Education For Citizenship

For John, BLUF:  The autahor, a University President, has written off K-12 Public Educztion as a place where future voters learn about democracy.  That is sad.  There was a day when most people didn't go to college and public schools had the responsibility of Civics education, and stepped up.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Universities Are Shunning Their Responsibility to Democracy

Here is the sub-headline:

Institutions of higher education have remained, at best, bit players in the project of educating the citizenry.

From The Atlantic, by Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels, 3 October 2021.

Here is the lede plus three:

was born in canada, and my sense of national identity, like that of many Canadians, was formed in direct relation—perhaps in opposition—to the great colossus to the south. We were a country that aspired not to the lofty abstractions of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” but to the more prosaic benefits of “peace, order, and good government.”  I have always been proud of Canada’s basic values—but I have also envied the grandeur of the American experiment, even in the face of its shortcomings and contradictions.

When I first came to the United States, in the mid-2000s, I expected, perhaps naively, that this country would be a bastion of civic learning.  Surely the stewards of the world’s first modern democracy would understand the need to cultivate an understanding of both its majesty and its mechanics—the Enlightenment ideas that animate it and the institutions that make it work.  But when my children enrolled in high school in Philadelphia, they received only a weak introduction to any of this.  That modest exposure, however, was far more elaborate than what many other children across the country receive.  Two years ago, during a seminar at Johns Hopkins University, I asked my students if any of them had learned about core democratic ideas and institutions in high school.  Only a smattering of hands went up—and those few were at half-mast.

The dearth of civic education is corrosive. According to an Associated Press–GfK survey, from 1984 to 2014, the share of American adults who said that staying informed about current affairs and public issues was “not an obligation that a citizen owes to the country” more than tripled, from 6 to 20 percent.  Over roughly the same period, according to Cambridge University’s Centre for the Future of Democracy, dissatisfaction with democracy among young people has risen precipitously, particularly in the United States.

For decades, elementary and secondary schools have borne the responsibility of educating about citizenship.  But in an era when funding is limited and partisans on all sides are quick to detect the merest whiff of agendas they dislike, civics and social-studies classes are among the first to shrivel.  A majority of principals and other school leaders surveyed in 2018 by Education Week believed that students were not getting enough civics education.  Often, there is little they can do.

Another sign of the times.  Back in the day, when I was in Eighth Grade, one of our year long classes was called Core.  It was about being a grownup and grownup responsibilities.  For example, we had to research and do a report on three different future careers.  (I did Aeronautical Engineer and Army Armor Officer and one other, which I can't remember.)  We studied the US Constitution.  We wrote a town charter for a mythical town in which we lived  We learned civics.

Today, apparently not so much.

Who fixes this?  Our School Superintendent?  Our School Committee?  The General Court?  The Troika of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden?

I think it is on the voters of Lowell.  Vote wisely on Tuesday, but vote, so those elected know you are paying at least a little attention.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff