Actor Richard Dreyfuss, who starred in the critically acclaimed movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus” about a musician/composer who reluctantly accepts a “day” job as a teacher, but soon finds it’s his true passion, is heading back to school in an effort to show Americans how to become better citizens.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday, the Academy Award-winning actor said, “The teaching of civics presently in the United States is dismal and startling.” Which is why he is launching a campaign to develop a civics curriculum for America’s schools.
Dreyfuss went on to tell viewers that when he was a child civics classes taught not only the checks and balances in government but also the reasons behind the creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
“We want to define the necessity of civics,” he said. “What is it, and is it necessary? If it’s necessary, is it urgent? And if it’s urgent, what do we do? And then to proceed to literally design classes.”
Dreyfuss said the main impetus for his idea is to “revive the notion that we can learn how to run the country and learn, not, you know, for Republicans and not for Democrats, but learn how to run the Constitution.”
I took an Advanced Placement civics class in high school and felt my teacher did a stellar job illustrating how the lessons we learned in books could be applied to present day situations. My teacher went above and beyond the normal classroom curriculum and gave us real world applications to the theories featured in our books.
Dreyfuss did not provide exact details on what kind of curriculum he is designing, but I look forward to seeing what he wants to revamp. Most people know Dreyfuss as an Oscar winner for “The Goodbye Girl,” (he also starred in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) than a civics leader, so this next project should be quite interesting to watch unfold.