Tag Archives: civics education

Told You So…Repeatedly

WFYI recently reported on a new business alliance focused on improving civic education. It’s a welcome development.

The Indiana Business Alliance for Civics will provide resources and work with businesses to encourage employees to register and vote, and will provide education about civics. It will also connect businesses with schools, to encourage civics education. The alliance is led by Business For America, a national nonprofit. 

As long-time readers of this blog know, civics education has been a primary focus for me for a long time. During my tenure at IUPUI (now IU-Indy), I founded the Center for Civic Literacy, which explored ways to reverse Americans’ really shocking lack of knowledge about the most basic elements of their Constitutional, political and legal systems. 

A recent Substack attributed the lack of emphasis on civics–and really, all of the humanities–to the growing emphasis on STEM, which the authors traced back to the shock of Sputnik. As they wrote,

it’s not enough for students only to study math, technology, and the sciences. It’s not enough for our country to have the top earners, or the top innovators of weapons and warfare. We all need to be educated citizens, knowledgeable about history and civics as well as science and technology.

If you think the over-emphasis on STEM and the neglect of civics is overstated, you need only follow the money.

At the start of the Biden administration, the federal government was spending more than $50 per student on STEM education, versus only $0.50 per student per year on civic education (and even that represents a tenfold increase from a few years earlier). You get what you pay for: on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics assessment, American students have been scoring pretty dismally for decades now. And as of August 2025, the Trump administration has cut $12 billion for K-12 education (including some STEM programs) and merged funds for civic education with other areas, so that some states may not spend any money on civic education at all.

One paragraph really says it all–it explains how our woeful lack of civic knowledge has contributed to the success of the MAGA/Trump assault on America’s democratic institutions.

Democracy is reliant on a culture of civic participation. Governing ourselves takes work and commitment. So if we’re going to renovate our constitutional democracy and institutions in the United States to work better for everyone, we also need to do some serious work on our culture of citizenship, to make sure that we are ready to play our part well. Civic education is how we restore and grow that culture.

When you don’t know how the system is supposed to work, you are a prime target for disinformation.

I attribute the over-emphasis on STEM and the corresponding lack of concern for civic literacy to what is a hot-button issue for me: the widely-accepted belief that education is basically a consumer good–that it is indistinguishable from job training. Ratings of colleges focus on the earnings of graduates, not the depth of knowledge communicated in classrooms–a fatal misunderstanding of the educational mission. Not only is genuine education a far broader benefit to the individual, it is a public good that builds the capacity of the nation to govern itself.

As Robert Reich wrote in a 2022 essay,

Such an education must encourage civic virtue. It should explain and illustrate the profound differences between doing whatever it takes to win, and acting for the common good; between getting as much as one can get for oneself, and giving back to society; between seeking personal celebrity, wealth, or power, and helping build a better society for all. And why the latter choices are morally necessary.

Finally, civic virtue must be practiced. Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It should be a duty of citizenship.

A concerted emphasis on civic virtue might even begin to change the nature of America’s social incentives, which now are disproportionately weighted toward rewarding greed and celebrity. And–again, as regular readers know–I have long been an advocate for a year or two of mandatory public service.

It’s a positive sign when business leaders recognize the dangers of our civic deficit and take action to combat it. If and when we defeat MAGA’s assault on the principles that made America America, strengthening civics instruction should be a very high priority.

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What Is Civic Literacy?

Those of us who have spent years warning about the consequences of Americans’ low levels of civic literacy can take some comfort in the fact that Trump’s election not only proved our point, but seems to have generated an awakening among people who were previously unimpressed with the importance of the issue.

Here in Indiana, former Governor Mitch Daniels, who is now the President of Purdue University, has called for a campus-wide, mandatory civics test.

The faculty has been debating the proper approach to testing students’ civic literacy; in the meantime, they have

promised to let the president ask for a straight up-or-down vote on his baseline assumption that students should at least be able to pass the same test given to newly naturalized citizens.

Ah yes–the naturalization test.

As concerns about levels of civic ignorance have grown, a number of states have passed laws mandating the use of the naturalization test in order to graduate from high school. It’s so typical of American lawmakers, who tend to favor what I call “bumper-sticker” solutions. Civics instruction inadequate? Well, here’s a test. Give that. Problem solved.

