A recent Fox News survey found that 70% of voters believe there is a need for more civics education. It stands to reason as fewer than one-quarter of US eighth graders performed at or above proficiency on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam in civics. Thirteen states still need civics course requirements at the high school level, and only seven states require a full year of civics or government.
When we talk civics, many assume it means a K-12 curriculum that educates young minds and hearts on the establishment of our country as a constitutional republic, not a straight-up democracy; the significance of the principles of liberty penned in the Declaration of Independence; the unique nature of self-governance and the checks and balances through our three branches of government that is of the people and by the people. And that this first-of-its-kind system of government that became a major superpower requires citizen engagement for it to survive and succeed.
Founding figures like Jefferson, Madison, and Adams vociferously advocated for widespread education to preserve liberty and empower citizens to self-govern effectively. Stripping statues reminiscent of these men and others in our history who modeled the preservation of our republic sent a loud message to the next generation that these noble albeit imperfect figures are worth diddly-squat.
According to the 2022 Constitution Day Survey, fewer than half of Americans could name all three branches of government, while only one in four could not name any. There were sharp declines in the ability of respondents to name freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. The time-honored American tradition of teaching classic civics hasn’t just been tossed; it appears to have been substituted with a cheap, radicalized, anti-American counterfeit. That’s right. You need to check in on what is being taught in civics classes in your local schools.
According to the Pioneer Institute’s early 2022 study, there are a few civics programs out there breathing life into homeschoolers and some charter schools that are true to the founding, including pedagogies from Hillsdale’s 1776, the Bill of Rights Institute, Teaching American History from the Ashbrook Center, and Florida’s proposed K-12 Civics and Government Standards. On the other hand, many public schools have been manipulated and infiltrated by the US Dept of Ed-funded non-government organizations that spread radical social-justice style activism under the guise of civics. The pack leader is Educating for American Democracy (EAD), which conveniently slipped into schools nationwide in 2021, masquerading as civics. It is routinely introduced to state boards of education as a framework to inform state standards, forcing all lessons and textbooks to conform to its outline for curricula.
Though touted as a bi-partisan effort to revive civics for the 21st century, Educating for Democracy priorities for students are far-afield to teaching good citizenship and a true understanding of the Republic. Instead, it promotes radicalizing the next generation to “create student opportunities to engage with real-world events and problem-solving about issues in their communities, taking informed action to create a more perfect union.” (Just one example of EAD’s doublespeak: the phrase “to create a more perfect union” does not comport with what our Founders intended.)
EAD urges teachers “to affirm diverse identities and provide inclusive instruction and examples.” If that meant respecting one another equally, that would make sense, but we know by now this isn’t the meaning of those words. Its website links to Activism Online, which directs kids to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Learning for Justice, which supposedly tackles systemic injustice. But SPLC has shown its true colors through numerous actions against founding freedom principles and is anything but a harbinger of justice for all.
Students are also encouraged to participate in student government and committees, meet with local political leaders, and engage in their community. That all sounds good if their participation and activities are around supporting the principles of liberty, not actions that seek to divide us.
The bottom line? Educating for America’s Roadmap has distilled the traditional civics curriculum to just one of seven themes: “Theme 4: A New Government and Constitution.” This theme delves into the United States' institutional history and the constitutional design's theoretical foundations. Let’s face it: omitting six of seven components of a conventional civics curriculum is hardly educational.
Back to EAD’s activist bent. Take, for example, protesting gun violence. It is a well-recognized – if not often ignored – fact that guns don’t kill people; people do. None of us condone gun violence; however, if we violate the Second Amendment and take guns away from all people, bad people will still get guns illegally, and people will still be harmed or killed. Unless good guys have guns to protect and defend, we are in worse trouble than we are now. Still, protests after school shootings carry an anti-second amendment sentiment. This leads us to a misguided example of student activism in response to Uvalde when 200 schools in 34 states, from California's shores to the peaks of Vermont, including the District of Columbia, staged walkouts in response to the tragedy. In Rhode Island, a teacher took things further when she piled young students in vehicles, trotted them off to the state capitol without parental permission, and told them to lay down on the floor of the capitol dome in protest of guns after Uvalde.
Educating for Democracy’s idea of “activism” is of this ilk. Pioneer Institute further explains that emphasizing political action enables the next generation to become adept in administrative tactics and evasion. Still, it compromises the values of a free republic. They envision “democracy” and fairness enforced and upheld by the maneuvers of lifelong bureaucrats. This trend will not provide us with an America led by devoted citizens committed to the principles of liberty enshrined in our founding documents.
Above all, parents and liberty-honoring school board majorities must be aware that this counterfeit civics allows for a radicalization that impairs future leaders from understanding what made America great, including individual liberty, free markets, private property rights, limited government, and the ability to pursue your dreams. If we aren’t outspoken now, future generations will be punished for using their voices at all.
American civics may be dead in many public schools, but we can work together to resurrect it.
Tamra Farah has twenty years of experience in public policy and politics, focusing on protecting individual liberty and promoting limited government. She has worked at the senior and director level for Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks and is now the President of AmericanStrategies.org. She is on all social media @tamrafarah.