Last week, the country watched the first contested fight for the role of House speaker in a century. Kevin McCarthy鈥檚 15-ballot bid concerned the nation鈥檚 third-ranking constitutional office, the balance of power in the Republican party, and whether decades of increasingly centralized power would be reversed in the House of Representatives.
This was an important fight. To make sense of it, one needed to understand Congress, the speakership, how the centralization of power and erosion of the committee system has changed the House, and more. The dispute offered a case study in principled opposition (Chip Roy鈥檚 fight to loosen the speaker鈥檚 hold on the House) vs. the performative antics of the Matt Gaetz faction.
Unfortunately, as a long-ago civics teacher, this all reminded me that these are precisely the kinds of topics that get shorted in civics education today鈥攅ven by those committed to the subject.
As I鈥檝e observed before, civics education today frequently seems less intent on teaching about political institutions, the virtues of checks and balances, and the importance of restraint than on encouraging and celebrating political engagement. Just last fall, a RAND found that K-12 teachers are more likely to think civics education should be about 鈥減romoting respect for and safeguard of the environment鈥� than about 鈥減romoting knowledge of social, political, and civic institutions.鈥�
Ironically, such 鈥渁ctivism鈥�-centered instruction winds up turning students into passive observers of the democratic process. If someone doesn鈥檛 know what the speaker does, how the House works, or what the stakes are, the entire clash just becomes a performative sideshow. Someone may vote or show up at a rally with a sign, but they don鈥檛 know how government works or how decisions get made. And this makes it tough to cut through all the social media and cable news hysterics to determine who鈥檚 behaving responsibly.
More fundamentally, fixating on activism misses the point of civics education. If the past half-dozen years have taught us anything, it should be that political participation alone doesn鈥檛 safeguard self-government or the health of the republic. Safeguarding democracy requires responsible behavior on the part of election officials and local officeholders in positions devoid of glamor. Responsible governance requires public officials to accept the legitimacy of elections and lawmaking even when they don鈥檛 like the result.
A healthy nation needs citizens who understand why all this matters, and the ways in which separation of powers, checks and balances, and protections for those with whom they disagree help make it easier for those on the losing side of an election or vote to live with the result. Yet, another RAND survey鈥攖his one of the nation鈥檚 social studies teachers鈥� that barely half thought it essential that students understand concepts like the separation of powers or checks and balances or even that students should learn to 鈥渂e respectful of authority.鈥�
The results aren鈥檛 hard to see. The University of Pennsylvania鈥檚 Annenberg Public Policy Center has just 26 percent of Americans could name the three branches of government. The Institute for Citizens and Scholars has that only 1 in 3 Americans could pass the nation鈥檚 Citizenship Test.
This is why the fixation on activism is short-sighted. In fact, cable news viewers who get whipped into a fury about the speaker鈥檚 fight without understanding the context, stakes, or consequences are arguably doing more to retard than advance healthful self-government. The same is true when students learn to make furious demands for instant action before they grasp the ways in which checks and balances or separation of powers have perhaps protected things they hold dear.
Students learning to pursue their civic passions is a good thing. I鈥檓 all for students learning to champion the causes or candidates they believe in. Fact is, though, this is also the easy part of civic education. Teaching students why the speaker fight mattered鈥攁nd how to judge the stakes and claims for themselves鈥攊s the harder part of civic education. That鈥檚 the stuff which equips students to understand government and make it work differently, so that they鈥檙e not attending rallies, posting angry videos, and then lamenting that nothing ever changes.
