Tag Archives: civic literacy

Justice Souter

David Souter died earlier this month.

When George H.W. Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court, I watched the confirmation hearings on television. I saw a brilliant, thoughtful jurist. His purported “evolution” on the high court bench didn’t surprise me; his jurisprudence remained grounded in precedent and reverence for what I call the American Idea.

A few years after he retired from the Court, I was fortunate enough to attend a small conference on civic literacy at Harvard Law School, convened by then-Dean Martha Minow. Both Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor participated, and I was especially impressed by Souter’s remarks. I asked him if he would allow a copy to be published in the Journal of Civic Literacy –a publication of the Center I’d established at IUPUI (now IU-Indy). He graciously agreed. That was in 2013, and his observations have become even more pertinent.

Here they are.

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Dean Minow: Nearly three years ago, Justice Souter gave a truly extraordinary commencement address here at Harvard, upon receiving an honorary degree. In his exploration of the tensions among the values embodied in the United States Constitution, he offered deep insights into important decision making by the Supreme Court and equally conveyed the hard work that is necessary to advance the values of democracy and freedom, individual rights, and democratic participation. We are so touched and honored by your participation here today, which I know reflects your admiration and affection for your colleague, Justice O’Connor, and also your deep abiding commitment to this subject [civics]. Why does it matter to you so much?

Justice Souter: I’ve come by stages, I guess, to the answer. I’ll take you through the stages. By the way, I should issue two disclaimers to begin with. The first is, we are talking about civics and I’m going to talk in terms of civics. But, you cannot have civics without history. So, I might just as well be making the argument for history. The second disclaimer is, I don’t mean to take positions in the pedagogy controversy. I don’t know how to teach, I don’t know where the proper midpoint is between interactive learning and book learning and participatory exercises and so on. I’m not taking a position there. Maybe with one exception, and that is, if you’re going to test in math and reading you better test in civics or it’s going to be a poor child of the curriculum.

On the question why I think it matters, as I’ve said, I’ve come to my feelings by stages and the first stage was set by Justice O’Connor at a series of conferences she and Justice Breyer sponsored in Washington, provoked by the concern for the independence of the courts. The judiciary at the time was under a lot of attack and almost from the beginning the thing we learned there was the degree of civic illiteracy. We learned the statistic, which I believe is still true today, that there are only about a third of the people in the United States who can name the three branches of government. And the lesson that everyone learned was that without some knowledge of the structure, without, frankly, some constitutional knowledge, the value of an independent judiciary is a value that makes no sense. Independent from whom? From what? Well, we know the answer. The rest of the government, etcetera.

But, the first point of focus that came to me was that without a bedrock grounding in a lot of fundamentals that my own generation did learn as kids, constitutional values will frequently make no sense because there is no context for them.

The second stage of thinking why this subject of civics matters has come as a result of the recent calls for constitutional amendment and constitutional change, which we have been getting from all corners. There have been calls for an amendment in response to Roe v. Wade, calls for an amendment in response to the Citizens United campaign contribution limitation decision, calls for change in response to the possibility of a disparity between the Electoral College vote and the popular vote, and so on. It’s pretty obvious that someone who has no idea of what we have in the Constitution to start with is in no position to make any kind of critical judgment about what we might change, whether we ought to change it, and if so what change we ought or ought not to make. Ignorance is no foundation for constitutional thinking but, like it or not, we are being asked as a country to engage in constitutional thinking. None of it may in fact lead to a formally proposed amendment, let alone a convention, but who knows. So, I guess the second point in my feeling was about what is at stake: simply the need for a foundation for critical judgment on the part of citizens.

But finally, I’ve come, to a third, umbrella position, which certainly subsumes the two stages that I’ve already mentioned. And I will warn you right now that my ultimate line is like the remarks of several other people here this morning. Let me make my point this way. The American constitutional system is in effect a constant exercise in balancing, and perhaps a precarious balancing, between two very fundamental tendencies in American society and American political organization: the tendency to fragment into pursuit of individual interests and the tendency to pull together.

