(Washington, DC) This is an audio podcast of me talking with Frank LoMonte, Executive Director of The Student Press Law Center, who defends free expression in schools. Frank and I discussed the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge and its recent report “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement.” The report is relevant to the First Amendment concerns of the Student Press Law Center because it emphasizes “free expression and civil deliberation” (p. 24-25) as essential aspects of civic education:

Young people need the space and encouragement to form and refine their own positions on political issues, even if their views happen to be controversial. Adults, schools, political officials, and youth themselves must adopt a generally tolerant and welcoming attitude toward this process of developing and expressing a political identity.

In the National Youth Survey, discussions of current issues predicted greater electoral engagement. We also find that when parents encouraged their adolescent children to express opinions and disagreements, these young people had higher electoral engagement, political knowledge, and informed voting in 2012. Teachers in our Teacher Survey put a high priority on civic discussion.

Just as young people must be free to adopt and express their own views, they must also be taught and expected to interact with peers and older citizens in ways that involve genuinely understanding alternative views, learning from these discussions, and collaborating on common goals.

In the podcast, Frank and I discuss the serious obstacles to this kind of education–unhelpful tests and standards, parental resistance, a caustic media environment–and how to overcome them.

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On NPR’s “Tell Me More” recently, I discussed the Pledge of Allegiance with host Michel Martin and reporter Mary Plummer from KPCC in Pasadena. At one point, Martin asked me whether I would replace the Pledge with something “better.” I replied that I am not necessarily against it, “but I do think there is something more important, which is actually to have a conversation, an appreciative conversation but a thoughtful conversation, about what ‘liberty and justice for all’ means–to actually take some of those words like ‘liberty’ and ‘justice,’ which are very complicated and controversial, and talk about them and understand them.”

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(Washington, DC) Here I am at the National Press Club, releasing the report of the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, entitled “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement.”

Here is the text of our press release:

While the federal government is shut down, young people across America are required to study our system of government and how a bill becomes a law. Successful civic education is both more difficult and more important when Congress and other elected officials set such poor examples. Today, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE)—the nationally recognized research center based at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service—released a groundbreaking report on how to educate young Americans for political participation in a time of deep polarization.

The new report, released this morning at a Newsmaker event hosted by the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., was written by the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge and is entitled, “All Together Now: Collaboration and Innovation for Youth Engagement.” The report provides recommendations for educators, parents, and national, state and local policymakers on how to engage American youth.

The Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge is a distinguished, bipartisan group of scholars convened by CIRCLE to investigate exclusive data collected during and after the 2012 elections on issues such as civic knowledge, voting behavior, and the educational experiences of Americans ages 25 and under—a crucial constituency in electoral politics. The report is based, in part, on data collected for the Commission from more than 6,000 young adults and 720 high school civics or government teachers, and an analysis of all states’ voting and education laws. The research was funded by the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, Robert R. McCormick Foundation, W.T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and Youth Engagement Fund.

“Teachers face an inhospitable climate for civics: tests and standards that do not reward discussing current events, considerable resistance from parents to anything touching politics, and a national political climate that alienates young people from public life,” said Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE. “The research for this new report demonstrates the urgency of better civic education in schools and community-based organizations that include youth.”

Some highlights of the report’s findings released today include:

•     Current levels of knowledgeable engagement by America’s youth remain too low. Less than half of young Americans vote, even in presidential elections, and just 10 percent of Americans between 18 and 24 met a standard of “informed engagement” in the 2012 presidential election cycle.
•     Opportunities for civic learning and engagement are highly unequal. White, wealthy students are four to six times as likely as Hispanic or Black students from low-income households to exceed the “proficient” level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in civics. Only 7 percent of students whose parents didn’t graduate from high school and who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch reached “proficient.”
•     Civic education is increasingly viewed as controversial by the public. A quarter (24.8 percent) of the teachers surveyed by the Commission thought that parents or other adults in their community would object if politics was discussed in their course—even though they were asked about a course on government or civics taught during a presidential election year.
•     Although highly controversial, voting laws have only small effects. Photo ID laws seemed to lower voting for young people who have not attended college. Same Day Voter Registration modestly, but reliably, boosts youth turnout. The overall effects of these laws are small compared to the larger challenges to engaging youth in democracy.

“Research shows that civics education works. Discussing controversial issues, engaging in service learning if it involves discussion of “root causes,” being contacted by parties and campaigns, and participating in extracurricular groups all predict good civic outcomes for students,” said Trey Grayson, former Kentucky Secretary of State (R-KY), Director of the Harvard Institute of Politics and member of CIRCLE’s Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge. “As a teacher we surveyed stated, civic education ‘is essential if we are to continue as a free democratic society’.”