Unfortunately, the questions on the naturalization test tend to be “civic trivia.” How many stripes on the flag? Name one branch of government? What are the first three words of the Constitution? How many U.S. Senators are there?

Now, knowing the answers to the questions on the civics test is fine. But it certainly doesn’t mean that the responder understands the way American government works. Knowing the length of a Senator’s term (another question on the test) tells you nothing about the operation of the federal government, or federalism’s division of jurisdiction–the relationships among local, state and federal levels of government.

It’s certainly nice if the test-taker can name ONE right protected by the First Amendment (another question), but that ability doesn’t translate into understanding the interaction of the religion clauses, or the purpose of free speech or a free press. Knowing that the first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights doesn’t translate into understanding the “negative liberty” premise of the Bill of Rights– the reason that the provisions of the Bill of Rights only restrict government. (I wish I had a dollar for every student who has come into my classroom utterly unaware of that essential fact.)

What’s the difference between civil rights and civil liberties?

What is probable cause and why does it matter?

What do we mean by due process of law? The equal protection of the law?

If we really care about an informed electorate, a citizenry capable of debating the application of the actual constitution rather than a fanciful Fox-ified document, a citizenry with at least a superficial understanding of America’s history,  that isn’t going to be accomplished by a requirement that students correctly answer six questions from the citizenship test.

If I had a magic wand, I’d make every high school in the country require We the People–a curriculum that actually produces civically-literate citizens.

But that’s a solution that wouldn’t fit on a bumper-sticker.

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The Kids Are All Right

I hadn’t planned to post about the Parkland students  who have become the articulate and determined voice of a newly energized gun control movement. Given the amount of media attention generated by last Saturday’s amazingly successful march, I doubted I could add anything to the conversation already underway.

But then I read articles from the Christian Science Monitor and from Slate asking–and answering–the question “why are these kids so articulate and effective?”

As the Monitor explained,

The Parkland students were thrust into the spotlight, but they had preparation for this moment. Thanks to state law, they have benefited from a civic education that many Americans have gone without – one that has taught them how to politically mobilize, articulate their opinions, and understand complex legislative processes. Now they are using their education to lead their peers across the country.

“Parkland really shows the potential of public civic education,” says Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “The goal is to make every student like that – not afraid to discuss difficult issues,” and with the skills to express a viewpoint.

As the article from Slate elaborated,

The effectiveness of these poised, articulate, well-informed, and seemingly preternaturally mature student leaders of Stoneman Douglas has been vaguely attributed to very specific personalities and talents. Indeed, their words and actions have been so staggeringly powerful, they ended up fueling laughable claims about crisis actors, coaching, and fat checks from George Soros. But there is a more fundamental lesson to be learned in the events of this tragedy: These kids aren’t freaks of nature. Their eloquence and poise also represent the absolute vindication of the extracurricular education they receive at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Despite the gradual erosion of the arts and physical education in America’s public schools, the students of Stoneman Douglas have been the beneficiaries of the kind of 1950s-style public education that has all but vanished in America and that is being dismantled with great deliberation as funding for things like the arts, civics, and enrichment are zeroed out.

Civics education, it turns out, really can produce effective citizens, and Florida, it also turns out, has the most comprehensive civics education program in the country.

The Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Civics Education Act – named for the former member of the US Supreme Court who has made civic education a hallmark of her post-bench work – passed in 2010 with bipartisan support. It mandates that all middle school students in Florida take a civics course, pass a comprehensive test, and include civics education reading in K-12 language arts.

More than 90 percent of Florida civics teachers discuss current events in the classroom, and two-thirds of them do so every week. Most employ a variety of methods, including  debates and mock trials.

Florida’s Broward County, the sixth largest school district in the United States where Stoneman Douglas High is located, takes civics education even further. In the district-wide debate program, every public high school and middle school has a team, and several elementary schools participate as well.

“[T]he overall emphasis of civic learning is paying off,” says Louise Dubé, executive director of iCivics, a civic learning website with teaching resources and games founded by Justice O’Connor in 2009. “[Parkland] is a sad way that we got to discover this, but a Civics 2.0 – not your grandmother’s civics – but a civics that is relevant, engaging, and puts kids at the center of the political action … graduates citizens who are ready to be a part of a community that we call the American experiment.”

