{"id":111845,"date":"2025-08-27T23:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=111845"},"modified":"2025-08-27T23:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T04:38:09","slug":"111845","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=111845","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

CIVICS REVOLUTION: Conservatives Are Reviving Traditional Education With a Modern Twist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The classroom subject of \u201ccivics\u201d evokes antiquated images of Cold War-era conformity, but Andrew Hart describes a recent teacher workshop on civics with a schoolboy\u2019s exuberance: \u201cIt was really refreshing. I was, like, wow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The weeklong seminar at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia delved into the writings of Aristotle and Cicero, the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and civil rights titans W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cWe spent the first full day just talking about philosophy,\u201d said Hart, who teaches history and government at a Florida private school. \u201cIt was almost like a graduate course with a professor who is an expert.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Forty-five states are considering 198 bills related to K-12 civics education.<\/div>\n
AP<\/div>\n
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The Jack Miller Center, a leading civics education provider, organized the seminar, part of a cottage industry that is reviving the tradition of studying the rights and duties of American citizenship, updated for modern sensibilities. After decades of neglect in the wake of the 1960s social upheavals and emphasis on STEM competency, civics is making a comeback. Universities are opening multimillion-dollar civics schools, some with deans and doctoral programs, and more than half the states now have civics requirements or competency tests in K-12. The boom reached a crescendo this summer with 45 states considering 198 bills related to K\u201312 civic education.<\/p>\n

But reintroducing the subject in today\u2019s hyper-partisan climate is not simply about making students learn the ABCs of government and practicing the art of rhetoric. Civics now comes with a warning label \u2013 \u201cthe most bitterly contested subject in education today,\u201d\u00a0according to The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 placing it squarely in the crosshairs of the culture wars.<\/p>\n

The tension around civics reflects the national disagreement about the meaning of the United States in the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century: Is America a land of opportunity and freedom for all? Or is it designed to award unearned privilege to a select few, and second-class status to everyone else? The answer determines how middle schoolers and high schoolers are taught about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Dr. King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech, and other key texts of the American experience.<\/p>\n

Ideological disagreements over the nation\u2019s identity have led to bitter clashes over curricula, reading assignments, and library books in local school boards and state legislatures.<\/p>\n

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Since the federal government has limited say over what K-12 schools teach \u2013 and Congress punted in 2022 on a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand K-12 civics with $1 billion in annual funding \u2013 states and local school districts are developing their own civics pilot projects,\u00a0standards<\/a>, and tests. Nonprofits of all political stripes stand at the ready to supply curricula, study guides, and professional support for teachers.<\/p>\n

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Progressive groups have redoubled their ongoing efforts, developing educational materials that recast the nation\u2019s history as a counternarrative of righteous resistance against colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, and the patriarchy. Such projects include Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019s Learning for Justice<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Teaching Tolerance<\/a>,\u00a0Zinn Education Project<\/a>,\u00a0National Black Lives Matter at School<\/a>,\u00a0and the 1619 Project Curriculum<\/a>.\u00a0Ethnic studies<\/a>\u00a0courses, which are required\u00a0for high school graduation<\/a>\u00a0in some states and school districts, explicitly draw on\u00a0Critical Race Theory<\/a>\u00a0and queer advocacy to emphasize intersectionality, oppression, power, privilege, and \u201cwhiteness\u201d as the foundational values of Western Civilization<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In opposing this trend, some conservatives are moving away from the reflexive, flag-waving patriotism of the past. It \u201cteaches that the founders are awesome and Lincoln perfects it. And then you needed Martin Luther King to finish things off,\u201d the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat told Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on a\u00a0recent podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like certain versions of that conservative patriotic education don\u2019t feel as deep and rich as America deserves,\u201d Douthat said.<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia-based Jack Miller Center and other civics advocates have settled on a synthesis of both perspectives, avoiding the extremes of cynicism and nostalgia that reduce the nation\u2019s history to tropes and caricatures. The center\u2019s eponymous founder committed his fortune from the office supply business to \u201csolving the national crisis of uninformed citizenship by teaching America\u2019s founding principles and history.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The center aims to de-escalate the subject by bypassing interpretive textbooks and online learning aids and going directly to the original documents \u2013 the Federalist Papers, presidential speeches and letters, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and much more.<\/p>\n

Its K-12 teacher workshops include the types of readings and writers that were largely ignored in the stodgy civics instruction a generation ago: first lady Abigail Adams, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, the Slavery Provisions of the U.S. Constitution, pro-slavery advocate John Calhoun, poets Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, Nikole Hannah-Jones (the architect of the NYT\u2019s 1619 Project), and Amanda Gorman, the African American poet who recited her verse, \u201cThis Hill We Climb,\u201d at President Biden\u2019s 2021 inauguration.<\/p>\n