“All young Americans should be informed and responsibly involved in politics and civic life. And engaging the next generation is the best long-term solution to problems of polarization, incivility, and dysfunction in national politics,” said Levine.

To break current patterns, the report recommends policymakers must embrace innovative and collaborative approaches to civic education. Examples of recommendations from the report include:

•     Lowering the voting age to 17 in municipal or state elections so that students can be encouraged to vote while they are taking a required civics class.
•     Policies that support teachers’ obligation to include discussions of current, controversial political issues in the curriculum. Assigning students to read and debate news in class and encouraging them to discuss with their parents and other adults who are important in their lives.
•     State standards for civics that focus on developing advanced civic skills, such as deliberation and collaboration, rather than memorizing facts.
•     Badges for excellence in civics. These portable, online certificates would demonstrate advanced civic skills, knowledge, and actual contributions.

Both a full list of the commission’s members and additional, detailed information about the commission, its mission and focus can be found here.

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CIRCLE (http://www.civicyouth.org) is a nonpartisan, independent, academic research center that studies young people in politics and presents detailed data on young voters in all 50 states. CIRCLE is part of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.

The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service (http://activecitizen.tufts.edu/) is a national leader whose model and research are setting the standard for higher education’s role in civic engagement education. Serving every school of Tufts University, Tisch College creates an enduring culture that prepares students to be lifelong active citizens.

Tufts University (http://www.tufts.edu/), located on three Massachusetts campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, and in Talloires, France, is recognized as one of the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs across the university’s schools is widely encouraged.

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In Stockton, CA, columnist Mike Fitzgerald argues that his city needs civic literacy to address its dire economic and political condition:

For two decades, Stockton’s leaders overpaid public employees, subsidized sprawl and racked up staggering debt.

Few objected.

When the crisis hit, a reform council hired a competent city manager. Over the ensuing three years, leaders halted past excesses and put in place fiscal reforms.

But, dismayingly, many citizens seemed unable to distinguish between the reform council and the hacks of the past. They voted almost all reformers out of office.

A surreal procession of angry citizens came before the council to denounce it.

“There are reasons to be angry,” Levine said. “But a successful citizen needs to be able to make distinctions. To figure out who in charge is bad and who is good. And it’s very disempowering if you’re so distrustful that you can’t identify an ally.”

Inability to discern friend from foe explains the blanket anger. It’s a primal scream, as opposed to literate civic discourse.

Angry, unwitting citizens are part of an incompetence loop. They fail to recognize good service; they pelt all councils with hostility; which repels good leaders; which leaves Bozos; who govern poorly; thus further disaffecting the masses.

For some causes of civic illiteracy, such as poverty, there are no easy solutions. A couple obvious remedies are to strengthen literacy programs and civics classes.

Meanwhile, in the University of Florida’s student newspaper, The Alligator, I challenge students to get more involved in civic reform:

… We face profound problems the government isn’t addressing — persistent unemployment, climate change, violence and mass incarceration and the slow desertion of our great industrial cities, to name just a few.

Although we should expect more from the government and our political leaders, they cannot solve these problems on their own. People can solve even the most difficult problems if they are organized and active. That is not a wish — it is a finding of extensive research. But where are we going to get more active and responsible citizens?

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(Washington, DC) I’d like to talk briefly about what we have to do to improve civic education in America.

First, I need to say something very quick about the goal. What should students learn?

I agree with people who say that kids should study the founding documents of the American republic, their origins and great principles. Citizens will not protect these ideas unless they understand them. And the founding documents are worthy of understanding and exploration.

But understanding perennial principles is not enough. Students must also deliberate with fellow citizens about current controversies. That is a skill human beings have to learn. It does not come automatically, and it is certainly not being modeled by our media or the national government. Students must learn from experience how to talk with others who may disagree about controversial issues.

And deliberation is not enough. Talking without ever acting is pretty empty. You can say most anything without learning from the results or affecting the world. At least sometimes, students should be part of groups that talk about what they should do, then actually do what they have talked about doing, and then reflect on the experience, holding themselves accountable for the results.

By the way, I am not necessarily talking about service-learning projects as the opportunities for students to plan projects and then act as citizens. Students can act in many other ways as well—for example, when they manage school clubs and groups, produce collaborative reports and presentations, or even play roles in fictional simulations.

Like deliberation, collaboration is something we must learn from experience, with guidance from teachers and other adults. It does not come naturally.

