For the past 10 years or so, my research team at Stanford University has been interviewing young Americans in their high school and college years about what U.S. citizenship means to them. The range in their responses has been astounding.
Some aspire to positions of leadership in our society. They prepare themselves by studying history and keeping informed about current events, work for political campaigns or causes, run for student government, and organize effective efforts to change school policy on such issues as the elimination of athletic programs.
But such highly engaged students are only a small part of our contemporary student spectrum. In our studies, we have found frequent expressions of apathy, lack of interest, and outright ignorance of past and present civic matters among American high school and college students (Damon, 2011).
One high school student, for example, commented that "being American is not really special … I don't find being an American citizen very important." Another replied, "I don't want to belong to any country. It just feels like you are obligated to this country. I don't like the whole thing of [being a] citizen." Although many students are not quite this bald-faced in their indifference to citizenship, it's no exaggeration to say that civic responsibilities are among the last things on most young people's minds these days.
A democratic society, for its very survival, needs to constantly replenish its ranks with new cadres of young people educated in citizenship and dedicated to civic virtues. Without a younger generation capable of carrying on democratic traditions, a society will drift into anarchy and despotism, often in that order. Unfortunately, there are some troubling signs that we are headed in that direction today.
The Growing Civics Gap
The past decade has seen a steady drumbeat of indicators revealing glaring gaps in our students' civic knowledge, motivation, and interest. Indeed, we appear to be in the midst of what Sandra Day O'Connor calls a "crisis" in civics education (Dillon, 2011). The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics found that barely one in four high school students scored proficient in their knowledge of citizenship. Of all the academic subjects tested, civics and its closely linked subject of history came in dead last (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011).
In an American Enterprise Institute study, when social studies teachers were asked whether they were "very confident that most of the students in their high schools have actually learned" American citizenship concepts such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the importance of rules and authority, tolerance for different groups and opinions, and the responsibility to vote and serve on juries, only 24 percent of the teachers answered in the affirmative (Schmitt et al., 2010). An earlier U.S. Department of Education study found that only 9 percent of high school students were able to cite reasons why it is important for citizens to participate in a democracy, and only 6 percent were able to cite reasons why having a constitution benefits a country (Hedges, 1999).
For more than a decade now, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) has reported sharp, stepwise declines in young Americans' awareness of civic and political events. This lack of knowledge, interest, and awareness is paralleled by the inaction of many young Americans. For example, even in the hotly contested 2008 election, only 52 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted (CIRCLE, n.d.).
U.S. Schools Neglect Their Role
For a country that views itself as the leader of the free world, we are surprisingly casual about passing along the interests, skills, and knowledge required for U.S. citizenship to our younger generation. Neither civics nor history comes anywhere near math or literacy in the priorities set by most of our schools today—and it shows.
This neglect is not what the founders of our republic had in mind. Jefferson believed that cultivating civic virtue should be a key goal of education (Chinard, 1926). Washington and Madison imagined a national university that would teach good citizenship to America's younger generations (Bailyn, 1960).
The tradition of placing civics at the center of schooling continued for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. In his visit to America in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that unlike in the nations of Europe, the general thrust of American schooling was directed toward political life (Tocqueville, 1840/2002). When waves of new immigrants reached these shores in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one explicit mission of the public schools was to teach them how to become productive citizens in a democracy (Tyack, 1974).
A recent report from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania (Gould, 2011) noted that until the 1960s, U.S. high schools routinely offered courses called Civics, Problems of Democracy, and U.S. Government. Since then, however, we have seen a decades-long decline in civics instruction, fueled by increasing pressure on schools to raise student scores on tests of basic reading and math skills.
There is no gene for citizenship; it must be learned. Like any activity that relies on knowledge and skill, it can be learned well, or it can be learned badly—either with sound knowledge and good judgment or with irrationality and ignorance. The good news is that in a democracy like ours, everyone can learn to participate in constructive citizenship activities, regardless of family background, cultural heritage, or social status. The bad news is that we are failing to provide our youth with an education sufficient to this task.
Placing Citizenship Front and Center
What can we do about this crisis? First, citizenship instruction must be placed front and center in U.S. classrooms rather than relegated to the margins. We must ensure that our students learn essential civic concepts, such as the separation of powers, representative government, and the meaning and importance of the U.S. Constitution. Some programs for such teaching now exist. But such programs are not widely used, in part because the assessments that now drive the priorities of schools rarely test for civic knowledge.
And civic knowledge, although important, is not enough. To effectively participate in a democratic society, young people must also have a sense of civic purpose (Damon, 2008, 2011). Young citizens must care enough about society to be willing to act—even to sacrifice if called on. Jefferson, quoting Montesquieu, wrote in his commonplace book that "to preserve the republic we must love it … Everything depends on establishing this love in a republic; and to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education" (Gowdy, n.d.). If we are to educate students for this kind of dedicated civic purpose, we need to do the following:
- Inspire students with examples of civic leaders with whom they can identify. This means teaching students about the real lives of people who have contributed to the common good, with all their human imperfections, rather than presenting students with two-dimensional cardboard versions of remote historical figures. It also means teaching about people who share some of the students' own experiences and backgrounds.
- Unchain the teaching of history from its strict chronological sequencing. Recent stories often can be presented in a more compelling manner than stories of people who lived under long-departed, unfamiliar social conditions. Once students are captivated by stories they can understand and relate to, it's easier to interest them in a chronological historical narrative of events and people in the distant past.
