Category Archives: advocating civic education

Don’t Call them Underdogs

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I wrote a review of a new PBS documentary about urban debate leagues for Education Next. It was published today, and it begins:

You may have seen a movie in which teenagers experience grave injustice and then enter a prestigious competition where they prove to the world that they are smart. The competition might be the AP math exam (Stand and Deliver, 1988), the National Spelling Bee (Akeelah and the Bee, 2006), robotics (Spare Parts, 2015), or chess (Queen of Katwe, 2016), to name just a few.

Typically, one charismatic adult believes in the kids, inspires them to confront their doubts and society’s stereotypes, and leads them—through setbacks—to an exciting victory that demonstrates their dignity and character as well as their skills.

Immutable, a new documentary film produced by Found Object and available for streaming at PBS on March 6, is much better …

What Counts As Success? Assessing The Impact Of Civics In Higher Ed

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On February 18, the Alliance for Civics in the Academy hosted a webinar on “What Counts as Success? Assessing the Impact of Civics in Higher Ed” with Trygve Throntveit, Rachel Wahl, Joseph Kahne, and me.

We discussed some of the advantages of developing reliable and consistent measurements of civic education, particularly the opportunity to learn from data and the need to be accountable. We also discussed some drawbacks and risks, including Campbell’s Law (a remark by Donald T. Campbell): “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

We asked ourselves who should use assessments, and for what purposes. For example, it is a different matter for a college professor to get feedback from the students in a course or for a university to measure student outcomes. I thought the conversation was both intellectually serious and relevant to practice.

Panelists:

  • Rachel Wahl: Associate Professor in the Social Foundations Program, Department of Educational Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia
  • Joseph Kahne: Ted and Jo Dutton Presidential Professor for Education Policy and Politics and Director of the Civic Engagement Research Group at the University of California, Riverside.
  • Trygve Throntveit: PhD, Research Professor in Higher Education and Associate Director of the Center for Economic and Civic Learning (CECL) at Ball State University.

I was the moderator. The video is here:

a resource for students on social movements and activism

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In a recorded interview with the Story Preservation Initiative, I discuss “landmark cases and civic turning points—including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Brown v. Board of Education, the United Farm Workers boycott, and Watergate—to illustrate how people came together to reinforce core democratic principles of equality, justice, and the rule of law.”

This recording and related documents are meant as a resource for teachers and students, particularly in high schools.

I also discuss “the ‘nuts-and-bolts’ skills young people need to participate effectively in civic life—how communities organize, how coalitions form, and how citizens can work together to effect change.” And I mention “skills that support meaningful participation, including listening, debating, respecting opposing viewpoints, and learning from history.”

a conversation about civics in Chinese traditions

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On December 10, the Alliance for Civics in the Academy hosted a webinar on “Comparative Civics: Beyond Western Civ” with Fordham professor Dongxian Jiang, University of Chicago professor Shadi Bartsch, Nanyang Technical University professor Simon Sihang Luo, and University of Chicago student Jessie Wang. I was the moderator.

The title of the event suggests our original plan, which was to think about the role of “non-Western” texts and ideas (whatever the word “Western” means) in civic education. As it turned out, our panel had the expertise and lived experience to focus on China. Clearly, we could have chosen many other foci, but I thought this one was useful–it made for a coherent conversation. We discussed what “civic education” has meant in China, what American students can learn from studying Chinese society and classical texts, how Confucian thinkers might assess American civic education, what you should know to teach Chinese texts well, and other topics that may also apply (mutatis mutandis) to other countries and regions of the world.

The video is below.

The next ACA webinar will be “Beyond the Ivory Tower: What Elite and Non-Selective Colleges Can Teach Each Other About Civics” with Thomas Schnaubelt, J. Cherie Strachan, Scott Arcenas, and Josiah Ober on January 14, 2026, from 9:00-10:00 a.m. PT.

See also core curricula without the concept of the West; the history of the phrase “the West”, etc.

civic education webinar

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I enjoyed this recent discussion of civic education in colleges and universities with Josiah Ober, Jenna Silber Storey, Mary Clark, and our moderator Debra Satz. I thought the questions from the audience were particularly interesting.

In case you are interested in the Alliance, this is the website.

The next webinar will be “Out of Many, One: Creating a Pluralistic Framework for Civics in Higher Education,” with Paul Carrese (Arizona State University), Jacob Levy (McGill University) and Minh Ly (University of Vermont), moderated by Brian Coyne (Stanford University). That’s on Wednesday, November 12, 2025 from 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Pacific (noon Eastern). You could register here.

And the one after that will be “Comparative Civics: Beyond Western Civ.,” with Dongxian Jiang, Shadi Bartsch, Simon Sihang Luo, and me as the moderator. That’s on December 12, 2025, from 9:00-10:00 a.m. PT.