July 1, 2011
by
William Damon (Senior Fellow and member of the Virtues of a Free Society Task Force)
Young people in this country are failing civics, which is a crisis for the nation.
The
New York Times headline from May could not have been more compelling: "
Failing grades on civics exam called a 'crisis.'"
The accompanying story reported bleak news from the latest National
Assessment of Student Progress (widely known as the "nation's report
card"). Among our present crop of high school seniors, only one in four
scored at least "proficient" in knowledge of U. S. citizenship. Of all
the academic subjects tested, civics and the closely linked subject of
history came in last: "a smaller proportion of fourth and eighth graders
demonstrated proficiency in civics than in any other subject the
federal government has tested since 2005, except history, American
students' worst subject."
Illustration by Barbara Kelley
Not surprisingly, the story drew appalled reactions from public
figures such as Sandra Day O'Conner ("we have a crisis on our hands").
Charles Quigley, a civics educator, noted that "the results confirm an
alarming and continuing trend that civics in America is on the decline."
He declared that in the U.S. today, "civic education is facing a real
'civic recession.'" Yet within a week, despite the perception of crisis
among those who were paying attention, the story vanished from sight.
This may be the most alarming part of the crisis—our society's seeming
lack of awareness of the grave threat that civic ignorance among our
youth poses to the future of our democracy.
Perhaps this important story was largely ignored because it was not
really news. For the past ten years or more, virtually every glimpse
into American students' views on citizenship has revealed both a lack of
understanding and a lack of interest. An American Enterprise Institute
study earlier this year found that most social studies teachers doubted
that their students grasped core U.S. citizenship concepts such as the
Bill of Rights or the separation of powers. A recent Department of
Education study found that only nine percent of U.S. high school
students are able to cite reasons why it is important for citizens to
participate in a democracy, and only six percent are able to identify
reasons why having a constitution benefits a country. The Center for
Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) has
reported a decades-long, step-wise decline in interest in political
affairs among college freshmen—from over 60 percent of the population in
1966 to less than half that percentage in our current period.
A free society requires an informed and virtuous citizenry.
For the past ten years, our research team at Stanford has interviewed
broad cross-sections of American youth about what U. S. citizenship
means to them. Here is one high school student's reply, not atypical:
"We just had (American citizenship) the other day in history. I forget
what it was." Another student told us 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
citizen...I don’t like that whole thing. It’s like, citizen, no citizen;
it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like to be a good citizen—I don’t
know, I don’t want to be a citizen...it’s stupid to me."
Such statements reflect more than an ignorance of citizenship—though
they may provide us with clues about the source of students'
present-day lack of knowledge. Beyond not knowing what U.S. citizenship
entails, many young Americans today are not motivated to learn about
how to become a fully engaged citizen of their country. They simply do
not care about their status as American citizens. Notions such as civic
virtue, civic duty, or devotion to their country mean little to them.
This is not true of all young people today—there are exceptions in
virtually every community—but it accurately describes a growing trend
that encompasses a large portion of our younger generation.
This trend has not arisen in isolation. Indeed, the attitudes of many
young Americans are closely aligned with intellectual positions that
they likely have never encountered first-hand. In our leading
intellectual and educational circles, the entire notion of national
devotion is now in dispute. For example, in a book about the future of
citizenship, a law professor recently wrote: "Longstanding notions of
democratic citizenship are becoming obsolete …American identity is
unsustainable in the face of globalization." As a replacement for
commitment to a nation-state, the author wrote, "loyalties…are moving to
transnational communities defined by many different ways: by race,
ethnicity, gender, religion, age, and sexual orientation." In similar
fashion, many influential educators are turning to "cosmopolitanism" and
"global citizenship" as the proper aim of civics instruction,
de-emphasizing the attachment to any particular country such as the
United States. As global citizens, it is argued, our primary
identification should be with the humanity of the world, and our primary
obligation should be to the universal ideals of human rights and
justice. Devotion to one's own nation state, commonly referred to as
patriotism, is suspect because it may turn into a militant chauvinism or
a dangerous "my country right or wrong" perspective.
As one high school student put it, "...It’s like to
be a good citizen—I don’t know, I don’t want to be a citizen...it’s
stupid to me."
