In-Person Is How Civics Education Starts

This summer, I took my 11-year-old brother to court. Not to sue or testify against him, of course. I had been visiting the New York Supreme Court downtown on my own throughout the summer to learn about law. Occasionally, for lack of anyone to watch him, he tagged along. Notebooks in hand, blazers ironed and collars folded, together we witnessed law in the real world.

Throughout high school, I have studied law on my own through books, articles, online classes, and research papers. But textbook law and law in practice are very different. Observing court proceedings taught me new dimensions I hadn’t seen in class. I learned basic courtroom procedure, function, and etiquette, but I also experienced the human side of law. Every defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge was an individual with their own lives, responsibilities, and views. Every defendant who entered the courtroom had their story, from alleged petty thieves to alleged murderers, and I began to understand how the law actually operates in the lives of everyday people.

Research supports the value of this kind of experiential learning. Experiential learning builds improved technical knowledge, a greater ability to apply knowledge in practice, and stronger understanding of subject matter. But my brother gave me another reason to believe in experiential learning: it made him curious.

After sitting through a few proceedings, he began asking questions that a civics textbook would not have prompted. How long do people have to wait for a decision? How does this affect the rest of their lives? Who decides whether a punishment is fair? Instead of simply memorizing rules or procedures, he was trying to understand them.

In most other school subjects, students have opportunities to put what they learn into practice. We use math at the grocery store, English when we write emails and read signs, and even chemistry when we bake. Law is different. Unless we receive a ticket, become involved in a lawsuit, or otherwise encounter the justice system ourselves, most of us rarely see the law in practice.

We learn about our Constitutional rights in seventh grade, but then seldom see how those rights affect us. We learn about prosecutors, defenders, and judges, but rarely see how courts can change lives. We know that laws have consequences, but rarely witness what those consequences look like. If we expect young people to become informed and responsible citizens, we cannot teach civics only through textbooks. Schools should give students opportunities to experience the institutions they are learning about firsthand. Courthouse field trips would be a simple but effective place to start.

Schools already organize trips to museums, historical sites, and cultural institutions. Courtrooms deserve the same consideration. Middle and high school students could observe proceedings and then connect what they saw to what they learn in class: constitutional rights, due process, criminal justice, judicial discretion, or the impact of legal precedent. A courtroom could turn concepts that once seemed distant and theoretical into something students can actually see and understand. 

These experiences could also teach something a textbook cannot: the consequences of entering the justice system. Most children understand that certain behaviors are illegal. But knowing that something is against the law is different from understanding what happens when someone is actually charged and convicted. This winter, I met a teen who had been involved with the court system for months simply because he had stolen shower soap from a pharmacy. The point is not to scare students into obeying the law. It is to help them understand that laws are not merely words on a page; they create systems that can have profound effects on people’s time, families, futures, and communities.

Perhaps most importantly, experiencing the justice system could teach students that being an informed citizen does not mean simply accepting the systems around them. It means understanding them well enough to question them and potentially change them. A student who watches a sentencing might wonder: What makes a punishment just? How does a crime affect the victim, the defendant, and their families? Should two people who commit similar crimes always receive the same sentence? What makes a law legitimate in the first place? These are questions we should encourage young people to ask. They are the foundation of civic participation.

Experiential law and civics education will not turn every student into a lawyer. It does something more important: it helps students become citizens who understand the institutions that govern them, recognize the human beings affected by those institutions, and feel empowered to question and improve them. Understanding a system is what allows us to recognize both what works and what needs to change. And in a time when political polarization and misinformation can make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact, opinion, and outrage, that understanding matters more than ever.

My brother did not leave the courthouse knowing every rule of criminal procedure. He left with a notebook full of questions. This is exactly where civic education should begin.

Naia Bell is a senior at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, New York.