I could spend a long time this morning, which I won’t, simply cataloging what seems to me the growing force of the former sort, the centrifugal tendencies that pull us apart. Just think about these.To begin with, the very nature of the United States as it has developed is a conglomeration of fragmenting tendencies. We do not have a national religion. We do not have a homogenized national private culture, as distinct from political culture. We are in fact an amalgamation. We are a patchwork. We are a nation of immigrants, and people remember where they came from, whether they look back one generation or fourteen. There is a disuniting tendency built into the very nature of the United States, and it’s not going to go away. And I don’t suppose there’s anyone who wants it to go away entirely. I don’t.

Number two, there is great force in a philosophical tenant that we like to think of as ours. It’s not a coincidence that Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American. Consider the notion of Emersonian individualism, Emersonian self-reliance. They feed a kind of admirably atomistic tendency that I suppose can be called a widely shared character, a powerful element of our scrambled culture.

Number three, we are living at a time when the class divide in the United States is growing larger and the possibility of bridging that class divide is in fact shrinking. We are at a point now where the spread of wealth disparity is greater than it has been for over a century. And it is now a very unfortunate fact of life in the United States that social mobility is greater in a number of European countries than it is in this one. Parents in the United States cannot assume that their children have a real opportunity to be better off than they were.

Number four, there is an increasingly apparent divisiveness inherent in current developments in the news media. You can cherry-pick the news you want on the device that you hold in your hand. A substantial portion of the country is not even exposed to the breadth of traditional newspapers.

And, finally, I’ll stop by simply echoing what others have said about the growing tendency toward cynicism about the processes of government for which there is a very good foundation. Too many people are realistically looking upon government as basically a clash between a public interest and more powerful interests, exerting power through lobbies financed by huge amounts of money, with the names of the people behind them being to a great extent undisclosed. These are conditions, historical and contemporary, that drive us apart and tend to disunite us. What have we got pulling on the other side? By and large, what we have pulling on the other side is an adherence to an American Constitutional system. The American Constitution is not simply a blueprint for structure, though it is that. It is not merely a Bill of Rights, though it is that, too. It is in essence, a value system, a value system that identifies the legitimate objects of power, the importance of distributing power, and the need to limit power by a shared and enforceable conception of human worth.

That value system is the counterpoise to the divisive tendencies that are so strong today, and civic ignorance is its enemy. It is beyond me how anyone can assume that our system of constitutional values is going to survive in the current divisive atmosphere while being unknown to the majority of the people of the United States. So, what is driving me right now is simply the indispensability of our increasingly unrecognized and ignored constitutional value system. Without it, there is no chance of overcoming, of surviving the polarization that everyone decries. It is only in the common acceptance of that value system that at the end of the day, no matter what we are fighting about, no matter what the vote is in Congress or the State House or the town meeting, we will still understand that something holds us together.

Ultimately, what is driving me in working for the renewal of civic education is the need to share the threatened aspirations that should mark us as people who belong together as a nation.   

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Indeed.
 
 

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Taking Credit

What do scolds like yours truly mean when we bemoan low levels of civic literacy ? Rather obviously, it’s an accusation of  lack of knowledge of America’s legal/philosophical framework–the Constitution and Bill of Rights, an understanding of what is meant by the “rule of law.” But it’s also, increasingly, a reference to citizens’ lack of historical knowledge and worrisome ignorance of the realities of the governing and economic environment they inhabit.

Civic ignorance isn’t all the fault of individuals who simply don’t care or don’t pay attention. For many years, high schools have neglected civics instruction and whitewashed America’s history. And the fragmented nature of our information environment positively encourages misunderstanding –or often, offers politically-motivated mythology–about the performance of Presidential administrations.

We’ve just emerged from an election in which Trump benefited handsomely from that latter ignorance, as voters blamed Biden for an inflation that was worldwide, even though, under his administration, the U.S. brought it under control far more quickly than other nations managed to do.

Trump’s narrow win points to a major problem posed by Americans’ low levels of civic literacy–the erroneous assignment of credit and blame.

Simon Rosenberg recently considered that problem.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inherited one of the worst first days an American Presidential Administration in our history. Trump left us a dadly bungled pandemic response that caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die unnecessarily, an economy in deep recession and a global economy teetering, a Capital City and our democracy that had just been attacked by Trump and his mobs. What Joe Biden and Kamala Harris walked into on January 20th was without doubt one of the worst first days an American Administration has ever faced.

