4 “Why Didn’t You Tell Me?” Civics, Politics, and Children’s Righteous Anger

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This chapter focuses on children’s understanding of civic and political matters, demonstrating both children’s enduring commitment to civic responsibility and their evolving beliefs about civic and political issues. Tracing American Jewish children’s beliefs about civic and political matters in both the United States and Israel over the course of elementary school, it demonstrates that Jewish children in the U.S. offer similar conceptions of civic responsibility when thinking about the U.S. and Israel. Yet the same children often display a gap between their emerging understanding of political issues and political leadership in the U.S. and their relative lack of familiarity with political life in Israel, a gap about which children express profound frustration and anger. This chapter situates the frustration of American Jewish youth not as a sign of disillusionment with Israel but rather as a desperate plea for a new approach to education.