Think about the government or social studies classes you took in high school. They probably taught you that we had three branches of government and that our democracy is based off of a Constitution and Bill of Rights. But did you ever get a chance to apply this knowledge, figure out how it is relevant to your life? Most likely not. And that is a sad fact that reflects the erosion of civic learning and values in our educational system.

Civics is essential to sustain our democracy. It teaches us how to access government and work within our communities. So why are so many Americans being raised without it? Civic learning deserves to be treated as fundamentally as reading and math.

But the past few years have shown that current civic policy is simply not making the cut. Only 10 states have language in their state constitutions to indicate a “civic mission” of schools, meaning a way of orienting your schools goals toward the development of a student with both the knowledge and skills that allow them to feel efficacy in their civic participation.  And only 13 states require students to complete a civics course at all. Even fewer of these states have a well-designed civics course. One lonely exemplar was in New York, which has a comprehensive, project and inquiry-based course called Participation in Government. The course asks students to apply the concepts they learn to current situations in government — which, if you think about it, is what the real players in government do.

In the meantime, the addition of other civic requirements would be useful. Encouraging civic project assessments or service learning would both serve as positive steps toward classroom-based civic learning. Tennessee and Maryland have both been successful with this—the former passed legislation for a civics project-based assessment earlier this year, and Maryland uses service learning linked to the formal curriculum (since 1992).

But attempts have been made to bring civics back on a national level. Last year the Sandra Day O’Connor Civic Learning Act was introduced to the House of Representatives with the hope of disaggregating NAEP scores and restoring funding to civic programs that was lost in 2009. In Illinois, much legislation has been passed concerning Democracy Schools. In 2005 and 2011, the General assembly passed resolutions to commend Democracy Schools. In 2007, the assembly passed an act providing for teacher professional development according to the Democracy School Initiative (appropriation was lost in a line-item veto).

And this legislation is desperately needed in Illinois, where “soft” standards in the School Code have corroded civic learning. For example, the code’s allocation for student voice in government is limited to an advisory role, and the code’s idea of civic content is limited to the flag code and pledge of allegiance.

But the addition of civic policies alone won’t be enough to improve civic learning. As NAEP Civics results showed, best practices in civic learning are meaningless if they aren’t engaging or taught skillfully to students. Any civic policy will need to be fleshed-out in order to be successful, and additional resources should be allocated for training teachers and developing programs.

As it stands, civics programs in schools are incomplete, insubstantial, and mis-directed. But to turn it around, and to promote civic engagement in students, I believe that requiring a civics course and educating teachers in teaching civics are critical. If we can do this— and I firmly believe it is within our capacity to do so—we will ensure students have the opportunity to fulfill our nation’s overarching theme: that all can active participants in their democracy and future.

 

Photo by James Sarmiento via Flickr