Featured Article: "To Fight Political Polarization, Reinvest in Civics and the Liberal Arts"

Civics education’s slow death in the United States is clearly seen in recent protests around the nation. 
 

To understand the bearing of civics education on American current events, it would be helpful to first answer the question: What is civics education and why is it important? 
 

Civics education is the study of the rights and responsibilities of citizens, with focus on an understanding of how the government works, understanding what freedom is, and what we must do to preserve such freedom and the democratic process through effective engagement. The importance of a civics education is best understood when such an education is missing. A passage from the introduction of the Civics Alliance’s American Birthright explains it well, 
 

Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of America’s history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country. The warping of American social studies instruction has created a corps of activists dedicated to the overthrow of America and its freedoms, larger numbers of Americans indifferent to the steady whittling away of American liberty, and many more who are so ignorant of the past they cannot use our heritage of freedom to judge contemporary debates. We must restore American social studies instruction centered on liberty if we are to restore the American republic to good health.

Right now, America is polarized. While this sentiment is true most of the time—the joys of a de facto two party system—the current polarization is only made worse by the declining quality of education and a loss of civics understanding. 
 

A 2022 report by the National Center for Education Statistics on the national U.S. history assessment test administered to eighth graders revealed less-than-ideal results. Scores began declining in 2014, and even then, the scores were not significantly different from those when the test was first offered in 1994. To break it down, the average score in 2022 was nine points lower than the average score in 2014, 13 percent of eighth graders performed at or above proficient level, and the percentage of students scoring at or below basic on the exam rose to 40 percent of eighth graders in 2022 from 34 percent in 2018.
 

Civics education is not only necessary as a cornerstone of K-12 education but it should continue into higher education—specifically in a college or university’s core curriculum so that every student gains a deeper understanding of their rights and duties—after all, education should both enrich culture and shape character, and ultimately promote virtuous citizenship. In an article for Minding the Campus, Jeffrey Schulman argues that reinstating civics and literature education—or humanities education in general—would do much to arrest the political chaos in America. 
 

The focus on STEM over humanities in higher education has left a gap in civics knowledge and other associated skills. Schulman states, “Ignorance of our country’s political tradition is increasing: Precipitous declines in humanities enrollments in colleges are accompanying lower scores in reading and writing on standardized tests.” After graduation, many college students are being released into society as “technically qualified” workers, but are also animus- and ideology-fueled vessels of civics destruction. 
 

Knowing that we Americans have a right to freedom of speech, and of free association, is quite different from knowing why we have these rights or when they ought to be exercised. Much of modern civics education is something called action civics: think K-12 teachers appearing with students at a local state capitol decked out with signs or, as in my colleague Chance Layton’s neighborhood, the occasional anti-gun march—among others—during school hours led by teachers and their students often under the age of ten. Will these students know the importance of their rights? The rarity of them? Is protesting the only right? What are our duties to the government? Why vote? What is a jury? Why pay taxes? Who serves in the military? What is a prison? What are the qualifications for elected office? Why don’t they ask the kids at Tiananmen Square, was fashion the reason why they were there?

Sending children or college students off to protest is not a sufficient civics education. Students must learn first the structure and function of government in American life, along with the many details that such instruction entails.

When this education fails or is missing entirely, the results can be devastating. 
 

Let’s compare two of the major protests which have taken place recently. Take for instance the Los Angeles protests against the ICE raids ordered by President Trump. These protests began with a few hundred people outside of a Los Angeles federal detention center and the Los Angeles Edward L. Roybal Federal Building and spiraled into chaos after clashes with the National Guard, which was deployed by President Trump. Protestors vandalized and set taxis on fire, and blocked the 101 Freeway, all while reports of more vandalism, looting, and violence continued to pour in. Without discussing the intricacies of the law, the immigration/migrant issue, or even federal versus state rights, the protestors were abusing their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and subsequently, were not practicing civics.
 

Compare this situation to the “No Kings” protests which coincided with Flag Day and the parade in Washington, D.C. celebrating the Army’s 250th anniversary. The “No Kings” protests were actually mostly peaceful, with more than 5 million participants and over 2,100 rallies and protests around the nation. According to the “No Kings” website, the protests were organized “to reject authoritarianism—and show the world what democracy really looks like.” “Mostly peaceful” in the context of these slew of protests means that while scenes of verbal altercations were often heated, violence was rare and importantly not condoned by participants. These scenes offer a dramatic contrast to the protests in Los Angeles, where students pick up as many hours in mandated ethnic studies courses as civics.
 

The need for better civics instruction has never been greater. In an effort to fulfil this great need and our mission to promote virtuous citizenship, the National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance have studied the ways in which activists have subvert education to achieve their political aims, written model legislation to counter these activists, and drafted model state standards to promote a better civics education and our American Birthright. These efforts seek to teach America’s foundational history of liberty and to reinstate love, law, and liberty as touchstones of American social studies education. 
 

Making good citizens should be a, if not the, priority of the educational system. 
 

Until next week.

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