Since 2011

Gabe Fleisher, Editor-in-Chief

wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com ● wakeuptopolitics.com ● @WakeUp2Politics

THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL – You better get to class!

From the Editor’s Teacher’s Desk

Hello everyone! I am so, so, SO excited for today’s edition of Wake Up To Politics

and the school year coming up. Hopefully, you received my email yesterday, and

know that “the Wake Up” returns today from a long summer break, and we are

jumping right in. This is a special, school-themed “Back-to-School” edition, and

will include an exclusive interview with former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day

O’Connor.

Sandra Day O’Connor was an Arizona elected official and judge when appointed

by President Ronald Reagan to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the

United States. After being confirmed and taking office in September 1981,

O’Connor joined the High Court as its first female member, and was soon as the

swing vote on the bench for most of her time as a Justice. O’Connor stepped down

from the Supreme Court in July 2005, and in her retirement has served as

Chancellor of The College of William & Mary, received the Presidential Medal of

Freedom from President Barack Obama, and been named by multiple publications

as among the world’s most powerful women.

My exclusive interview with Justice O’Connor focused on the main project of her

retirement from the Supreme Court: iCivics, a civic-based video game website she

founded to engage American students in civics. Please learn more in the feature

below, and then (students and teachers especially) check out O’Connor’s initiative

at www.icivics.org.

After my exclusive, we have other Back-to-School stuff, and a little news as well

to start of the school year!

Let’s make it a great day, and the start to a fabulous school year!

Gabe Fleisher

Editor-in-Chief

Wake Up To Politics

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

Back-to-School Edition Exclusive Interview:

O’Connor Tells Kids to Download Democracy First Female Supreme Court Justice Tells Wake Up To Politics About

Her Civic Video Games

By Gabe Fleisher, Editor-in-Chief

Civic Literacy Deficit

In 2010, the National

Assessment Governing

Board, authorized by the

U.S. Department of

Education, released “The

Nation’s Report Card” on

civics for the first time in

eight years, the result of

testing over 265,000

fourth, eighth, and

twelfth grade students in

nearly 1,500 schools

across America. The

results were

“distressing,” at least to

former Supreme Court

Justice Sandra Day

O’Connor, the first

woman to sit on the

highest court in the land.

This nationwide assessment test includes dozens of questions on civics, some

multiple choice, and others constructed response. Upon completing the test, the

students are grouped into “basic,” “proficient,” and “advanced” categories, with

each question categorized the same way. In the 2010 civics “Report Card,” a full

two-thirds of students scored below “proficient”. For the 8th

graders tested, that

number was 72%. Questions placed on the “proficient level,” which only 22% of

8th

grade students scored, included correctly choosing a role performed by the

Supreme Court from a list of multiple choices.

At this point, she told me in an exclusive interview, Sandra Day O’Connor, had

retired from that same court a few years before, one of the most influential women

in modern history and well-known as the Supreme Court’s swing vote and

independent voice, and was not “actively engaging in public life” for the first time

since attending law school, more than five decades before.

“Shortly after I retired from the Supreme Court [in 2006], I began looking for new

challenges to address and opportunities to continue participating in civics,” the

former Justice said. “While doing so I discovered something very distressing:

Americans knew shockingly little about our government and democracy.”

O’Connor, now 84, discovered this through seeing statistics from assessments such

as the 2010 “Report Card,” and decided, “Something had to be done to reinvigorate

civic learning in America.” And that she was the one to do it. Upon deciding her

next challenge to attack, O’Connor recognized that the most important step would

be to “find a way to make [civic education] materials engaging and fun for young

people,” acknowledging “old civic education models were dry and boring, and had

even “failed to capture my interest when I was a student,” she admitted. The

former jurist knew she had to work and “jazz things up a bit and bring civic

education into the 21st century

Birth of iCivics

And thus iCivics was born. And a self-described “old cowgirl” turned Supreme

Court justice had become an “unlikely ambassador for video games”. In February

2009, three years after leaving the bench, Justice O’Connor founded Our Courts,

along with Georgetown University Law School and Arizona State University. The

Our Courts initiative featured civics curriculum aimed at seventh-, eighth-, and

ninth-grade students, and by August 2009, the first two games, Supreme Decision

(where the player is a law clerk, assisting a Supreme Court justice in deciding her

The iCivics game “Do I Have a Right?”

position in a case) and Do I Have a Right? (where the player runs a constitutional

law firm), were launched.

By May 2010, the project expanded and rebranded, as Our Courts became iCivics.

Today, 28 interactive games and lesson plans for teachers are the cornerstone of

the iCivics program, which can be found at www.icivics.org. But can videogames

really turnaround the civic literacy deficit our country is facing, I asked Justice

O’Connor?