Trump and Vance will inherit one of the best. The Biden-Harris job market has been the best since the 1960s. Wage growth, new business formation and the # of job openings per unemployed persons have been at historically elevated levels. Inflation has been beaten, gas prices are low, interest rates are coming down and our recovery from COVID has been the best of any advanced nation in the world. The dollar is strong. GDP growth has hovered around 3% for all four years of Biden’s Presidency and the stock market keeps booming. The uninsured rate is the lowest on record. Through historic levels of domestic production of renewables, oil and gas America is more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. Crime, overdose rates, the flows to the border and the deficit have come way down. Biden’s big three investment bills are creating jobs and opportunities for American workers today and will keep doing so for decades if Trump doesn’t gut them. We’ve begun stripping away the requirement of a four year college degree for government employment and other jobs too. We’ve lowered the price of prescription drugs, capped insulin at $35 and this year all seniors will enjoy a $2,000 Rx price cap. The Iranian-Russian-Hezbollah-Hamas axis in the Middle East has been deeply degraded. The Western alliance has been rejuvenated…..

Rosenberg morosely itemizes what we know is coming: Trump will take credit for Biden’s accomplishments. If he doesn’t manage to tank the stock market, its health will be due to him.

The economy will be strong due to him. Crime will be down due to him. Seniors will have their prescriptions capped at $2,000 due to him. Bridges will be built due to him. Record domestic gas and oil production will happen due to him. Gas prices will be low due to him. Iran and Russia will be weakened in the Middle East due to him…….

Rosenberg writes that Americans need to engage in a “long and deep conversation” about why the story of the Biden-Harris administration failed to resonate with the public–why so many Americans simply failed to understand its really remarkable performance–and dramatically mis-remembered the chaos and ineptitude of the prior Trump administration. As Rosenberg writes,

There has been one big story in American politics since 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell – Democrats have made things better for the American people, Republicans have made them worse. We’ve repeatedly brought growth, lower deficits, rising wages, American progress. Republicans have brought 3 recessions in a row, higher deficits, American decline and now unfathomable MAGA ugliness and extremism.

Americans’ confusion of celebrity with actual accomplishment is responsible for some of the phenomena I lump under “civic illiteracy.” If Joe Biden had the glamour and oratorical skills of a Barack Obama, perhaps the successes of his administration would have been more widely understood.

Trump will take credit for Biden’s accomplishments. Those of us who know better need to be loud and persistent truth tellers.

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Addressing The Civics Deficit

I spent a considerable part of my academic career focusing on what I described as the civic deficit. Soon after joining the faculty–and especially when I taught undergraduate classes–I came face to face with students who had obviously gone through both elementary and high school classes without learning even the most basic outlines of American history or government.

An exchange with an undergraduate first acquainted me with the extent of that civic deficit.

I taught my classes through a constitutional lens. We studied the Bill of Rights and wrestled with questions about how those rights should be understood and applied today. I often introduced discussion of the First Amendment’s Free Speech provisions by asking students questions like “What did James Madison think about porn on the Internet?”

Obviously, the response I wanted was something along the lines of “James Madison never imagined a communication mechanism like the Internet”–which would then lead to a (hopefully nuanced) discussion of how today’s courts should apply the values protected by that Amendment to a world the founders could never have imagined. So I was taken aback when a young woman–a junior in college–responded to that question with a puzzled question of her own: “Who’s James Madison?”

I went home, had a very stiff drink–and for the ensuing 18 or so years, focused a major part of my research agenda and advocacy on civic education.

I relate this story because I am finally beginning to see evidence that others share my concern–and my firm belief in the importance of civic knowledge.  The New York Times recently reported that businesses in the U.S. and Europe have recognized the existence and significance of the deficit, and are engaging in efforts to fill the void left by inadequate schooling.

The article began by describing a German worker’s experience with online conspiracy attacks, and the subsequent eight-week program that helped her deal with the misinformation. The program was offered by her employer, described as a “multinational recruitment firm with 3,500 employees in Germany.” The company said the project was part of its own aim to “strengthen democratic values and make their employees more resilient.”

