What Do We “Owe” to Our Country? Part 2: Why Teaching Civics Matters

(Note this is the second piece in a series. Part 1 is here)

A quick quiz:

September 17 was (please select one):

A. Wife Appreciation Day

B. National Pet Bird Day

C. National Bobby Day (celebration of everyone named Bobby)

D. Pet Carbon Monoxide Day (prevention, not endorsement)

E. Citizenship and Constitution Day

F. Apple Dumpling Day

And the answer is…

Okay that was a trick. It is remarkably easy to get a day designated, and September 17 is all of those things. But in 1787, that’s the day that the nation’s founders signed the Constitution, and since 1956, we’ve had September 17 designated as the day we should celebrate the US Constitution.

If you missed the celebration this year, well, that’s part of the problem. We do our big national pride celebration every year on July 4, and we don’t really find time any year to teach people about what it means to be a citizen. We don’t ask them to learn about the Constitution or what it means.

We don’t teach civics. But that could be changing. If we can figure out how to do it without clubbing each other over the political head.

There’s plenty of data to support the fact that we Americans don’t know much – or want to know much -- about our government. The latest survey by the Annenberg Foundation, released last week for Constitution Day, found that:

· Some 17% of Americans could not name any of the three branches of government;

· Only 40% know that freedom of religion is protected by the Constitution; just 28% know freedom of the press is.

*People might know the first three words of the Constitution, but they’re a little shaky on the rest. (Photo Antony Garland,; Unsplash)*

Other surveys show:

· About 1 in 5 eligible Americans are not registered to vote. Of those registered, just 46% voted in the latest midterm elections. We rank 31st among OECD nations in participation in voting;

· Only 22% of 8th graders are considered “proficient” in civics.

Just 36% of adult US citizens could pass the test required of prospective immigrants seeking to be citizens. In only one state (Vermont) would a majority of citizens pass the test.

· Just 29% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans trust government “all” or “most” of the time.

If we don’t know the Constitution, it means on some level we don’t know how to operate in the country we live in, what the rules are. And that kind of ignorance makes it seem like it might be okay to, I don’t know, just decide you don’t accept election results and storm the Capitol. That seems like a problem.

Some people say that pride in country is outdated, that civics doesn’t really matter, or that civics is just dressed-up jingoism and we live in a global society now. Others say that we participate in civic life in other ways that build community.

Well, no. Survey after survey shows that our participation in church, unions or any sort of volunteerism -- local, national or global -- is down. We’ve stopped reading newspapers. The 2017 Civic Health Index found that 60% of rural residents and 30% of urban residents live in “civic deserts”: locations where there is no place to discuss or address important issues.

In his new book The Bill of Obligations (see this earlier post), Richard Haass lists “Support the Teaching of Civics” as one of ten “obligations” Americans should live into. We aren’t doing it now. Just seven states (and DC) require a year or more of civics education during the K-12 years (Hawaii requires a year and a half). Thirty states require a half year of teaching sometime during twelve years; thirteen states require nothing. At the higher ed level, almost no colleges or universities require any civics education. In a 2022 article, Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins, summarized the attitude of higher ed toward teaching civics this way: “Our curricula have abdicated responsibility for teaching the habits of democracy.”

It's easy to make civics seem like a ridiculously-complicated subject to take on, and there some ways of making it sound impossible: witness the warring narratives between the 1619 project and the (Trump) President’s Advisory 1776 Commission (now “1776 Action”). Haass suggests that those issues might be better addressed in history courses, but that if a civics course takes on those issues, it should be in a discussion format.

But there’s a lot of consensus on most of what should be taught.

CivX, a nonpartisan advocacy group, summarizes three principles this way:

· Knowledge: we should teach what government is and how it works – its structure, basic terms, ideas and texts;

· Values: we should make sure people understand basic values such as the importance of free speech (see this earlier post), the importance of civil discourse, and the value of listening to people who have a different perspective;

· Behaviors: we should make sure people know how to vote, how to volunteer, and how to participate in public meetings.

We’re not starting from ground zero. The Department of Education has developed “National Standards for Civic Education,” outlining what might be taught in grades 4, 8 and 12. The National Archives has developed a series of open programs called Civics for All. A group called iCivics, founded by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and now supported by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, nonprofit and business leaders, has developed a free, nonpartisan curriculum that is game-based, and being used by 9 million students a year.

So why isn’t a movement taking off? Polling shows that 71% of Independents, 77% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats support more education, with most saying it is more important now than it was five years ago. Almost no issue has that level of support anymore.

Now the challenge is translating theoretical support into reality.

It looks like to me there is a decent vehicle we could drive to success.

A bipartisan, business-backed bill introduced (and partially funded in 2022) puts money where the mouths are. The “Civics Secures Democracy Act” proposes a federal investment of $1 billion a year for five years to fund greater implementation in states, opt-in grants for higher ed, increased research on effective civics education. Some Republicans worry that the Biden administration will turn the bill political with rules. But that’s what amendments are for.

*Imagine a raucous town hall meeting of folks demanding more teaching of civics (Photo by Chuttersnap for Unsplash)*

Maybe it’s time for civic action. What would happen if a group of citizens used their right of assembly to gather and then decided to petition the government? Oh wait, there’s a problem: the latest surveys show that only 33% of us know the Constitution guarantees us the right to assemble and only 9% know that we have the right to petition the government.

References:

US proclamations about days: https://nationaltoday.com/september-17-holidays/

Annenberg civics survey 2023: https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/many-dont-know-key-facts-about-u-s-constitution-annenberg-civics-study-finds/

Recommendations for civic ed: https://production-carnegie.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/ab/dd/abdda62e-6e84-47a4-a043-348d2f2085ae/ccny_grantee_2011_guardian.pdf

Voter turnout: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/

Ron Daniel on teaching of civics: https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/64/what-universities-owe-democracy/

CivX findings on civic knowledge: https://civxnow.org

Some info on iCivics: https://www.icivics.org/about

National Standards for Civic Education: https://www.civiced.org/resource-materials/national-standards-for-civics-and-government

National Archives Civics for all of US: https://civics.archives.gov/about

Civics Secures Democracy Act: https://civxnow.org/our-work/federal/

Republican concerns about CSDA: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bogus-civics-bill-will-push-crt-on-states/