Want to provide a classical education? Teach civics
Bruce AndersonLedger Columnist
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A good deal of the education policy conversation these days is about a “classical” education.
There is a good bit of merit in this, at least in the part I see as a real addition to the content currently taught from kindergarten through high school. As an instructor in higher education, I’m on one of the last stops on this educational journey. We have expectations of what may have been taught along the way to the students making their way to our doors.
But expectations vary by discipline. In my own field, I might not notice the lack of knowledge in fundamental physics, for example, but I do notice a scarcity in the knowledge of civics.
In theory, every student graduating high school should have the basics of what have come to be called the “founding documents:” The Declaration of Independence and its manifest values, the Articles of Confederation and, most importantly, the Constitution of the United States. The USA has moved in upward progression as a nation since 1789 and the amendments to our basic document reveal this. I would also fantasize that a general idea of the causes of the American revolution and what followed in creating the USA might be broached – even taught.
There is a general deficiency of both motivation and understanding of the importance of engagement with the system - voting, considering policy alternatives, understanding the other side of any political or policy question. This lack of interest and the accompanying lack of basic information are clearly related. We cannot expect citizens – or future citizens – to act on knowledge they do not have. We are raising a generation that leaves behind a vast reservoir of otherwise talented, bright people with no idea what citizenship or Americanism really means.
Some of this may be taught at our level, of course, but inclusion at the K-12 level, systematically and objectively, would serve not only the student I see in the classroom, but certainly more importantly, the students I will never see: those who choose to move into specialized education, take jobs in training in the trades, or simply go to work and start families. That students might only get this sort of education at the college level crassly and arrogantly delegitimizes these choices and deprives us of a large pool of citizens educated in basic citizenship.
Because not every high school student is bound on the path to a four-year degree in an institution like mine, and because those that are would be so well-served by receiving this most foundational information, I would advocate its inclusion for every single student. It cannot be only the province of an AP Government class.
A toolkit of basic civic education, reinforced several times across the grades, gives us a collection of things we all understand to be true about how the nation works, making all arguments more meaningful because of a common point of reference. The entire system we live in is predicated on the idea that all will know some basic facts, and that the millions of shades of interest embodied in the country will be logically and sensibly represented in government as a result.
When we discuss a classical education, this is what comes to my mind as once-cherished elements of that tradition, now largely gone.
Basic civics should not be a secret shared only by the elite.
Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern
