Voting in this election, which I did just a couple of hours after the ballot arrived in my mailbox, confirmed a view that I have held for a long time: If I ever tested my students in ways that messed them up as thoroughly as the ballot messes me up, no sane student would ever register for my classes again.
Like a diligent student, I try to follow national and local political issues as closely as possible so that I can provide the best possible answers at the civics test — the election.
Choosing a candidate for an office is easy. It is like the true-false questions in a test. But choosing an idea, which is what the statewide measures are, turns out to be a disaster for me, because ideas warrant discussions before a simple up or down vote.
It is through discussions that we further understand the issue and, more importantly, the complications that might be buried deep down. This is why when I test students on concepts, I don’t use true-false or multiple-choice questions. Instead, I force them to explore the fuzzy, gray areas through short essay responses.
Through reasoning and persuasion, and with evidence, students finally arrive at convincing answers, even if they don’t necessarily agree with my conclusions. At least, that is my hope.
Politics is overwhelmingly about the fuzzy, gray areas. For instance, according to the big fat voter’s pamphlet, Measure 61 “creates mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain theft, identity theft, forgery, drug and burglary crimes.” What a juicy piece for discussions! Even on the surface, the measure comes across as one with multiple effects, and with unintended consequences that we will come to know about only years later.
However, instead of having discussions, I am simply being asked to note whether I am for it or against it. Isn’t such a “yes” or “no” the most atrociously inappropriate way for society to decide on most of such ballot measures?
On the other hand, these are the kinds of questions I would love to have on an essay test — or better yet, for classroom discussions. Oh, yes, we do have a forum for classroom discussions in the political context: the Legislature! Not one, but two chambers of the Legislature — the Senate and the House.
Well unfortunately, there was no option to write a 700-word essay as my response to Measure 61. Maybe an opinion piece, if the editor publishes it, but that does not count as a vote anyway.
To complicate matters, the ballot warned me that voting a certain way on Measure 57 could nullify my vote on Measure 61. Shucks! Back to reading the pamphlet all over again. It was certainly one of those rare occasions when I wished I weren’t a teetotaler — a few drinks might have helped ease my frustrations.
Finally, I metaphorically held my nose and voted.
I imagined giving my students an exam with a few questions and warning them there that there would be a penalty if their answers to one question did not match up with their answers to another question. If I did that, I am sure that soon, my peers and the public would seriously question my sanity — which, come to think of it, some do even now!
I simply cannot understand how we have ended up with a political process where we have two measures about the same set of issues, and where a vote on one can negate the vote on the other. Perhaps that is proof enough that neither measure should have been on the ballot in the first place.
I am all in favor of initiative legislation, and want as much citizen participation as possible in our collective decision-making. I am immensely thankful that these citizen-empowering tools are enshrined in the constitutions both in Oregon and California, where I lived before relocating to Eugene.
But if the 2008 ballot is an indicator of how ugly the future tests might be for us civics students, well, I think it is time we overhauled the curriculum. At least to prevent the abuse of initiative legislation, if not for anything else, maybe we ought to revise our state Constitution as a part of Oregon’s sesquicentennial celebrations — before disgruntled voters abandon voting itself.
Published in the Register Guard, October 27, 2008
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