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It’s no accident that some of the loudest voices in politics built their platforms not on policy or lived expertise, but on convincing people they alone could explain how America works. When people don’t know what government actually does, they’re more likely to mistake performance for truth. A confident voice with a social media following can feel like a teacher. And in an era where charisma beats accuracy, fake civics has become a powerful weapon.
Most of us know Election Day comes in November, and some can name a governor or senator. But far fewer can explain what a county commission controls, how federal dollars reach a classroom, or why a city clerk can shape daily life more than the President. We know the broad symbols of democracy but not the mechanics. That gap—between recognizing politics from a distance and understanding how power actually works up close—is where misinformation thrives.
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And that’s the dangerous part. People who don’t know how their systems work can’t hold them accountable. They can’t distinguish between a serious proposal and a viral rant. They end up outsourcing their understanding to the most confident voice in the room—or the one with the slickest production values online.
The result is a public square that confuses noise for knowledge. Social media clips masquerade as history lessons. Influencers frame every policy fight as good versus evil, never as the messy work of compromise. Citizens hungry for clarity swallow these narratives whole, mistaking certainty for credibility. And before long, people who’ve never read a school budget are leading fights about “indoctrination,” or people who’ve never stepped into a council meeting are dictating local spending debates.
I always find it laughable when media personalities or self-proclaimed “experts” who’ve never even sat through a party meeting suddenly want to lecture the DNC Chair on how the party operates. News flash: your speculation does not match reality.
From ignorance to fear to violence
There’s a deeper cost to this ignorance. When people don’t understand how government works, they don’t just get confused—they get scared. A zoning decision becomes evidence of a conspiracy. A budget cut becomes proof of corruption. An election process they never learned about in school feels rigged by default.
It doesn’t take much to turn fear into anger. Then anger turns into resentment. And resentment can turn into violence. We saw it on January 6th. We’ve seen it at school board meetings where parents scream about teachers’ committing imaginary crimes. We continue to see it in threats against college campuses, elected officials, and political parties in the wake of recent political violence.
None of this happens in a vacuum. It happens because too many people were never taught the basics of what government does. So every rumor sounds plausible, and every grievance feels existential. When institutions are mysterious, they’re easy to cast as malicious—like when a routine school board vote is spun into a plot against parents. When authority is confusing, it’s easy to call it illegitimate—like when election rules people never learned about suddenly look like fraud. And when you believe the system itself is illegitimate, violence starts to feel like the only language left.
That’s why civics education matters: it is the antidote to fear, the way we turn confusion into clarity and channel anger into constructive power.
This isn’t just about schools. It’s about whether democracy can hold under the weight of its own neglect. Teaching civics isn’t a matter of nostalgia for Schoolhouse Rock. It’s about equipping citizens to tell the difference between a disagreement and a threat, between a setback and a conspiracy.
A society where people don’t know how government works is destined to fail. Self-government depends on self-knowledge. When citizens can’t follow the flow of power, they stop believing they have any. And people who feel powerless are the easiest to manipulate.
On this week’s episode of At Our Table, NEA President Becky Pringle put it plainly: “Our young people need to see that they have power and that they are part of a larger community of people who are organizing to use that power.”
When they don’t see that, or when they don’t know how power actually flows, they become easy marks for anyone willing to sell them a counterfeit version of civics. Charisma takes the place of knowledge, and manipulation wears the mask of education.
Too often, we’ve let citizenship shrink into a kind of fandom. We cheer for our team. We boo the other side. We repost slogans, share memes, and call it political engagement. But citizenship isn’t about performance. It’s about responsibility.
Responsible citizenship requires enough understanding to connect a policy change in Washington to the hospital budget in your hometown. It requires the discipline to see through the theatrics of influencers who sell outrage as enlightenment. It requires the humility to accept that government is complicated and that complexity is a feature of democracy, not a flaw.
Without that grounding, people mistake anger for agency. They confuse volume for impact. And they become ripe for recruitment by anyone willing to feed their fears.
What kind of public square do we want?
The truth is that democracy doesn’t collapse because people argue. Disagreement is built into the design. Democracy collapses when people no longer know what they’re arguing about. When voters can’t connect consequences to causes, when they can’t trace decisions back to decision-makers, accountability disappears. And manipulation fills the void.
That’s why civic education can’t be treated as an afterthought. It should be threaded through every grade, not crammed into a single high school elective. Kids should learn early what local government does, see how federal policy shapes their daily lives, and practice real problem-solving—writing petitions, testifying at mock hearings, tracing how an idea becomes a rule in their own community. And Civics should be more than just the operations of government but include an understanding of the political parties that influence and even control the government. Civic fluency isn’t about memorizing dates. It’s about building the muscle to ask who holds power, how it flows, and what role we play in shaping it.
But it can’t stop with schools. Adults need spaces to rebuild that fluency too: town halls that actually teach, community workshops that walk through budgets, local media that explains process as much as outcome. Civic education isn’t a box you check before graduation. It’s a lifelong skill set that keeps power visible—and therefore accountable.
It’s time to move past cosplay politics. Real expertise comes from engaging with how things actually operate. Frustration often comes when perception doesn’t align with reality.
If we want a healthier public square, we need citizens who know where to stand and how to act—not just whom to cheer for. That’s the work in front of us.
The surest way to protect democracy is to teach people how to use it.
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