Civics education is all the rage at the moment. And for good reason. In a recent article in Commentary, (“A Republic, If You Can Teach It”), Robert Pondiscio reports the grim news that: “Scores on the long-running National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in history and civics make the same students dismal performance in reading and math seem robust by comparison. . .‘the typical American student is stunningly ignorant of her history and government,’ with only 20 percent scoring ‘proficient’ in civics and 31 percent scoring ‘below basic.’ NAEP history test scores are even worse.”
Pondiscio’s article is a review of The Cradle of Citizenship by James Traub. Traub recognizes that “history and civics standards, curricular material, official pronouncements from school leaders, and indeed the entire atmosphere surrounding the schools is shaped by progressive views so pervasive as barely even to be recognized as views.” But he is defensive of “action civics” — “an approach to civic education favored by progressive educators that valorizes student participation in real-world political or community projects.”
According to Pondiscio, Traub believes such experiences “offer students an authentic encounter with democratic participation.” Pondiscio replies that “Action civics stumbles, like so many education fads before it, because it assumes – incorrectly – that doing is a substitute for knowing”:
In practice, cultivating an activist impulse without deep background knowledge does not produce independent civic agency so much as the appearance of it. Students learn how to act, but not how to judge; how to mobilize, but not how to understand. The result is not self-government but a kind of civic ventriloquism – preparing young people to march energetically in someone else’s army, convinced all the while that they are acting on their own.
I have an alternative. This past semester, I assigned my students to attend a city council meeting, a county commissioners meeting, and a school board meeting. They were to sit and listen, then report and discuss what they saw. The results were instructive.
• First, they had to find where those meetings were held.
• Second, they had to get themselves there. They’re adults; I wasn’t taking them. No car? Take the bus, like plenty of people do who live in the city
• And third, they found there were no long speeches. Speakers get no more than two minutes to make their case.
I expected that what my students would find was mostly chaos and craziness, and that they would be somewhat put off by this. I was wrong. To their credit, my students found the good amid the confusion. And to their credit, they realized quickly they didn’t know enough to make any sensible suggestions about the things being discussed.
The city council was discussing the closure of a road to make way for a public works project. Some citizens complained this would make it impossible for them to get to work. “What did they think?” I asked. They admitted they didn’t know where that road was, why it was being closed, or whether it would cause insoluble problems for these people.
Other citizens complained about a homeless shelter slated to open near their school. The mayor reassured them it would be a “great” center with “the best people” and “expert care,” so no worries. “Were they reassured?” Not really, but they weren’t sure. They wanted to help the homeless. But a center right down the street from a school? They understood why the parents would be concerned. They also understood why people would be out in the streets demonstrating for the center (“Don’t be heartless; we have to care for the homeless!”) and against it (“These are our children!”)
At the county commissioners’ meeting, they met up with another important issue: federalism. The commissioners were supposed to take up the re-districting approved by the Texas legislature. But that re-districting plan was being challenged in court, so the commissioners’ meeting was cancelled, even though there were other issues on the agenda. This left my students sitting there waiting for the rest of the meeting until a police officer kicked them out.
Students had a clearer sense of things at the school board meetings because they had more recently been in school themselves – although not all had gone to public school – or they had siblings still in school. And yet the discussions still largely escaped them. Should this retired teacher they didn’t know be given an award, or were the people opposed right that she shouldn’t? And was this issue worth thirty minutes of debate and discussion? How about the new testing regime being proposed? They knew nothing about it.
Now the key question: Would they go again now that they had been once and seen what goes on? Yes, they said, although it’s impossible to know. What they realized was that, if they did go, they would need to be well prepared if they were going to have a positive impact. And they would need to condense all their wisdom into a two-minute talk.
As Catholics, we are to be a leaven within society. As St. Augustine taught, those who are devoted to the City of God often make the best citizens, because their love for the Good is more powerful than their lust for dominating others. And as Catholics, we believe that the convictions of our faith can be defended by reason.
What I hoped my students learned above all is that democracy – real representative democracy, not just bitching in the streets – requires experience, knowledge, patience, and a generosity of spirit. We all have our “big ideas” about how things should be done. We know how we would run things if we were in charge. But so does everyone else. Democracy isn’t about “getting my way”; it is about coming together with others to find ways to serve the common good.
Since we don’t teach or encourage students to do this anymore, we shouldn’t be surprised that it doesn’t happen often. I’m pretty sure that taking students to march in angry, self-righteous protests isn’t going to do it.