These amazing kids haven’t just exhibited poise and passion; the have demonstrated an ability to marshal their peers and supportive adults, and mount an impressive display of disciplined public outrage. (NBC reported nearly a million marchers in Washington, D.C. alone.) They have displayed an understanding of politics and the role of citizens in the crafting of public policy.

Empowered by civic education, they’ve given other teenagers throughout America a Master Class in civic engagement.

Assuming Trump and Bolton don’t nuke the world in the interim, the country will eventually be in very good hands.

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The Trust Conundrum

I was recently asked to participate in a panel exploring current levels of trust and distrust in government. Among other things, we were asked to consider what citizens might do to mitigate the growing cynicism about politics, and whether we thought the current media environment was contributing to widespread distrust of government at all levels.

These are questions worth pondering.

I think a great deal of distrust in government is a result of the deficit in civic literacy that I have written about previously. When citizens don’t understand constitutional constraints on the public sector, when they are unfamiliar with the most basic historical and philosophic roots of our particular approach to self-government, they are unable to evaluate the lawfulness of government activity. One result is that government action that should be entirely predictable looks arbitrary, while corruptions of the process are seen as “business as usual.” Normal checks and balances are decried as unnecessary red tape, and egregious abuses of legislative mechanisms like the filibuster are seen not as a misuse of power, but part of the ordinary, mysterious processes of the political system.

When citizens aren’t able to distinguish between use and misuse of the power of the state, it’s no wonder they believe all public policy is for sale.

The current chaos that is the media is even more consequential, because a healthy Fourth Estate is critical to democratic self-government.

Citizens can’t act on the basis of information they don’t have. The paradox of life in the age of the Internet is that there are more voices than ever before—theoretically, a good thing—but we’ve lost news that is collectively recognized as authoritative, which is proving to be a very bad thing. A babble of opinion, spin and outright fabrication has replaced what used to be called the “iron core”—reliable information that has been fact-checked and authenticated.

It is one thing to draw different conclusions from a reported set of facts; it is quite another to deny the existence of the facts themselves.

On the one hand, the Internet has empowered many more government watchdogs; on the other, it has facilitated the rise of innumerable conspiracy theorists, fringe groups, special interests and outright liars. The result is that someone who prefers to believe, say, that global climate change is a hoax or that President Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya can readily find sources that confirm those suspicions.

The days when everyone listened to—and trusted the veracity of—reporting by Walter Cronkite and his counterparts in the mainstream media are long gone. (Indeed, there is a persuasive argument to be made that there is no longer such a thing as “mainstream” media.) Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts.  Today, thanks to incredibly shrinking newsrooms and proliferating propagandists, people are choosing their own facts, and increasingly living in alternate realities that conform to their pre-existing beliefs and prejudices. When thoughtful Americans aren’t sure what news they can trust, and ideologically rigid Americans—left and right—are living in information bubbles of their own choosing, the lack of constructive dialogue and institutional trust shouldn’t surprise us.

In a world that is changing as rapidly and dramatically as ours, the importance of real journalism—not “infotainment,” not talking heads, not bloggers, not columnists, not “he-said, she-said” stenographers, but actual fact-checked, verified news in context—becomes immeasurably more important.

Without a shared reality, we can’t build trust. Without accurate civics education and an authoritative journalism of verification, we can’t share a reality.

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The Deficit That Matters

I know I’ve been beating this horse for awhile now, but I am firmly convinced that the most troubling deficit Americans face is not fiscal.

It’s our deficit of civic literacy.

Only 36 percent of Americans can correctly name the three branches of government. Fewer than half of 12th grade students can describe the meaning of federalism. Only 35.5% of teenagers can correctly identify “We the People” as the first three words of the Constitution. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 2006 report on civics competencies found that barely a quarter of the nation’s 4th, 8th and 12th graders are proficient in civics, with only five percent of seniors able to identify and explain checks on presidential power.  Things haven’t improved since then; the 2010 results were released earlier this year, and student performance at the 12th grade level showed a statistically significant decline since the 2006 test. Average scores for female, White and African American students declined, and the percentage of 12th grade students who reported studying the Constitution dropped by a statistically significant five percent. A list of all the additional literature documenting the extent of civic ignorance would be too lengthy to include.

