(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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