Politics today are emotional and messy. Don’t talk about anything in the news if you want to keep the peace with family and friends.
Thankfully, this doesn’t apply to teaching.
In fact, it’s the exact opposite. The classroom, especially the homeschool classroom, is an excellent place to dissect, discuss, and debate politics.
And then write a paper about it!
Most of the time we teach about history, from creation to about 1970s.
But we’re living in historical times right now. Huge debates are happening, and many kids want to have a say.
Let them write about–Donald Trump! Hillary Clinton! Cuba! Wikileaks! Antifa!
If you’re not comfortable with how to get your student started writing about current events, you might do the following:
- Find a simple essay writing curriculum that teaches persuasive writing. A great place to start it The Lively Art of Writing. It’s a pretty straight forward little book. It basically teaches the 5 paragraph essay with a refutation paragraph. A refutation paragraph involves refuting the opposing opinion.
- Pick a debate issue, and start brainstorming. Here’s just a few:
- An evaluation of President Trumps response to Puerto Rico
- An evaluation of the media’s coverage of Puerto Rico
- The Democratic party’s response to President Trump
- The Republican party’s response to President Trump
- The media’s coverage of President Trump
- Antifa versus The Alt-Right
- Is there an Alt-Right?
- Is there an Alt-Left
- The history of Antifa and its mission
- Is Antifa justified to protest hate speech with violence?
- What would Dr. Martin Luther King think of President Trump? (This one might seem like a far-fetched assignment, but this falls into the progymnasmata category of Impersonation.
- What would Dr. Martin Luther King think of Antifa?
- Should professional athletes kneel during the national anthem?
- Should professional athletes be fired for kneeling during the national anthem?
- If a person voted for President Trump, is he a racist?
- Which is worse–racism or abortion?
- What values should a person have to be president?
- What is presidential behavior?
- Should America move toward single payer health care?
- If any, what action should the United States take against North Korea?
- Should Catalan be allowed to declare independence from Spain?
- Should the Spanish government block Catalan from declaring independence?
- Did the Cuban government act with aggression toward the United States ambassadors?
- What action should the federal government take regarding DACA?
- Should Confederate statues be removed?
- What is nationalism?
- What is white nationalism?
- Nationalism vs patriotism
- What is black lives matter?
- How important is black lives matter?
- What is a hate group?
- What should minimum wage be?
- Does the government owe money to the people whose homes were flooded when the government released dams for the greater good?
- Should Julian Assange be set free?
- Does Wikileaks play an important role in global politics?
- Is Wikileaks a terrorist group?
- What is a terrorist group and who falls into that category?
- What is terrorism?
- Why is domestic terrorism an important issue and how does a domestic terrorist attack spin the coversation?
- What rights should non-citizens have in the United States of America?
- Should America take in more refugees?
These are just a few topics to discuss and write about, and every day the list grows.
When students write about topics that interest them, they often write more and with greater clarity.
While the current political climate is pretty awful for the citizenry and the overall good of our country, our children have the opportunity to learn quite a bit from it!