nguyen
In a world becoming more political each day, the importance of civics education is very apparent.
Civics is a very important subject because it brings much more than just government into a class—it brings ourselves as citizens into the mix. We are without a doubt the backbone of America so it’s very important to know our rights and civil duties as citizens. Our choices and opinions not only affect ourselves but the others around us as well. Having a thorough education can help us realize how much of an impact we have on each other and the world.
We all have an opinion. Our opinions are some of the most important things we possess. Our opinions not only help us exchange different ideas but also can shape how we live through voting, protesting and other means. Civics education can help form our opinions and or change them by allowing new perspectives to be shown. Having our opinions shaped or changed can allow us to be confident in what we believe in and why we believe it.
The world as of now is changing rapidly and drastically and that is evident with protest and social media as of late. Social media’s role is to help opinions travel very far at a fast pace and a protest can take that opinion and amplify that even further by becoming a physical entity in someone’s life. Although protests have been around for a long time it has had a barrier because there was no real way to communicate effectively across hundreds of miles but social media takes that physical barrier away.
Education in civics is one of the most important things anyone can learn as of now because of how fast the world is changing. People are starting to become more aware of their surroundings and while that is a good thing it can lead to multiple problems.
A big problem right now is low voter turnout. Having a good civics education can help prevent this because citizens would understand the importance and process of voting and how that can affect their daily lives. This would also inform current voters of how important their votes are by showing them the sheer number of people voting. A single vote has a lot of power because it can bring up topics that other parties haven’t considered and allow those topics to be part of their agenda because of those voters’ concerns.
Another problem is violence and radical ideology and that civics can help prevent. Violence is something we should always avoid because getting hurt or hurting others doesn’t help anyone. People have conflicting opinions, which are okay to have, but how we go about it changes the whole situation. Violence can cause people to become more radical with their opinions and potentially cause discourse within their communities.
Of course it is our right as Americans to protest and question others but with the proper knowledge, we would be able to understand that there are safer and more effective ways to handle social problems. We need to have more people educated about civics going into the future so that hopefully in the future, we can question the government better and more effectively to change it for the better. Having a deeper understanding in civics can allow us to have a simple conversation with no arguments in between by allowing us to understand the importance of our opinions and how they can affect others.
