The Continuing Crisis in Civic Education
Our founders built us a Republic for engaged citizens, yet we don’t provide our citizens with the fundamentals to properly engage.
I have often talked about the crisis in Civic Education in America, and that was reinforced this week in place they didn’t even have an election: Kentucky:
Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams reminded the state’s residents that they cannot vote in the New York City mayoral race after his office received calls about polls being closed.
Yes, this is a real thing that happened.
Now, some of what Secretary Adams was dealing with here has to do with the nationalizing of elections, particularly off-year elections that get more national attention and scrutiny than they otherwise wood in a normal mid-term or Presidential Election. Both state elections are near the two biggest political media markets, Washington and New York. And of course the New York City election is hyper-reported upon because the broadcast networks are all based on New York and make EVERYTHING that happens in New York City the nation’s problem news.
But that’s no excuse for the residents of Kentucky wondering why they can’t in an election being held in New York City, or Virginia, or New Jersey. That comes back to the failure of schools to properly prepare our students for being a member of society. And if you want to know why politics are the way they are right now, THERE is the reason.
When I was a Maryland High Schooler, each student was required to pass the Maryland Citizenship Test as part of the comprehensive battery of tests necessary to graduate high school. Most students passed that test in the 9th grade. It was not a particularly hard test, even if each student had to take civics in their freshman year.1 But the civics test was one class taken by every student, most of whom had no interest in the subject and were merely teaching the students only to get them to pass the test. What I’m saying is, you would get more from watching Schoolhouse Rocks than you got from your standard civics course at Chesapeake High School.
Fast forward to today. Nobody has any idea how our country works. People call their Congressman about trash pickup. People call their State Delegate about the federal budget. Nobody understands that state run elections instead of the federal government2. And people have been hypertrained to think that only what happens in Washington truly matters when 90% of the decisions that impact their lives happen at the local level.
As I wrote upon the closure of Red Maryland five years ago:
People don’t know what constitutional governance is. You would be surprised with how many people email us, comment on our Facebook page, or speak to us in person and ask “Why can’t Hogan just do [fill in the blank]?” without even stopping to realize that no Governor has the authority to do what they are suggesting. Most can’t read the political tea leaves or understand enough about the political realities in the General Assembly to do the math, not understanding that no piece of legislation is going to pass without 71 Delegates and 24 Senators voting for it first. They often complain about the Republican Party not doing enough to elect Republican candidates to enact conservative policies, but then are AWOL when it comes to making phone calls, door-knocking, or volunteering for candidates.
The nationalization of politics is also part of the problem. It’s a growing and terrible trend that we have seen, and it’s getting worse every year. For most people, if they don’t see it on Fox News or they don’t read it on Breitbart or they don’t see it on Facebook, it didn’t happen. People remain zoned in on Congress and Washington and national politics and whatever the epic news story of the days is that they are completely clueless when it comes to state and local politics. As we wrote in our FAQ:
Despite nearly 13 years of effort on Red Marylands part so much of conservative media these days is focused on national politics and “owning the libs” as opposed to cogent thought and discussion of campaigns and issues. Combine that with voters and consumers of media on social media devoting 98% of their attention to President Trump and his decisions and ignoring important issues at the state level, it felt like we were in a vicious cycle where nobody cared about things that mattered.
And it’s still that way. People react to things at the state level, on our Facebook page, with a national lens……State and local politics have always been and, frankly, remains our passion. It’s where people can do the most good and have the most change in the political process. But people long stopped caring about things that matter so they can panic about things that don’t.
The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand the Constitution. The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand how a bill becomes a law. The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand the regulatory process. The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand the difference between federal government and state government, the state government and county government, or the country government and municipal government. The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand block grants. The overwhelming majority of people don’t understand the three branches of government. It is a crisis.
Studies have found that knowledge about the foundations and functions of governments, needed for civic engagement, has diminished globally and that in places like the United States, the punitive nature of modern politics has made it harder to close the gap.
At the same time, the prevalence of news and conversation in daily life about government, politics and civic events makes this a prime time to ratchet up civics education, some experts said, with many advocating for educators to get to students now, when they are listening.
“Democracies have been in different crises for more than 10 years,” said Louisa Slavkova, co-founder of the Civics Innovation Hub, a Pan-European organization founded in 2021 dedicated to civic education. “When democracy deteriorates, you need more and better civic education. If there is a pandemic, you need to send in the nurses and the doctors. It’s the same thing with a democracy crisis — civic educators are the nurses.”
Nationally and internationally, surveys show that students’ knowledge of civics has decreased in recent years, even as access to misinformation and disinformation on social media, television and the internet has proliferated.
Our founders built us a Republican for engaged citizens, yet we don’t provide our citizens with the fundamentals to be properly engaged. And that has provided us with multiple generations of students who have no idea how the political process works. And when you learn about politics from TikTokers, YouTubers, and Facebookers with an agenda, not only do you learn a warped idea of how the process works, you also are susceptible to fraudsters, hucksters, and charlatans who can easily seduce you into believing conspiracy theories, hidden agendas, and other crackpot stuff.
People like Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes thrive on those who don’t know anything about politics and society.
How do we fix the crisis in Civics Education? The same way we addressed the issue with STEM Education. By focusing on it and making sure that it is emphasized throughout K-12 education.
<No Child Left Behind> tied school funding to math and reading scores; schools vastly increased their emphasis on those subjects and decreased time spent on social studies, where civics is most commonly taught in the United States.
The American Competitiveness Initiative was announced in President George W. Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address addressing the crisis in STEM. Since then it has been replaced by three successive versions of the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act.
That’s why I am proposing the American Civic Engagement Initiative to provide federal funding for civic education programs, including block grants to public and private school systems to teach civics, public engagement, and basic understanding of federal, state, and local governments. We need to start making sure that the kids in school now understand how our government works, how a bill becomes a law, and the basic levels of government. And we need to teach civics education at EVERY level of the school curriculum, from Kindergarten all the way through Grade 12. That is the only way that we can stop the modern day insanity of politics and get to a point where people understand that not every election is life and death, not everybody is out to kill them, and not everybody involved in the wheels of government is involved in a massive conspiracy.
Ben Franklin said we have a “A Republican, If We Can Keep It.” Only if we put the wheels back on the bus of America’s crumbling understanding of government and politics will we ever be able to truly keep it.
Except us advanced kids, we got to take the test mid semester and then take economics the rest of the way.
Including the President.