I have mentioned three things to learn: the fundamental principles and structure of the republic, actual deliberation, and collaboration. The three go together beautifully. The constitutional principles underlie the deliberation and work. The work informs the discussion. The discussion guides the work.

Many social studies teachers know how to bring all three together—certainly not every day, but over the course of a semester or a school year. We conducted a national survey of civics teachers this summer and found most of them committed to just this kind of education.

But a lot of things stand in the way.

Most state standards are just long lists of facts to cover. A teacher we surveyed recently said:

“Students do not ‘debate’—they argue and have no support for their opinions. Should that be a priority? Well, of course, but I don’t have time to teach it. I am bound by a set of state guidelines as to what I am to teach even though there is no high stake testing for government classes.”

Also, most states don’t test in civics, and those that do ask exclusively multiple-choice questions that have nothing to do with deliberation or collaboration. Our research finds that whether a state has a test makes no difference to what students know, perhaps because the existing tests are not much good.

Opportunities for civic learning are deeply unequal, most widely available to students in wealthy communities who are on course to college.

Teachers get very little education or support for interactive civic education. Nationally, most recall never having received relevant professional development once they are in the classroom. Only 10 states require instructors who teach civics or government classes to have certification in civics or government.

Last week, the National Council for the Social Studies released a new framework for state social studies standards called the C3 Framework: College, Career, and Citizenship. Maryland and Kentucky are already using it to revise their state standards, and I am confident other states will join them. For full disclosure, I was deeply involved in writing the C3, so I am biased. But I can vouch for that fact that all the themes I have mentioned today are included: foundational principles, deliberation, action.

Implementing the C3 Framework would be a good step. But civic education completely depends on quality. Standards mean little without supportive materials, teacher education, and assessments. A test for students or a teacher certification requirement can be valuable if it is well designed, aligned with the curriculum, and if the people who face the assessment have opportunities to learn what they need to know. If not, the assessment can hurt. To implement a test or requirement well, over time, takes support from organizations outside of higher education: the legal community, higher education, the media, parents.

On Oct. 9, CIRCLE will release the report of the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, which is entitled All Together Now: Innovation and Collaboration for Youth Engagement. It is based on truly exhaustive research, including surveys or interviews with more than 6,000 youth, students, and stakeholders. Note the title, which calls for collaboration. The report will recommend state coalitions for civics that can be in the business for the long term, not only demanding a new law or policy, but staying around to make sure the implementation is good.

We know that many other institutions influence kids’ civic development: parents and families, the news media, social media, campaigns and elections, city governments. Schools matter, but they cannot by themselves get the job done. Civic education is a responsibility of society as a whole, and a diverse coalition or task force can call on many different sectors as opportunities arise.

We have been involved with several such efforts. The one that has had the most legislative impact is The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, based at the University of Central Florida and the University of Florida. The Joint Center grew from a 2006 bipartisan effort, launched by Congressman Lou Frey and Senator Bob Graham, to improve civic education in Florida. Since then, with the help of many other organizations and people, the state’s social studies standards and benchmarks have been revised and strengthened and the Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Civics Education Act has added civics to Florida’s list of tested subjects. In addition to Sen. Graham, the Joint Center’s director, Doug Dobson, is here today.

Another model is The Illinois Civic Mission Coalition, which includes educators, administrators, students, universities, funders, elected officials, policymakers, and representatives from the private and non-profit sectors. They wrote a document called the Civic Blueprint for Illinois High Schools. They have enlisted partner schools that are committed to the cause, and they also advocate at the state level and draw on all their members for ongoing action and support.

In California, Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson have created a high-powered task force on civics. And of course, at the national level, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, brilliantly directed by the unstoppable Ted McConnell, is the coalition for civics.

These efforts vary, but they all recognize the same truths. We are not doing enough to engage our young people in civic life. There are no simple solutions. A test, a mandatory course, an easier voting system—none of those reforms will make much difference just by itself. Engaging our young people will require the dedicated efforts of many people, in many contexts, over time.

None of that should surprise us. These are the same truths we teach—or ought to teach—our young people about politics in general. They are going to face serious public problems all their lives: the problems that we inherited or created and are leaving to them. No serious problem will yield unless people work together to define and address it—each contributing his or her own assets and ideas. Working together on public causes is not just a chore or burden but is also a satisfying aspect of the good life.

These are the lessons we should be sharing with our young people, and they apply to us as well.

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One of my projects for the last several years has been to help write the C3 (College, Career and Citizenship) Framework for the social studies. It was released today by the National Council for the Social Studies, and CIRCLE issued a supportive release.

