democracy needs to be reborn in each generation, and education is its midwife, so said john dewey.e recently, america's favorite unemployed cowgirl, justice sandra day o'connor, has reserved from one end of this country to the other knowledge of our system of government, our rights and responsibilities as citizens is not passed down through the gene pool, it must be taught, and we have work to do. each of these three patriots was describing the essential, historic civic mission of our nation's schools, a mission as important as foundational today as it always has been, as it always will be. for those of us who care about the civic health of our nation, for those of us who care about people becoming civically engaged, we must care about the foundational civic mission of our schools. and, folks, we're not talking about your grandpa's civic learning. we're not talking about old-fashioned didactic civic education. we're talking about new, exciting ways to learn how to be civically engaged. my colleague, the first social studies teacher in our nation, susan griffin, is going to talk a l