The consequences of this ignorance are profound. The most important predictor of active civic engagement is greater civic knowledge–according to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, greater civic literacy trumps even a college degree, and “no other variable, including age, income, race, gender, religion, or partisanship was found to exceed both the breadth and depth of civic literacy’s positive impact on active political engagement”.

Our research team conducted a survey of state departments of education, as part of an effort to determine the content and extent of civics instruction the various states are requiring. We identified two basic problems: first, there is no generally accepted definition of “civics” or “civic literacy.” Definitions ranged from knowledge of the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights and their historical antecedents (our preferred meaning) to approaches that implicitly conflate community “good works” like planting trees or picking up trash in the parks or by the side of the road, with the production of “good citizens.” Depending upon a state’s particular view of what civics encompasses, civic education requirements might be met by taking a government course, a separate course called “civics,” an American history course, or some combination.

The second problem we found was that, with a few notable exceptions, even in states with very good civics and government standards, like Indiana, those standards are essentially aspirational. The requirements aren’t part of the current high-stakes testing regime, with the result that they are not taken seriously. Public schools’ focus remains firmly fixed upon those subjects being evaluated under No Child Left Behind, and the result is that large numbers of American students graduate from high school profoundly ignorant of the history, philosophy and architecture of their government institutions.

Scholars have identified a number of theorized consequences of our civic deficit: loss of civic identity; loss of public accountability; a paralyzed/polarized politics; a loss of personal agency, and unfortunate effects on the study of religion and science.

  • Civic identity. America is one of the most diverse countries on earth. Our citizens do not share a political history, a common religion, or a single race or ethnicity. As a consequence of immigration, we frequently do not even speak the same language. In the absence of such cultural ties, we require what Robert Bellah calls a “civil religion” in order to forge a common civic identity. In the United States, that civil religion has centered upon our constituent documents and the governing philosophy they embody, on what I call “The American Idea”. When Americans don’t know the contents of that Idea, when they are ignorant of the history, philosophy and evolution of our constitutional form of government, they may share a common national geography, but they don’t share a civic identity.
  • Public accountability. We hear a great deal about the obligation of government to be transparent and accountable. We hear less about the obligations of citizens to be sufficiently informed so that they can respond appropriately to information about the way in which government is conducting the people’s business. True accountability requires that those in power report adequately on the laws and regulations they have enacted and the other actions they have taken; it also requires a populace able to measure those laws and activities against the standards prescribed by our Constitution and Bill of Rights. When either half of that process is not functioning, accountability is compromised.
  • A paralyzed, polarized politics. We can see the consequences of our civic deficit every day, in presidential debates and campaigns for city councils. The loss of civic literacy is a loss of the ability to communicate. We can talk at each other, but no longer with each other, because we are not speaking the same language. American politicians on all points along the political spectrum constantly refer to the Constitution, but you only need to listen a short while to realize that very few of them seem to be talking about the same document.   This lack of a common frame of reference makes productive dialogue impossible.
  • Loss of personal agency. In a country where citizens constantly interact with public organizations—from the Social Security Administration, to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, to the local zoning administrator—a basic knowledge of one’s rights and duties as a citizen is essential to a sense of personal empowerment and efficacy. This is especially important to people who have limited personal and fiscal resources.
  • Science and religion. What is rarely noted, but important, is the relationship between students’ civic knowledge and their appreciation of the roots of both the American religious experience and the Establishment Clause. This is equally the case with science; both science and our particular conception of liberty and personal autonomy emerged from the Enlightenment, and some scholars have argued that science cannot flourish in a society in which that relationship is unrecognized.

The question is: what should we do? How do we fix this problem, which is at the root of so many other problems?

First, we need additional research.  What are the reasons for our current deficit? Why haven’t we been able to sustain previous efforts to strengthen civic education? What elements of civic literacy lead to civic participation and action? What curricula have demonstrated effectiveness? What do citizens absolutely need to understand in order to be empowered participants in our civic conversations? What do they need to know in order to hold government accountable?

Second, we need a campaign to draw increased public attention to the nature and extent of the problems caused by our deficit of civic literacy. We need to “connect the dots” between our impoverished civic understanding and our political gridlock and polarization, and we need to make the case that citizenship requires more than a birth certificate (short form or long!).

Deficit reduction needs to begin with sound civics education.

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