In light of the 2024 election results, students and staff talked about whether there is enough teaching about politics and elections in their classes. While most agreed that it’s not really addressed, opinions differed on whether that should change.
“We really should teach more about voting, especially for eleventh and twelfth graders because they could pre-register to vote,” said Patsy DiMonte, who teaches Government and Economics. “We teach two months on government, and most students don’t even know how it’s structured, so before we teach them about voting and elections, they need to learn the structure,” he said.
Humanities teacher Vasiliki Kazalas also thought that students lacked foundational knowledge.
“My concern is that many students don’t know the difference between federal, state, and local government,” she said. “If you don’t understand how government is structured, then it becomes very difficult to understand what’s happening in it.”
Students didn’t disagree and shared their experiences of learning about politics in class.
“We did a project in Humanities and we learned about issues in the world and what each candidate’s going to do about it,” sophomore Seth Walker said. “We also did a quiz. We basically had to agree or disagree with like certain topics and at the end it will show you which candidate you resonate more with,” he said.
Junior Essence Edwards agreed that politics are somewhat incorporated into her lessons.
“I would say Government and Economics, and Global teaches a little bit about politics, so yeah,” said Edwards. “But not anything like voting or elections, yet.”
The topic of election education also begs the question of whether students are even interested in learning about it. Walker is and thinks there “should be other classes that teach it to their students, as to provide insight on who you’d be voting for.” And he’s not alone.
“In my Humanities class we talked about politics. I’m actually intrigued by it,” said freshman Jose Reynoso.
Edwards shares Reynoso’s interest in politics. “It’s definitely a topic I kind of like to research about, just to keep up,” she said.
However, other students don’t seem to care when it comes to politics.
“Nothing about politics interests me; I just don’t really care,” said senior Denis Lila, who claimed that he didn’t learn anything about voting or elections in his classes.
And freshman Amina Williams, who acknowledged that they sometimes talk about politics in Humanities, felt similarly to Lila.
“I’m not really interested in politics; it’s boring,” said Williams.
DiMonte sees this disinterest in the classroom.
“Not even like, 20 percent of the juniors or seniors were interested in learning about the structure of government,” said DiMonte. “I think they’re just reflecting, or are a general reflection of how Americans are when it comes to government.”