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\"Lucas<\/div>\n
Lucas Morel says American identity is forged out of disagreement.<\/div>\n
Lucas Morel<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This viewpoint diversity reflects the Jack Miller Center\u2019s philosophy that American identity is forged out of disagreement, and that understanding the nation\u2019s history and development requires familiarity with the historical and literary documents written by the leading voices in those controversies, said Lucas Morel, professor of politics at Washington & Lee College in Virginia. He leads Jack Miller Center teacher seminars and serves on the organization\u2019s board of directors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe founding in itself and the early American period \u2013 these were products of debate and discussion,\u201d Morel said. \u201cAnd we have found over time that the teachers find these programs so engaging precisely because the Jack Miller Center does not say, \u2018These are the eight things you have to believe about the Declaration of Independence, and you have to write lesson plans that have these answers.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jack Miller Center\u2019s influence comes from leveraging its 1,300-plus affiliated academicians, who have participated in its workshops, to train middle- and high-school teachers in the civics canon. At the\u00a013 civics schools at public universities<\/a>, nine deans or directors are center fellows, and one in three civics faculty is an alumnus of its professor training and networking programs. More than 130 of these scholars, or about 10% of the professors who have participated in center\u00a0programs<\/a>, have taught some 3,000 K-12 teachers in summer institutes during the past decade, and these numbers are expected to grow. By the end of this year, the Jack Miller Center will have trained about 4,000 K-12 educators in this growing network.<\/p>\n

In a typical multi-day Jack Miller Center seminar, each K-12 teacher is expected to read and discuss a curated anthology, spanning several hundred pages of primary sources. Curriculum development sessions help teachers apply the material in the classroom.<\/p>\n

Last year, the center announced the\u00a0Civics Foundations Graduate Consortium<\/a>, a network of universities offering graduate-level education for K-12 civics teachers focusing on history and government rather than\u00a0more typical<\/a>\u00a0subjects like pedagogy, child development, and administration. The consortium launched with four institutions, including the University of Chicago Graham School, and by 2028 plans to expand to 22 universities. One of the consortium\u2019s\u00a0courses<\/a>, \u201cThe Settling of America:\u00a0Immigration<\/a>\u00a0and Ethnicity, 1924 \u2013 Present,\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>is inescapably topical, as the transition from the Biden to the Trump administrations has brought a shift from a policy of mass immigration to mass deportations.<\/p>\n

With a fundraising total of $5.5 million last year, the center is part of a national civics movement of philosophically aligned educators, administrators, and funders. Its two dozen employees focus on just one aspect of civics \u2013 knowledge \u2013 largely leaving civics advocacy, civics skills, and civic responsibility to others.<\/p>\n

Some advocates say that the civics network\u00a0should borrow the template<\/a>\u00a0perfected by leftist academics. They reoriented research with the creation of university centers and departments dedicated to women\u2019s, critical race, and gender\/queer studies during the past half-century.<\/p>\n

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\"Arizona<\/div>\n
Paul Carrese hopes to build a national network of civics instructors: “You train the professors who do the research and educate a generation of teachers.”<\/div>\n
Arizona State University<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cEducation is a long game. You train the professors who do the research and educate a generation of teachers,\u201d explained pioneer Paul Carrese, the center\u2019s senior fellow for Civic Thought and Leadership, who had served as founding director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. \u201cThings happen glacially, but gradually you can turn the battleship.”<\/p>\n

Despite the center\u2019s aspirations for nonpartisanship, its leaders are not value-neutral. They describe the center\u2019s work as patriotic and committed to the \u201csacred obligation\u201d of preserving America\u2019s founding principles. The organization has received in excess of $1 million from a number of\u00a0conservative funders<\/a>, such as the Charles Koch Foundation, Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, Paula and John Lillard, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation.<\/p>\n

To some degree, as a response to the overreach of the Great Awokening of the past decade, civics is gaining traction. Currently, 28 states have civics assessments, and 14 of them are a version of the national citizenship test, according to iCivics, an advocacy group founded in 2009 by the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor. In the past few years, 28 states have adopted over 40 policies, such as civics course requirements, civic accomplishment recognitions, funding for professional learning, and state civics commissions, according to a forthcoming article co-authored by Carrese in\u00a0the journal of the National Association of State Boards of Education.\u00a0The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation has even created a\u00a0National Civics Bee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tone of civics literature is replete with gloomy assessments of deficiencies in student knowledge of basic civics, a mood that recalls the panic of the Why Johnny Can\u2019t Read era, with a\u00a02021 civics report<\/a>\u00a0warning that \u201cthe world\u2019s oldest constitutional democracy [is] in grave danger.\u201d Carrese echoed these sentiments in a Jack Miller Center\u00a0publication<\/a>\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n