Across Germany, several hundred companies have taken part in such workshops, and similar classes are being held in other Western countries, including the United States. Businesses are finding they need to bolster their employees in the face of increasingly vitriolic political debate. Seminars on civics and democratic principles — such as the importance of voting or recognizing the dangers of disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech — have become a way to ensure healthier relationships at the workplace, and in society at large. In addition, reports show that economic growth is higher in stable democracies, and liberal border policies allow companies to attract skilled immigrants.

The instruction has benefits for employee performance; according to representatives of the companies. They say that giving employees basic knowledge of democratic principles and factual underpinnings helps them “recognize and respond to hate speech and misinformation” and “has made employees more self-assured in doing their jobs.”

Groups like the Business Council for Democracy and Weltoffenes Sachsen in Germany and Civic Alliance or the Leadership Now Project in the United States organize workshops like the one Ms. Krüger took part in, provide research and webinars, and support civic education and get-out-the-vote efforts — all of it nonpartisan. Most are nonprofit organizations, backed by independent foundations or a group of businesses that rely on their political independence as a selling point…

A key principle of the workshops was that they be voluntary for employees, said Nina Gbur, the organization’s project manager. They also have to be ideologically neutral, and not target any group or members of a given political party.

What is encouraging is growing recognition that the health of business depends upon the health of democracy.

“Democracy is the basis of our entrepreneurial activity,” said Judith Borowski, managing director of Nomos, which offers its employees civics workshops. “And if we no longer have democracy, then the basis for our entrepreneurial activities will also be very curtailed.”

Authoritarianism is facilitated by ignorance–the ability of political extremists to twist facts and misrepresent history in order to play on citizens’ fears and prejudices.

In Germany, media literacy has been a critical issue, while programs in the United States are frequently focused on teaching employees about how the government works and voting rights. But their basic premise is to empower employees to understand how their actions, both in and out of the workplace, affect the political climate and, ultimately, their own jobs.

These programs are very good news. So is the movement to expand civics education in the schools.

We have a very long way to go…

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Why I Love David French

I make it a point to read anything I come across from David French, whose writing I love because it is both eloquent and thoughtful–and admittedly, for the same reason most of us like writers: he shares my own beliefs and concerns. (Come on–admit it. We all prefer the folks we consider wise because they agree with us.)

In a recent essay for the New York Times, French focused on one of my longstanding and primary obsessions: the American public’s lack of civic literacy, and the consequences of that pervasive lack.

French used what he aptly termed the the “Articulate Ignorance of Vivek Ramaswamy” as his jumping off point, using reactions to Ramaswamy’s glib ignorance as an example of the way “in which poor leadership transforms civic ignorance from a problem into a crisis — a crisis that can have catastrophic effects on the nation and, ultimately, the world.”

French refers to the research that I have often reported on this site:

Civic ignorance is a very old American problem. If you spend five seconds researching what Americans know about their own history and their own government, you’ll uncover an avalanche of troubling research, much of it dating back decades. As Samuel Goldman detailed two years ago, as far back as 1943, 77 percent of Americans knew essentially nothing about the Bill of Rights, and in 1952 only 19 percent could name the three branches of government.

That number rose to a still dispiriting 38 percent in 2011, a year in which almost twice as many Americans knew that Randy Jackson was a judge on “American Idol” as knew that John Roberts was the chief justice of the United States. A 2018 survey found that most Americans couldn’t pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. Among other failings, most respondents couldn’t identify which nations the United States fought in World War II and didn’t know how many justices sat on the Supreme Court.

Unlike my periodic rants on the subject, French isn’t sharing these statistics to bemoan public ignorance. He wants to make a different argument, namely

that the combination of civic ignorance, corrupt leadership and partisan animosity means that the chickens are finally coming home to roost. We’re finally truly feeling the consequences of having a public disconnected from political reality.

Simply put, civic ignorance was a serious but manageable problem, as long as our leader class and key institutions still broadly, if imperfectly, cared about truth and knowledge — and as long as our citizens cared about the opinions of that leader class and those institutions.

French reminded his readers of the time that Gerald Ford’s gaffe about Soviet domination of Eastern Europe made a huge difference in that campaign. As he says:

Note the process: Ford made a mistake, even his own team recognized the mistake and tried to offer a plausible alternative meaning, and then press coverage of the mistake made an impression on the public.

