The Unsettling Reemergence of Inadequate Civics Education

The old-fashioned notion of ‘civics’, seemingly consigned to the annals of yesteryear, is experiencing a reawakening which is as surprising as it is concerning. Andrew Hart, a history and government instructor at a private institution in Florida, recently participated in a workshop on the subject, leaving him rather unsettled. The week-long event at Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution delved into texts authored by everyone from Aristotle and Cicero to the Founding Fathers and Lincoln, even including references to civil rights figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. His takeaway? A discomfiting observation: ‘we were immersed in philosophy’.

Quirkily, this civics seminar was convened by an organization known as The Jack Miller Center. This group is part of a growing sector romanticizing and attempting to resurrect the ideal of civics, seemingly glossing over the decades of decline that followed social disruptions in the 1960s and the eventual academic focus on STEM subjects. Now, in an era of questionable priorities, universities are pouring millions of dollars into the establishment of civics centers, complete with deans and Ph.D. programs.

In fact, we’ve seen an increase in the emphasis on civics education to the extent that over 50% of states now necessitate some form of civics competency testing in K-12 schools. This year, the momentum seemed to hit a peak with 45 states actually considering nearly 200 separate legislative pieces tied to K-12 civics education. However, what we ought to focus on is not simply the sterile ABCs of government, but the art of discourse, which seems critically absent from this new ‘civics’ era.

The crux of the issue is that the renewed focus on civics education is underpinned by a nationalist disagreement over America’s identity in this century. The wrenching question at the heart of this debate is whether America is a land of equal opportunity and freedom for each citizen, or whether it epitomizes a system favoring the privileged few to the disadvantage of the vast majority. This existential question redefines how our youth is taught about foundational texts such as the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address.

The problematic dichotomy here is that state and local school districts – given the limited jurisdiction the federal government has on K-12 curricula – are left to devise their own benchmarks for civics education. This leaves the fundamental question of how our history is taught in the hands of regional decision-making bodies. Inexplicably, the Jack Miller Center along with other civics advocates find themselves settling on an amalgamation of perspectives, somehow weaving through extreme cynicism or nostalgia without reducing American history to mere cliches.

This peculiar compromise on civics education is achieved by bypassing interpretive materials of all stripes and returning to the source – original texts and documents like the Federalist Papers, presidential speeches, Supreme Court rulings, and so forth. They appear to believe that it will neutralize the subject, extracting it from the grips of the polarized political climate we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, this approach only seems to further highlight the underlying tensions within our history.

This year, the Jack Miller Center is expected to have indoctrinated around 4,000 K-12 educators via this form of ‘direct source’ learning. At these multi-day seminars, each participant is required to peruse and discuss a selected anthology of primary sources. In addition, curricular development sessions endeavor to help educators transfer this learning into the classroom. Though well-structured, this simplistic approach hardly addresses the complexities of our history.

While civics advocates are willing to concede on specific criticisms, they are more than ready to deflect general accusations. For instance, Drew Kurlowski, a political scientist at Coastal Carolina University and one of the many workshop facilitators of the Jack Miller Center, acknowledges the systematic exclusions, but dilutes its significance. Despite acknowledging that ‘the Founders built a system that claims universal principles’, he then contradicts himself by saying that ‘they denied them in practice to a large, if not the majority, of the population’.

Kurlowski further justifies the emphasis on original sources in civics, arguing that students must begin at the beginning – with the historical record. He suggests that understanding ‘What did the Founders propose?’ is crucial before addressing the questions of ‘what did they ignore, what did they get wrong, and how have other people responded’. The flawed focus in this line of argument is evident when he laments that much of a disservice is done ‘when we go straight to the critiquing without first comprehending the argument’.

Despite the concerns, there appears to be an unmitigated push for this antiquated form of civics education. It is as if we are being forced to contend with a rigid re-learning of a history that has already proven problematic in its biases, exclusions, and distortions. How can we claim to be teaching our youth to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens, when the very material they are learning from has been shown to be problematic and an oversimplification of our complex past?

Perhaps it will be instructive to remember that while civics may seem a valuable subject for crafting alert, informed, and proactive citizens, its implementation in our institutions must be measured, inclusive, and above all else, reflective of the diverse realities that inform the American identity. In its current form, though, this new wave of civics education resembles nothing more than an ideologically driven exercise, and poses more dangers than it resolves.

As speakers representing the various spectrums of our society continue to stir the cauldron of public discourse, it is becoming increasingly evident that a reconsideration of this approach to civics education is necessary. We are at risk of creating a flurry of confusing expectations for our youth, while systematically failing to provide them with a complete understanding of their national identity, their rights, and the complexities of their responsibilities as American citizens.