There was a story on the front page of the Recorder about the new civics testing and what those scores say about civic education. I would humbly suggest that if we really want to assess civics education we would do well to look at what is happening around us.  A majority of voters have chosen a president and majority in Congress who are illegally sending troops into American cities to kidnap and terrorize citizens based on lies about the state of crime in those cities, cutting support for the farmers who provide our food and terrorizing many of those who work their fields, and doing away with agencies and departments whose mission is protecting the quality of our air and water. They are allowing Musk and his Doge boys access to our most sensitive personal and financial data, sending masked thugs into our communities to kidnap people off the street without any probable cause, without warrants, and without any due process. 

President Donald Trump and his Congress have shut down the government rather than provide health care for the population they have been elected to serve.  They have worked overtime to stonewall an investigation into the Epstein files that would provide evidence as to whether the president, already convicted of sexual assault, is also a pedophile guilty of sexually abusing children. And then there is Robert Kennedy Jr. and his bogus campaigns against the vaccines that saved so many during the Covid pandemic, and who is now blaming Tylenol for autism, and the hate-filled project 2025, being carried out right in front of our eyes.

We don’t need test scores, on the MCAS or the new civics exam to know that our educational system is failing us. As long as we continue to mis-educate our children into believing that education means doing what they are told and spitting back answers on tests rather than learning to think critically, demand supporting evidence, and to care about their neighbors, we will not have a population capable of  challenging the lies and smoke screens fed to us by the administration and their allies.

Doug Selwyn

Greenfield