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Schools

Sandburg High School Honored For Civics Work

The school was recognized as an "Illinois School of Democracy" for active democratic process efforts among students over recent years.

Carl Sandburg High School social studies students, past and present, were recognized on Friday for their years of applying civics and history lessons beyond the classroom.

 The school was recognized as an "Illinois School of Democracy" during a ceremony Friday morning in the school's Performing Arts Center. Members of the Illinois Civics Mission Coalition, the organization that makes the distinction, also lauded Sandburg's teachers for providing students with experiences in the rights, responsibilities and tensions that are all elements of a constitutional democracy.

Sandburg's application to be recognized was spearheaded by social studies teachers Jim Mattera, Adam Osmanski and Pat Usher on the accomplishments of their students. Many of the students participate in the school's Model United Nations Club and have organized mock voting drives and fieldtrips to various historical landmarks.

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In spring of 2009, for instance, Osmanski took his students west to join in a Model U.N. conference. Among the sites they stopped and appreciated were the steps of Sproul Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, where Martin Luther King, Jr. once spoke.

"It's history coming alive for the students," said Dr. James Gay, Consolidated High School District 230 superintendant. "It's important to see how their actions can make a positive impact on the community."

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The school also received a $3,000 scholarship to be spent on social studies curriculum as part of the recognition. For almost an hour, one speaker after another bestowed praise and political words of wisdom, though the students have already been organizing extracurricular civics programs for years, before reaching the legal voting age.

Carolyn Pereira, retiring chair of the ICMC, reminded students that for democracy to work it requires constant watch and vigilance.

"'When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness,'" she said, quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, a French admirer of antebellum America. "It is up to you to ensure that the lessons we have learned continue to light our way on the path to democracy."

The keynote speaker was Mary Beth Tinker, who in 1965—at the age of 13—protested the Vietnam War at her Des Moines, Iowa junior high school by wearing a black armband. She was suspended indefinitely.

Her family challenged school officials and prevailed four years later when the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Justice Abe Fortas and others agreed that a public school could not censor student speech or expression unless it disrupted the educational process.

The ceremony for Sandburg's award intentionally fell on the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, a document that was "only a good start," Tinker said.

"Democracy has to grow," she said.

Although subsequent Supreme Court cases have refined the boundaries of student free speech, Tinker remains a "symbol of our civic capability," said Usher.

The ICMC is a non-partisan consortium of private and public sector representatives, including professors and policymakers, and assembled by the McCormick Foundation, which ranks amongst the nation's largest charities. The foundation was established in 1955 after the death of Col. Robert R. McCormick, a longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune.

Sandburg is the ninth school to have successfully completed a civic audit, but the credit should not go current students and teachers alone, Usher said.

"The programs that we had to identify [on the application] were started decades ago," he said. "This is truly a legacy of staff and students who came before us. Hopefully this award can be a great inspiration for our future students."

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