While the lofty ideals of cosmopolitanism and world citizenship are
understandable, they do not in themselves provide a realistic route to
civic education. For one thing, the serious tasks of citizenship that
students need to learn are all 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 army
or peace corps; and we are not called to jury duty in any world
courtroom. When we write e-mails to our congressional representatives or
vote and campaign for candidates running for elected office, these
activities are part of our national civic life, not part of any global
event. As philosopher Michael Walzer wrote, "I am not a citizen of the
world…I am not even aware that there is a world such that one could be a
citizen of."
To conduct our U.S. citizenship activities intelligently and
responsibly, we must know how the American system operates; and we must
care enough to make the effort to get involved. More than this, in times
of national peril, we must care enough to
sacrifice for the
common good if needed. This requires more than civic knowledge: it
demands devotion to a cause greater than ourselves. Over the course of
American history, love of country has been the foremost motivator of
such sacrifices for the greater good, in battles both against tyrannical
forces abroad and social injustices domestically.
Discouraging young Americans from identifying with their country—and,
indeed, from celebrating the traditional American quest for liberty and
equal rights—is a sure way to remove their most powerful source of
motivation to learn about U. S. citizenship. Why would a student exert
any effort to master the rules of a system that the student has no
respect for and no interest in being part of? To acquire civic knowledge
as well as civic virtue, students need to care about their country.
It is especially odd to see schools with large immigrant populations
neglect teaching students about American identity and the American
tradition. Educational critic Diane Ravitch observed this phenomenon
when visiting a New York City school whose principal proudly spoke of
the school's efforts to celebrate the cultures of all the immigrant
students. Ravitch 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."
These and other American students are being urged to identify with,
on the one hand, customs from the native lands they have departed and,
on the other hand, with the abstract ideals of an amorphous global
culture. Lost in between these romantic affiliations is an
identification with the nation where these students actually will
practice citizenship. Adding to the dysfunction of this educational
choice, as Ravitch writes, is 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."
We are not "citizens of the world." We do not pay taxes to the world; we do not vote for a world president or senator.
How can we do better? Of course we need to teach students the
Constitution, along with its essential underlying principles such as
separation of powers, representative government, and Federalism.
Excellent programs for such teaching now exist. But these programs are
not widely used amidst today's single-minded focus on basic skills.
Compounding this neglect, the school assessments that drive the
priorities of teachers infrequently test for civic knowledge. To
preserve the American heritage of liberty and democracy for future
generations, citizenship instruction must be placed front and center in
U. S. classrooms rather than relegated to the margins.
As for the essential matter of motivation, the only way to capture
students' interest is to inspire in them some justifiable pride in their
country's best traditions. Fortunately, U. S. success stories are not
hard to find. In our recent history, three 20th Century cases could be
taught to promote pride in the American tradition: 1) the civil rights
movement that extended rights to millions of citizens in the United
States; 2) victories over totalitarianism (especially fascism,
communism, and other militaristic tyrannies) that extended new freedoms
to millions of subjugated people in Europe and Asia; and 3) the building
of a middle class that offered economic freedom to millions of ordinary
citizens, and to immigrants coming to American in search of a better
life as well.
We live in a time marked by anxieties over many perceived threats to
our way of life—terrorism, economic collapse, and climate change, to
mention just a few of the widespread fears making our headlines these
days. But there is a looming crisis closer at hand that poses every bit
as grave a threat to the future of our way of life: the very real
possibility that our democracy will be left in the hands of a citizenry
unprepared to govern it and unwilling the make the sacrifices needed to
preserve it. A free society requires an informed and virtuous citizenry.
Failing this, as Ben Franklin long ago warned, despotism lies just
around the corner.
William Damon is a professor of education at Stanford
University, director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and a senior
fellow at the Hoover Institution. For the past twenty-five years, Damon
has written on character development at all stages of life. Damon's
recent books include
Failing Liberty 101 (Hoover Press, 2011);
The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find their Calling in Life (2008); and
The Moral Advantage: How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing (2004). Damon was founding editor of
New Direction for Child and Adolescent Development and is editor in chief of
The Handbook of Child Psychology
(1998 and 2006 editions). He is an elected member of the National
Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research
Association.
