Can Civics Save America?

Culture war in education

A May 2021 article in the Atlantic, Can Civics Save America?, considers whether civics and history can be taught in public schools in a way that helps to restore some health to our seriously damaged American democracy. The alternative is that it will inflame partisan antagonisms if not done with extreme care and strict neutrality. The Atlantic writes:

Civic education sounds dull, dutiful, and antiquated, like paper drives or the Presidential Physical Fitness Test—but today it bears all the passion and distemper of our fraught politics. Last year, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz found that a majority of Americans of both parties rank civics as their top choice for how to “strengthen the American identity,” ahead of national service (preferred by Democrats) and religious activity (favored by Republicans). Civics, if left undefined, is the one solution for polarization that both sides support.

It’s also the most bitterly contested subject in education today. Civics is at the heart of the struggle to define the meaning of the American idea. Think of the battle lines as 1619 versus 1776—The New York Times Magazine’s project to reframe American history around slavery and its legacy, and the Trump administration’s counterstrike in the form of a thin report on patriotic education. Teaching civics could restore health to American democracy, or inflame our mutual antagonisms. Events are currently pushing in both directions.

Schools fail to give students not only a knowledge of basic facts and concepts, .... but also “the realization that free people will disagree about just about everything.” The art of self-government depends on a capacity for argument, persuasion, compromise, and tolerance of disagreement—civic virtues that need to be learned and practiced. .... If Americans of all stripes now hold righteously dogmatic views that we can neither ground in facts nor justify against counterarguments, one overlooked cause is the fading of civics from American education.

In 2019, a group of scholars and educators began an ambitious effort to lay out a vision for how American children in the 21st century should learn about their multi-everything, relentlessly divided democracy. .... Funding came from the U.S. Department of Education (then led by Betsy DeVos) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Around 300 people ultimately worked on the project, whose 33-page report, Educating for American Democracy, came out in March.

Rather than euphemizing hard truths and eliding divisive arguments, the report faces them in clear language. “In recent decades, we as a nation have failed to prepare young Americans for self-government, leaving the world’s oldest constitutional democracy in grave danger, afflicted by both cynicism and nostalgia, as it approaches its 250th anniversary,” the report announces at the top. Its solution is not a new nationwide curriculum (sure to self-immolate in partisan fights) but a “roadmap” of pedagogical guidelines, informed by broad themes such as “civic participation” and “institutional and social transformation,” and also by questions such as “How can we offer an account of U.S. constitutional democracy that is simultaneously honest about the past without falling into cynicism, and appreciative of the founding without tipping into adulation?”

The article goes on to point out that the Educating for American Democracy report intentionally does not choose sides in culture war. That would cause it to be rejected and attacked by one side or the other and then fade into irrelevance. To avoid that trap, the authors resort to reliance on evidence, inquiry and reason (like pragmatic rationalism). In particular, the report does not tell schools what to teach or students what to think. It just provides guidance on educating students about how to think, debate, disagree, and learn about the past in the context of the present. The goal is to balance American pluralism and diversity with a shared American narrative. 

Phrases like “reflective patriotism” and “civic friendship” were invented and used to try to limit the inherent tension. As one can imagine, this puts a significant, complicated burden on teachers. 

The author of the article understands that the Educating for American Democracy report could lay out good ideas but still die a quiet death, like many other reports and efforts that try to be helpful. One question asks what else can we try to do? The two sides are bitterly divided and that is not going to change. 

We oppose it!

A proposed bill in Congress, the Civics Secures Democracy Act, appropriates $1 billion to support civics and U.S. history teaching. As of last May, there was some bipartisan support, but it is tenuous. The Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act both came  

under immediate attack from the right. A radical right pro-T**** source called American Greatness, referred to the report as “a Trojan horse for woke education.” The influential radical right National Review, Federalist Society, and Heritage Foundation all argued that the report and the proposed bill constituted a conspiracy to impose a national left-wing agenda and ideology on schoolchildren. A conservative group, the National Association of Scholars asked Republicans in congress to withdraw their sponsorship of the Civics Secures Democracy Act. 

Biden screws the pooch - he took a side in the culture war

In what appears to be a serious, probably lethal mistake for a civics and history teaching renewal, on April 19 the Biden administration proposed Education Department funding for two small teaching grants related to teaching civics and history. The grant rationale and requirements blundered by clearly taking the liberal side in the culture war. Information that accompanied the grants included these mistakes (i) citing “the New York Times’ landmark ‘1619 Project,’” (ii) emphasis on teaching “both the consequences of slavery, and the significant contributions of Black Americans to our society,” and (iii) stating that grant applicants must “take into account systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history,” “support the creation of learning environments that validate and reflect the diversity, identity, and experiences of all students,” and “contribute to inclusive, supportive, and identity-safe learning environments.” 

Both the Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act were designed to not inflame partisan differences or take a side. Despite that, both elicited immediate, intense criticism from the radical right. The ghastly mistakes in the grant applications has given the radical right the excuse to say, we told you so, and more vehemently reject the report and the bill pending in congress. Radical right demagogues are reveling in a festival of disinformation using Biden’s mistake as fresh ammunition.

The article ends with this correct observation:

Unlike Educating for American Democracy, the Biden administration’s [grant application] rule, like its conservative critics, imposes a fixed view of civics and U.S. history in place of inquiry, debate, and disagreement. By intent or blunder, the left and right are colluding to undermine the noble, elusive goal of giving American children the ability to think and argue and act together as citizens.

Questions: 

1. Based on the information in this post, is it reasonable to think the right is mostly acting to sabotage by intent and the left mostly blundering, assuming that the left generally supports the Educating for American Democracy report and the Civics Secures Democracy Act, while the right attacks and opposes them?

2. Is it reasonable to see neutral but honest teaching of civics and history as inherently more at odds with the morals, ideology, beliefs and politics of the radical right than with those of the center or left, radical or not?