The justice reported that a study by

the Persephone Group showed results

of a pre-test and post-test given to

students before and after playing the

first two iCivics games. After

playing Do I Have a Right once, test

scores improved by 13.7%, and

playing at least twice resulted in a

score boost of 18.3%. In addition,

Arizona State University conducted a

study of students playing Branches

of Power, which takes students through the

process of lawmaking through the vantage

point of playing members of each branch of government. After playing, 78% of all

students reported “better understanding of how the government worked,” while

86% of the students said they enjoyed playing the game. Since the program was

founded, 65,000 teachers have registered iCivics accounts, and over 11 million

games have been played on the website.

“I am very pleased with iCivics’ growth in such a short period of time, but, of

course there is always room for improvement,” Justice O’Connor said in response

to these shows of growth and success. “I look forward to iCivics’ continued growth

in the coming years.”

Sandra Day O’Connor says of iCivics: “This

is by far my most important work yet.”

She plans to continue traveling the

country and working to improve iCivics

and engage students in their democracy.

Going Ahead

How did we get in this deficit of civic knowledge in the first place? Part of it goes

back to the No Child Left Behind law, which initiated a nationwide focus on math,

writing, and science – as those became the subjects required for standardized tests.

As a result, civics was treated in many schools as an elective, and “pushed aside

and mistakenly treated as a distraction from preparing students for college and a

career,” according to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. This,

she maintains, is dangerous, not only to civic knowledge, but to civic engagement

– when students become voters in a few short years – as well.

And this problem will likely perpetuate if “old civic

education models” are continued to be taught, which

O’Connor says don’t “capture the attention of learners

or the true nature of civics [as] an active subject...about

participating in the political process.” Instead, she

believes, new and interactive models, such as iCivics,

must be taught in schools. Once civics becomes “as part

of the curriculum as language arts, math, or

science...Voting will come naturally [to the next

generation].”

Going forward, iCivics is attempting to convert all of its

games to apps compatible to tablet and smart phone

formats, allowing young people to take the program’s

content wherever they go. After decades of tough cases

while serving on the highest court in the land,

O’Connor says of the iCivics project, “This is by far my

most important work yet.”

“...We have been failing to impart the basic knowledge

that young people need to become effective citizens and leaders...[and] we all have

a role to play in shaping the character of our nation,” Justice O’Connor believes.

Until that knowledge is imparted, she plans to continue working to engage students

in the subject she has been intimately involved in her whole life. Through the

iCivics program, O’Connor is creating the lessons of the future, by tapping into the

countless hours spent by students on the computer and playing video games, as she

encourages the next generation to click into civics and download democracy.

Fury in Ferguson A special column covering the aftermath of a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri

Michael Brown Funeral Set for Today Funeral services for Michael

Brown, the black 18-year-old shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson,

Missouri, will be held today.

Brown’s shooting, while unarmed, by white police officer Darren Wilson

has set off protests lasting more than a week in Ferguson. As protestors

chanted (mostly peacefully), police responded with use of tear gas and

rubber bullets to subdue them. Today, as his son is laid to rest, Michael

Brown’s father asked the city of Ferguson for a day-long moment of silence

without protests.

“I would like for no protesting going on,” Michael Brown, Sr. told St. Louis

hip-hop station Hot 104.1 FM. “We just want a moment of silence that

whole day. Just out of respect for our son.”

The funeral is being held at 10 AM, in a local church that can hold up to

4,500. White House officials and other national figures (including Rev. Al

Sharpton, “Obama’s go-to man on race,” who will deliver the eulogy).

Question Homework of the Day While this space is usually for a daily trivia question, today it is optional

“homework” for you, in going with our “Back-to-School” theme:

After reading “Downloading Democracy,” the Wake Up To Politics

exclusive feature on Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s civics initiative, are you

inspired to test your own civics education and learn more? Of course, a huge

way to do that is by just reading Wake Up To Politics every day. Or visiting

O’Connor’s iCivics website and playing games on civics.

OR you could take the ultimate test. The very same test immigrants take

when striving to join this country as citizens, which all natural-born citizens

(as lifelong citizens of this nation) should, in theory, know as well.

Here’s how it works: This is a link to 100 questions on civics. During their

naturalization interview, for the civics portion, applicants will be asked up to

10 questions from that list of 100. Correctly answering 6 counts for passing

the test.

Have a friend, family member, student, teacher, co-worker, etc. pick 10

questions from the list and ask you them. Or really put your civics

knowledge to the test and see how well you fare with all 100 – I did this with

my mom, and got a pretty good score.

Then...email me with your score and we can see which one is the best. This

is not, of course, a competition...merely an opportunity to see how well you

know your nation’s history and democracy, and how you can improve in that

knowledge.