All states have social studies standards, but these documents tend to be incoherent, excessively long and detailed, and poorly aligned with tests, textbooks, and course requirements. The same has been true in other disciplines, and the now-controversial Common Core is an effort to standardize the standards for English and math to a better model. Our C3 Framework, instead, recognizes the right, power, and obligation of states to set their own standards. But it provides general guidance. Maryland and Kentucky are implementing the C3 Framework, and I hope other states will follow suit. The more states use it, the more the market will grow for improved texts and materials, tests and assessments, and teacher education. Unless they are implemented well, new standards will not make much difference. But they are a start.

One thing I especially like about the C3 is the “instructional arc,” which goes from “developing questions and planning inquiries” to “communicating conclusions and taking informed action.” We authors realized that students don’t get to decide what questions to ask, in a vacuum. The teacher decides that it is time to study Native Americans or the New Deal. But we wanted to indicate that asking questions is the start of real intellectual work.

“Taking informed action” may be controversial, but it is essential, because we learn advanced civic skills through practice. I would make two points in support of the “Informed Action” section: 1) Action can mean many things, not just community service or activism. Solving problems within the classroom or managing a student group would also count. And 2) action is not a newfangled addition to the social studies curriculum. It was a stronger component of civics in the mid-20th century, when courses called “community civics” and “problems of democracy” were very common. It is already mentioned in many state standards, albeit in miscellaneous ways. If anything, action has diminished as political science has become the model for high school civics. We are just putting a bit of it back in.

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I am proud to have joined the board of Discovering Justice and will attend my first board meeting later today. Discovering Justice teaches younger children about the law and the justice system in ways that increase their appreciation of legal norms and institutions while also encouraging them to use “the power of their own voices.”

Civic education is delivered by the 165,000 full-time social studies teachers in American schools. It is funded by states and localities as part of the general education system. However, independent nonprofit organizations serve important roles in producing materials and lesson plans, developing new models and approaches (“R&D”), convening and educating teachers, and advocating for supportive policies. For instance, I am proud to serve on the board of Street Law, Inc., and my organization works closely with iCivics and Generation Citizen on their evaluations.

Discovering Justice is highly unusual in focusing on younger children. Although some of the other civics NGOs have programs for grades k-8, they all emphasize adolescence. Much less is known about the civic development of young children and the lasting impact of providing civic education in the early grades. As the eminent political scientist Sir Bernard Crick lamented in 1999, “there is no political Piaget.” The way to find out what actually works is generally to develop, test, and refine interventions that may work. Usable research almost always begins with practical experimentation. Discovering Justice is doing that work for civic education k-8.

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Last year, I wrote a piece for CNN on how to teach 9/11 in public schools. That article will be part of a Twitter chat this evening at 9 pm eastern. The hashtag is #PTchat.

In brief summary, I argued that states should not require the teaching of 9/11, because states should generally refrain from requiring specific historical topics at all. If they go down that path, then everyone who thinks that X is important will demand that X be included in state standards to prove that the government cares. That’s why Illinois requires teachers to discuss Leif Erickson, the Irish Potato Famine, and the importance of trees and birds.  Long lists prevent curricular depth and diversity among schools. For instance, in Boston, 8th graders will focus on Reconstruction for several months, in partnership with Facing History. That would be impossible if they had to race to cover 9/11 by way of many other specified topics.

However, 9/11 is an example of a good topic to cover. It has the advantage of being recent, and too often, history class stops at World War II or the 1960s (in part because the accumulated state requirements take too long to cover). Ending more than a generation ago conveys the message that history is over and students have no role in it.

If teachers do elect to discuss 9/11 in social studies class, it should be treated relatively dispassionately, in a scholarly way, and students should be encouraged to consider the related controversies (such as whether the US should have invaded Afghanistan and Iraq as a result). We don’t want to indoctrinate kids with any particular view, but we do want them to learn to deliberate and reason about complex and contentious issues.

One subtle question is what counts as a legitimately open question for discussion, as opposed to a question that should be considered settled in a social studies classroom. (Diana Hess is the expert on this topic.) For instance, slavery is a settled question, but same-sex marriage, even though I strongly favor it, ought to be presented as unresolved. The suggestion that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy should not be treated on a par with the idea that al-Qaeda attacked the US. A student who thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy should be held accountable for providing very rigorous evidence (which I believe will be impossible). Nevertheless, the attack can be understood in several broader political contexts, and students should be encouraged to explore the controversies with due respect for evidence and logic.

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