The end of summer signals back to school for millions of students from kindergarten to graduate school. I feel pretty confident that most of them will encounter a reasonably solid curriculum in STEM subjects and fewer but still many will experience some decent language and literacy lessons.
But how many of returning American students will encounter a robust and effective curriculum that delves into civics, history and government? Unfortunately, not too many and certainly not enough will get a solid enough education in these subjects to make them civically literate.
No democratic nation can survive without a critical mass of civically literate citizens.
As I have written before in this blog series, civic literacy does not just happen It requires a robust curriculum, staffed by well-trained teachers who can impart
- A basic and unbiased understanding of the civic history of the nation
- A basic understanding of America public institutions and roles as they have evolved in our history.
- Understanding political thought and values and how they interact
- A grasp of the relative roles of the Individual and the polity
- An understanding of the rights and responsibilities of citizen participation in a democracy
- Understanding American political institutions in a comparative framework
- Understanding our political economy and its structures
- Understanding of why international geography, politics and interdependence matter
- Understanding of tools and consequences of political change
- Knowledge of basic logic, fact and bias recognition and media-savviness
- Learning and practicing the skills of critical thinking
Our schools can accomplish this if
- We give them enough money to provide a comprehensive civic curriculum and staff them with highly qualified and fairly-compensated teachers.
- Free our curriculum from woke, anti-woke and any other ideologically driven influences. See the basic outlines of civic literacy above. No ideological seasoning needed or wanted.
These tasks are not easy to accomplish. The consequences of not accomplishing them will be even harder and more expensive.