Civic Education, Civil Society, and Americanism
In our Semiquincentennial year, America’s civic muscle needs to be exercised.
Years ago, my parents and I used to watch Watters’ World (hosted by Jesse Watters) on the O’Reilly Factor. The show was a sort of precursor to the now overdone genre of man-on-the-street interviews, wherein someone goes around to unsuspecting strangers with a camera and microphone and tries to catch them looking dumb. Watters was a pioneer of this format.
While my folks and I always got a good laugh out of the segment, what Watters was uncovering was profoundly sad: Americans don’t know their history, or how their government works.
In one episode, Watters asked interviewees a question that should be a lay-up: “Who did America fight in the Revolutionary War?” The answers were disturbing. One young woman timidly responded, “the French?” Another laughingly answered, “China.”
College students, unfortunately, didn’t inspire optimism, either. When Jesse asked them about the number of Senators in the U.S. Senate, the responses were equally confounding: “I think it’s like seven or twelve.” Another answered confidently, but erroneously: “I know this! It’s fifty!”
I wish I could say that these were one-offs, particularly bad students who are in no way emblematic of the American body politic writ large.
Sadly, their ignorance of basic American history and civics is borne out in the data.
According to a Pew survey from 2023, a minority of Americans (44%) know the length of a Senate term. And even less (40%) know who chooses the president when there’s a tie in the electoral college. These numbers are even lower when we look exclusively at Zoomers.
There’s no question about it: we’re in a civic crisis.
One group, however, refuses to sit idly by as this very important muscle – the civic muscle, that is – atrophies.
At The Fund for American Studies’ (TFAS) annual conference, nonprofit leaders, public intellectuals, and patriots of all stripes articulated what they’ve been doing to correct course in K-12 and higher education.
This year’s theme: Developing Courageous Citizens: Revitalizing Civic Education and America’s Founding Principles.
From the onset, the vibe of the conference was unabashedly patriotic, without being blindly jingoistic. That is, the event’s attendees didn’t just love America because it’s trendy, or because it’s cool to wear “Don’t Tread on Me” t-shirts; they had a deep and earnest understanding of the Founding and believed wholeheartedly in what the Framers’ set out to achieve: a country defined by ordered liberty, self-governance, and human flourishing.
I’ve been to events where it seemed like “owning the libs” was the modus operandi. The folks at TFAS, however, don’t go for that kind of red-meat politics. Rather, their mission is actually one of unification around the country’s founding principles.
When I sat down with David Bobb, President of the Bill of Rights Institute, I didn’t hear much in the way of partisan shibboleths. Instead, I heard someone who was dedicated to the American tradition of civil society, pluralism, and civic education.
To him, though, Constitutional literacy alone isn’t enough: “Let’s say that 100% of Americans knew the three branches of government. That wouldn’t solve the challenges that we have now.”
Bobb spoke to me about what he called, “civic friendship,” and finding common purpose with our fellow citizens, something lacking in America today. “We are alienated from each other,” he told me, “in part because we are not hanging out in these forums that teach you how to have the art of association.”
To Bobb, what is needed today is a sort of Tocquevillian revival, wherein collaboration is practiced at the local level: “Today in our schools, students are often taught activism-civics. That teaches young people to start with a big, global problem. The result of that is failure because problems of this scale are very hard to tackle, especially in a short period of time. This tends to make them despondent about the small-d, democratic project. So, start local. Build those bonds of association.”
The practice of self-governance and collaboration is as American as it gets, and it’s an integral part of the revival of civic education.
Judge Douglas Ginsburg echoed these sentiments during a panel called, Civics and American Founding Knowledge Deficit: “Every voluntary group is a contribution to civic education.”
Other motifs throughout the event: Repudiating Wilsonianism and the 28th President’s emphasis on government bigness and the need for technocracy; a rejection of the Leftist academic Howard Zinn’s perversion of the Founding; and the very rational fear of an ever-expanding administrative state.
The through lines: self-governance, localism, patriotism, and gratitude. These themes, among others, will be necessary ingredients if we are to take a revival in civic education seriously.
Thus, it will be incumbent on America’s educators, particularly in K-12, not just to teach students how many members comprise the Senate, or who fought who in the Revolutionary War, but to inculcate in them the practice and habituation of collaboration and problem-solving at the local level.
Frank Filocomo is the Advancement Coordinator at RealClearFoundation. His work has been published in National Review, the Federalist, University Bookman, and elsewhere.