- Foster justifiable pride in the best traditions of our country, especially traditions that have extended liberty and equality to ever-expanding sectors of the population. This doesn't mean that we should refrain from teaching a critical perspective on wrongful acts or mistaken policies in our nation's history, but we should place these errors in the positive context of efforts that have led to progress toward American ideals. To develop motivation to act, students need, as Jefferson noted, a love of the republic—the basic attachment known as patriotism. Whatever the society's present or past failings, there is ample material in American history to promote such an attachment, and devoted citizenship requires it.
- Focus on the particulars of American citizenship rather than on abstract notions of global education. Although it's important to convey concerns about universal human rights and social justice, these topics do not in themselves provide a realistic route to civic education. The serious tasks of citizenship that students need to learn are played out on a local or national level rather than a global one. We do not pay taxes to the world; we do not vote for a world president or senator; we do not serve in a world military or Peace Corps; we are not called to jury duty in any world courtroom. To conduct citizenship activities intelligently and responsibly, our students must know how the American system operates—and they must care enough about it to get involved.
Fostering National Pride and Identity
For many schools in the United States today, these last two recommendations will require an adjustment of their present approach. Many educators are turning to "cosmopolitanism" and "global citizenship" as the proper aim of civics instruction, deemphasizing a particular attachment to America. As global citizens, it is often believed, students should primarily identify with humanity worldwide. This global perspective is sometimes augmented by an emphasis on critical thinking regarding America's failings.
It is true that today's students must learn to operate on a global plane, for both economic and civic reasons. It is also true that students should learn to think critically about their own country's past acts and present policies. But a global perspective need not be acquired in opposition to an identification as a citizen of the United States, and critical thinking does not mean ignoring or negating the positive achievements of American democracy. Discouraging young Americans from identifying with their country, or from celebrating the historic American quest for liberty and equality, is a sure way to remove students' most powerful source of motivation to learn about citizenship. Why would students exert any effort to master the rules of a system that they don't respect?
To acquire civic knowledge as well as civic virtue, students need to care deeply about their country. More than this, in times of national peril, they must care enough to sacrifice for the common good. Over the course of history, love of country has been a foremost motivator of such sacrifices, in battles against tyrannical forces abroad and social injustices at home.
It is especially odd to see the neglect of teaching about the American identity in schools with large populations of immigrant students, which includes most public schools these days. Education historian Diane Ravitch relates that on a visit to a New York City school, she heard the principal speaking proudly of the school's efforts to celebrate the cultures of all the immigrant students. Ravitch (2006) writes, "I asked him whether the school did anything to encourage students to appreciate American culture, and he admitted with embarrassment that it did not" (p. 580).
These students were being urged to identify with the customs of the native lands they had left as well as with the abstract ideals of an amorphous global culture. Lost between these romantic affiliations was their essential identification with the nation where they would actually practice citizenship. Adding to the dysfunctionality of this misplaced instructional choice, Ravitch (2006) writes, was the absurdity of teaching "a student whose family fled to this country from a tyrannical regime or from dire poverty to identify with that nation rather than with the one that gave the family refuge" (p. 581).
An Untapped Opportunity: Teaching the Civil Rights Movement
Informed citizenship and civic purpose grow out of a basic sense of attachment. Young people become motivated to act when three conditions are in place: They identify with the object of concern, they perceive that something needs to be done on its behalf, and they have hope that their efforts can accomplish something. Teaching students to think critically about their society is beneficial because it helps establish the need for action. But at the same time, we must give students hope that their efforts can achieve results and belief that their society is worth their efforts and their sacrifices. For this last condition, students need to learn about success stories of our past.
Fortunately, such success stories are not hard to find. One opportunity that is currently wasted in too many schools is the landmark civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. A recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center (2011) concluded that, fewer than 50 years after its great successes, this movement is now rarely taught in our schools and is little known among students.
The civil rights movement is an ideal subject for conveying an understanding of citizenship and a sense of civic purpose. It contains every one of the attributes of compelling civics education. It is recent enough that living people still remember it and students can easily recognize the goals, struggles, and social conflicts that defined the major events.
The civil rights movement made tangible progress in extending rights to millions of previously disenfranchised people, yet it is not entirely completed. Thus, it establishes a sense of optimism in the context of an existing injustice that still needs to be remedied—a maximally motivating combination.
The civil rights movement embodied the fundamental aspirations to liberty and equality that have animated the best moments of American democracy since its founding. It is an American story that played out in the context of American constitutional ideals and laws. Martin Luther King Jr. claimed this heritage in his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech when he stated that his dream for the liberty and equal rights of all citizens was "deeply rooted in the American Dream" (U.S. Constitution Online, n.d.).
By learning about the civil rights movement, students can learn about universal values of human rights and social justice in the context of the particulars of U.S. citizenship—another propitious combination. This kind of material is ideally suited to inspire students' interest in citizenship and their motivation to participate.
Helping Young People Find Their Role
Beyond teaching such vital topics as the civil rights movement, schools should create opportunities for young people to participate in civic and political events within and beyond the school. In the classroom, coursework can draw connections between students' own experiences and problems historical and contemporary civic leaders faced.
In one program developed by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center for Public Policy, Central High School in Philadelphia held a forum for current mayoral candidates at the school, giving students the opportunity to question the candidates on civic issues of concern to them. On another occasion, students from the school joined with students from other Philadelphia schools to conduct civics projects on topics ranging from global warming to gun violence (Gould, 2011).
Such real-life, in-person civic experiences can bring U.S. citizenship to life for students, especially when combined with peer support and integrated into a solid curriculum that conveys the essential concepts of government and history. By participating in community civic and political events outside the classroom, young people gain a sense of their own important roles in the continuing saga of our society's search for an exemplary democracy. When students acquire pride in the past aspirations and successes of our nation, faith in its future, and confidence that they can personally make a difference—indeed, that their contributions will be vital—they are on the road to developing strong civic purpose.
