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Teachers on Fire Magazine

The Teachers on Fire Magazine features articles written by agents of growth and transformative change in K-12 education today. If you write about education, reach out to @TeachersOnFire to become a writer for this publication. Writers keep full ownership of content.

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Let’s Talk About Giving Children the Right to Vote

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I welcome the voices of children in public life: we need to hear them. Maybe it’s time we got serious about true universal suffrage.

Without an educated population, the grand experiment of democracy cannot flourish. This is why we educate children. It’s not, as many assume, so that they can one day join the workforce as a cog in the economy, but so that they can acquire the knowledge, skills, and habits required for self-governance. If it’s not for that then, frankly, we should stop spending our tax dollars on public schools and let the corporations train their own damned workers.

We need citizens who are critical thinkers, who ask a lot of questions, who question authority, who stand up for their beliefs, who listen to others with the goal of understanding, and who know that they contribute to society in ways far beyond their ability to earn a greasy buck. These are not necessarily the traits of a good employee, but they are those of a good citizen. And if there is anything we need right now, it’s good citizens.

We spend a ton of time and treasure preparing our children for citizenship, but what we tend to forget is that our children, even the newborn babies, are already citizens. In fact, children are citizens who make up approximately a third of the US population.

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Teachers on Fire Magazine
Teachers on Fire Magazine

Published in Teachers on Fire Magazine

The Teachers on Fire Magazine features articles written by agents of growth and transformative change in K-12 education today. If you write about education, reach out to @TeachersOnFire to become a writer for this publication. Writers keep full ownership of content.

Teacher Tom
Teacher Tom

Written by Teacher Tom

Tom “Teacher Tom” Hobson is an early childhood educator, international speaker, education consultant, teacher of teachers, parent educator, and author.

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