What an Effective Civics Education Must Do

A s student demonstrations disappear from the news cycle, and commencement ceremonies are either canceled or broken down into small groups to avoid critical masses, now is the time to ask what’s next for American universities.

The demonstrations themselves are proof that American educators, officials, and administrators have not done a good job of educating students for meaningful civic engagement. The students’ intractable demands, invasions of public spaces and buildings on university campuses, and repeated refusals to negotiate with university authorities in good faith can be either dismissed as hooliganism or, more productively, seen as an indication that many students have lost faith in democratic governance and believe that power plays are the only way to get their way.

A welcome wave of proposals to teach civic engagement and delve into the lessons of the Founding Fathers has become visible across the nation. Programs are popping up to provide the needed education. There is Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, the University of North Carolina’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, the University of Texas at Austin’s School for Civic Leadership, and the Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to name just a few. It is rumored there may soon be five new programs in Ohio alone.

All these programs now face a crucial challenge: how to bridge the divide between study and practice. Yes, we teach Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Politics, Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, and The Federalist Papers — all good things — but how do we prepare students for the often-messy business of actual civic engagement? While Plato’s Republic is a brilliant and instructive book, its portrayal of steady, reasoned discourse is a far cry from what students would find in most city-council meetings.

I propose that only a mixture of both reading and experience would provide the training that students need to become wise civic leaders. Yes, we should have our students read Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Tocqueville, and all the rest, but they should also go to the meetings of the local city council and hear the county commissioners and the local school board. They should learn to stay quiet, listen, and observe, because they just don’t know enough yet. Whether they’re from out of town or local, students will most likely lack enough experience of a city’s management or investment in its future to have earned the privilege of expressing an opinion.

Students should then return to class and discuss the pros and cons of what they’ve seen — not from a position of superiority but with the goal of understanding what they’ve learned from the citizens who cared enough to show up at the meeting or get themselves elected to a local office with little prestige and who are now besieged with endless complaints and biased coverage from media outlets. Most of all, students need to understand that while books may have an admirable clarity, democratic governance in practice is a messy business. It requires patience and the skill of dealing with others whose needs and perspectives differ from one’s own.

Students should also ride along with police officers to understand the darker sides of their local community. They should learn about the economics of the town, the underserved communities where food is available only from local bodegas. It would be invaluable to choose some product made or sold in town and have students trace the supply chain from conception or field to the store. This would help them understand that products don’t just appear magically on the shelves. Farmers must grow the food; others, transport and store it; still others, distribute it to producers who process and package the products we buy. Also, where do our computers, iPhones, automobiles, refrigerators, and natural gas come from? How do they reach our homes or dorms? What would involvement in the local economy entail? What does it depend on?

The national news media have us convinced that government and economics are federal topics. But citizenship and government are not just about power-brokering in New York and Washington, D.C. Students need to know that the many things they care about are (or should be) handled locally. For that to happen, they must be ready to engage in their local institutions in good faith. We need to teach our young people the skills and self-discipline required for republican self-government and imbue them with the faith and love they need to preserve it, lest we lose the privilege and freedom of controlling our own affairs — the gift bequeathed to us at great cost by our forebears.