Now let’s fast-forward to the present moment. Instead of offering a plausible explanation for their mistakes — much less apologizing — all too many politicians deny that they’ve made any mistakes at all. They double down. They triple down. They claim that the fact-checking process itself is biased, the press is against them and they are the real truth tellers.

He follows up with several examples of Ramaswamy’s blatantly, factually incorrect (and actually ridiculous– but articulate!) statements–and the reaction of the GOP, which  “deemed him one of the night’s winners.”

He sums it up:

The bottom line is this: When a political class still broadly believes in policing dishonesty, the nation can manage the negative effects of widespread civic ignorance. When the political class corrects itself, the people will tend to follow. But when key members of the political class abandon any pretense of knowledge or truth, a poorly informed public is simply unequipped to hold them to account…

A democracy needs an informed public and a basically honest political class. It can muddle through without one or the other, but when it loses both, the democratic experiment is in peril. A public that knows little except that it despises its opponents will be vulnerable to even the most bizarre conspiracy theories, as we saw after the 2020 election. And when leaders ruthlessly exploit that ignorance and animosity, the Republic can fracture. How long can we endure the consequences of millions of Americans believing the most fantastical lies?

I told you so…..

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Christian Grievance

Sometimes, a news article will hit several of my hot buttons. This recent one managed to do so. (Not that it is particularly difficult to piss me off…the older I get, the crankier…)

Here’s the gist of the story: a poll taken by Politico discovered that

about 57 percent of Republicans, and 70 percent of Americans overall, believe the Constitution would not allow America to be declared a “Christian nation.” Respondents were then asked “Would You Favor or Oppose the United States Officially Declaring the United States to be a Christian Nation?”

Sixty-one percent of Republicans were in favor of just that, with 78 percent of Republicans who identify as an evangelical Christian backing the idea. Support was even higher among older Republicans.

Regular readers of this blog know of my preoccupation with America’s low levels of civic and constitutional literacy. These percentages reflect that only 57 percent of Republicans understand–or are prepared to acknowledge– the intended effect of the First Amendment, or the history of America’s constitutional debates.

Then, of course, there’s the little matter of America’s still-pervasive racism. Evidently, there are still a lot of White folks who are dogged believers that the pre-Civil War South should rise again, whether or not it actually will…

Per Politico

Our polling found that white grievance is highly correlated with support for a Christian nation. White respondents who say that members of their race have faced more discrimination than others are most likely to embrace a Christian America. Roughly 59 percent of all Americans who say white people have been discriminated against a lot more in the past five years favor declaring the U.S. a Christian nation, compared to 38 percent of all Americans. White Republicans who said white people have been more discriminated against also favored a Christian nation (65 percent) by a slightly larger percentage than all Republicans (63 percent).

Regular readers are also well aware of my language prejudices; I have this old English-teacher belief that words have meanings, and that communication requires that the people using those words broadly agree upon those meanings.

In any sane world, the assertion that White Americans suffer discrimination would be met with incomprehension. I know that political strategists dislike the contemporary use of the term “privilege”–its users sound elitist, and when one thinks of “privilege,” what comes to mind is unfair advantage. (Actually, White skin does confer advantage, just not the kind of material advantage that this particular word brings to mind.)

The fact remains that, in the good old U.S. of A., what is perceived of as discrimination against White people is a very overdue erosion of the considerably privileged status that skin color has historically  afforded them.

When I express my frequent criticisms of Christian Nationalism (which is, in reality, White Christian Nationalism), I try to be very clear that I am not criticizing Christianity. (To appropriate a phrase, some of my best friends are Christian..) I am happy to report that real Christians agree with me, as the following excerpts from a statement from Christians Against Christian Nationalism makes clear.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.

The statement affirms basic constitutional principles: That “one’s religious affiliation, or lack thereof, should be irrelevant to one’s standing in the civic community,” and that
“government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.” And it affirms others:

Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion.

We must stand up to and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation—including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes, and attacks on houses of worship—against religious communities at home and abroad.

Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue, or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As Christians, we must speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy.

So Republicans who want to label America as a “Christian Nation” manage to hit several of my hot buttons: concerns about civic literacy and the normalization of racism, annoyance at the misuse of language, and deep, deep fear of the rise of Christian Nationalism.

Politico did it all with one statistic…

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