Civil behavior is a fundamental building block of our democracy, and throughout our history, both children and adults have strived — and occasionally struggled — to demonstrate it through their behavior. In our 21st Century connected world, civility has become even more difficult for many people to understand and attain because certain aspects of digital life can thwart many individual’s good intentions.
If you are seeking useful information about civility to share in your school or community, check out How to Teach Civility to Kids, over at wikiHow. The article is, in essence, a tutorial, explaining what adults should do to encourage young people to grow into civil and kind individuals, and it offers specific ideas for conversations and activities.
Parents and teachers spend an enormous amount of their time and energy focusing with children on why it’s important to become civil individuals and emphasizing that these principles are the same either online or off. Yet educators and adults need continuing support and guidance as they go about the work of promoting and upholding civility. Their challenges are encouraging kids to learn how to be respectful and how to disagree respectfully and demonstrating to children the importance of being polite, even when they don’t feel like it. Encouraging children to assist others and be kind anytime ensures that children understand much more about what it means to be civil. The wikiHow article offers information and help.
Divided into three sections, How to Teach Civility to Kids offers suggestions for age-appropriate conversations and activities, and it emphasizes the need for adults to serve as role models. The three sections group information around the following topics.
- How to explain what civility is and why it matters.
- How adults can set up and model intolerance for incivility.
- How adults can model civility (one of the most important aspects of raising young people who understand what civility means).
Media! Tech! Parenting! 