Civics seemed to be on the cusp of a major breakthrough during the Biden administration that would have transformed the field from a provincial outpost in K-12 education. In 2021, a $1.1 million\u00a0bipartisan report<\/a>\u00a0endorsed by iCivics, \u201cEducating for American Democracy,\u201d laid out a roadmap for civics and history education, backed by 300-plus education experts across the political spectrum. It appeared that the elusive consensus had finally materialized. The report was a full-throated endorsement of civics updated for the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century that would expand the American story to include \u201cthe histories of women, Indigenous Americans, immigrant communities, sexual minorities, and those who are differently abled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The simultaneous introduction in Congress of the Civics Secures Democracy Act would have designated $1 billion a year for civics programs over five years. Had it been enacted into law, the legislation would have increased federal spending on K-12 civics from 46 cents per student to $18 per student, according to an analysis by iCivics.<\/p>\n

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\"FR158029<\/div>\n
The influential “anti-racist” writings of Ibram X. Kendi helped fuel a conservative backlash in education.<\/div>\n
AP<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The promise died when the Biden administration\u2019s Department of Education\u00a0issued an unrelated proposal<\/a>\u00a0for two grant programs in U.S. history and civics. It cited as historical authorities the controversial 1619 Project \u2013 a series of magazine articles later published as a book claiming that the nation\u2019s founding ideals were a \u201clie\u201d to justify the creation of a \u201cslavocracy\u201d \u2013 and the \u201cantiracist\u201d polemics of Ibram X. Kendi, who famously wrote that \u201cthe only remedy to past discrimination [against blacks] is present discrimination [against whites].\u201d<\/p>\n

The DOE proposal was full of woke jargon about systemic racism, \u201cidentity safe\u201d classrooms, and the moral imperative to \u201cvalidate\u201d marginalized identities \u2013 reflecting the views of progressive historians who criticize the approach to civics that\u2019s based on founding principles and classic texts.<\/p>\n

They stress that America\u2019s founding excluded and trampled on Indian, black, female, and queer voices, a subjugation that is perpetuated by civics educators largely focusing on founding documents authored by white males, most of them Christian and all of them Eurocentric.<\/p>\n

The academic left demands the \u201ccentering\u201d of marginalized voices in history education to compensate minority groups for historical exclusion. Civics advocates acknowledge the particulars but reject the general charge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat exclusion is real and inescapable,\u201d said Drew Kurlowski, a political scientist at Coastal Carolina University who leads Jack Miller Center workshops for K-12 teachers. \u201cThe founders built a system that claims universal principles like liberty and equality and natural rights, and they denied them in practice to a large, if not the majority, of the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Coastal<\/div>\n
Drew Kurlowski says civics education must include the inspiring truths and tragic failures of American history.<\/div>\n
Coastal Carolina University<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Still, Kurlowski said that there is a proper order to things, and students should start at the beginning, with the documents in the historical record.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to say, \u2018What did the Founders propose?\u2019 before you can say, \u2018What did they ignore, what did they get wrong, and how have other people responded,\u2019\u201d Kurlowski said. \u201cWe do a disservice when we go straight to the critiquing without first comprehending the argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Kelly, the center\u2019s chief program officer, agreed that the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and other key documents \u201cshould not be treated as having come from Mount Olympus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe founders were not gods, but human beings, and they made mistakes as all human beings do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But the progressive critique is based on false assumptions, Kelly said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe larger point seems to suggest that the problem we face today is that students understand the perspective of the founders too well, and what they don\u2019t have are means and tools by which to critique their point of view or their accomplishments,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cThe fact is: No, students do not understand the perspective and arguments that created our political institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CIVICS REVOLUTION: Conservatives Are Reviving Traditional Education With a Modern Twist. The classroom subject of \u201ccivics\u201d evokes antiquated images of Cold War-era conformity, but Andrew Hart describes a recent teacher workshop on civics with a schoolboy\u2019s exuberance: \u201cIt was really refreshing. I was, like, wow.\u201d The weeklong seminar at the Museum of the American Revolution … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-schools","category-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111846,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111845\/revisions\/111846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}