Fourth of July Brings Warnings of Our Civics Problem

By John Fund

Monday, July 04, 2022

 

A Rasmussen Reports survey released over the Fourth of July weekend finds that only 27 percent of people believe the Founding Fathers would consider the United States a success, down from 34 percent a year ago.

 

A stunning 53 percent now say the Founding Fathers — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, among many — would view America as a failure.

 

Almost as disturbing is a new Gallup poll that finds only 38 percent of Americans are “extremely proud” of their country, the lowest ever recorded. The falloff in patriotism is across the political spectrum. Only 58 percent of Republicans have extreme national pride, while independents register at 34 percent and Democrats at 26 percent.

 

There are many explanations for this trend, but surely one of them is the shocking ignorance of both young people and adults about American ideals, history, and institutions. A 2017 study by the Annenberg Center found that only one-quarter of Americans can name all three branches of government; a third can’t name any. An eyebrow-raising 37 percent couldn’t name any rights protected by the First Amendment. Only a third of Americans could pass the citizenship test that legal immigrants have to take to become citizens.

 

Paul Carrese, the director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, told the Atlantic last year that “historical and civic ignorance” adds to the polarization we see in the country today: “It’s easier for the [social-media] technology to have such a powerful effect if you start with no foundation. The winds are blowing and you have no ballast.”

 

Ever since the 1980s, public schools along with many private ones have ended or curtailed civics and social-studies classes in favor of easily testable subjects like math or reading. In 2011, all federal funding for civics and social studies was eliminated.

 

Every time I speak to high-school or college classes, I am stunned by what they haven’t learned. How our government’s separation of powers was set under the Constitution; how federal, state, and local governments work; how bills are originated and how they go through the system, including amendments; the powers government has — and doesn’t have; and how citizens can find out how their rights are used and misused. In addition, how legal immigrants go about becoming American citizens.

 

Terry Ponick, an editor at Communities Digital News, told me he sees the day-to-day consequences of this vacuum at the local level: “Graduates unfamiliar with these concepts, which have generally proved successful since 1789, (save for Civil War I), will have no reason to support them or think they’re a positive force for good. And that, in turn, enables them to think a new governmental system — socialism — would be a better placement.”

 

But ignorance isn’t the only threat to the understanding that Americans have of their country. In 2017, the National Association of Scholars released a report entitled, “Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics.” As the College Fix reported, the report suggests that “left-leaning professors have transformed the teaching of traditional civics with an emphasis on activism, creating a pipeline of students eager to serve the goals of secular-progressive causes.” The report’s authors note that instead of teaching “students the foundations of law, liberty, and self-government,” colleges teach them “how to organize protests, occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations.”

 

Perhaps it’s too much to expect that public schools today can go back to formally teaching students about representative government, the separation of powers, and landmark Supreme Court cases, but at least we should insist that they sponsor and encourage debates in which advocates of traditional civics from outside groups can help foster a sense of civic engagement.

 

People across the political spectrum have noticed the collapse of civic education, and, in 2019, the U.S. Education Department and the National Endowment for the Humanities funded a 33-page report entitled, “Educating for American Democracy.”

 

While well-intentioned, when the report’s recommendations were converted to legislation, the result was a Frankenstein’s monster. The “Civics Secures Democracy Act” may be voted on next month in Congress. It would parcel out $6 billion over a period of six years to create a de facto national curriculum in civics. National Review writer Stanley Kurtz has outlined the peril of passing the bill.

 

“(CSDA) will allow the Biden administration to push Critical Race Theory (CRT) on every public school in the country,” Kurtz writes. “States desperate to tap into the federal gravy train will have to tailor their civics and history grant proposals to the Biden administration’s liking. And abundant evidence shows that Biden’s Education Department is pushing CRT.” Sadly, he notes the bill has drawn some Republican support, from GOP senators Bill Cassidy, James Inhofe, and John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate.

 

While we battle to improve civics education in the classroom, or at least not make it worse, we would be wise to follow the advice of the Gipper. Ronald Reagan used his farewell address a quarter-century ago to presciently warn Americans were losing a sense of “informed patriotism.”

 

Reagan was characteristically optimistic in his final speech in 1989, but he did leave his audience with one clear warning for the future.

 

“Are we doing a good-enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” Reagan bluntly asked.

 

“We’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important,” he urged parents and teachers. “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.”

 

But Reagan himself was far too practical to believe that the job of reintroducing the study of self-government could be left to the schools. “All great change in America begins at the dinner table,” he said in his farewell address. “So, tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.”

 

It is also absolutely necessary if we are to have any success in efforts to “make America great again.” “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” Reagan reminded us. “We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”