Progressive Change Needs Strong Civics Education

by Mike Hall, Jun 24, 2009

More than 100 years ago, a commission, charged with examining how well high school students were being taught about government, politics and citizenship, found that a poor civics education linked to the plethora of bad politicians and weak public servants dominated turn-of-the-century American government.

Today, says Andrea Batista Schlesinger in a Point of View guest column at the AFL-CIO website, a renewed and strong emphasis on civics is even more vital in the 21st century.

We have to start caring a lot more about civics. If we want to ensure that a pro-worker progressive movement is in our future, we need to raise a generation of young people who feel connected to the institutions of their democracy, who understand how to navigate them and who understand from an early age that it is their right—and their responsibility—to question them.

Schlesinger is the author of The Death of Why: The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy. She is on a leave of absence from the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, where she served as executive director.

She says the researchers who conducted the 1905 study believed the success of our participatory democracy was directly related to the preparation of its youngest citizens.

If you believe this is true today, then you must also worry that our democracy is in sorry shape.

Since 1969, young people have been tested on  civics knowledge—their understanding of the inner workings of government and their rights and responsibilities as citizens. In 2006, only one in four 12th-graders met what Schlesinger calls a fairly low-bar definition of “proficient.” Only 5 percent of high school seniors could explain three ways in which the president can be checked by the legislative or judicial branches (see answers below). Only 28 percent of eighth-graders could identify the significance of the Declaration of Independence.

When presented with a photograph of the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr., only one in four could explain “two specific ways in which marches and demonstrations such as the one illustrated can achieve political goals.”

One reason young people have such an abysmal grasp of how government functions and how people can influence government and bring about change is the demise of civics education in schools, she says.

When  civics was more important in the schools in the 20th century, for example, children brought home civics grades on their report cards. In fact, students took three civics classes, including Problems in Democracy, in which they talked about current affairs and challenges facing American government….Today, that course is gone, with nothing to replace it.

Schlesinger warns that the lack of civics knowledge on the part of our young people is a long-term threat. Studies show the decision to vote—and the basis upon which people make their decisions in the voting booth—”can be traced to our civics knowledge.”

Maybe it’s anachronistic, but I think we need to raise young people who care about their local institutions as much as they care about the worlds they can access through Facebook, who have an understanding about how to pursue policy change right there in their local City Hall, who talk about current events and who know what a march on Washington can accomplish.

I care about civics because I care about a lasting progressive agenda in our country, one that is based on the right and ability of regular people to influence the direction of their government.

Click here to read Schlesinger’s guest column, “Remember Civics—Here’s Why We Need It.”

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Here are five ways Congress and the courts can check a president’s powers:

• The president’s appointments are confirmed by the Senate.
• He is subject to impeachment.
• He cannot make laws that were not passed by Congress.
• The laws that he does sign are subject to judicial review.
• His veto can be overturned by a two-thirds vote in Congress.

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