A paper by Sharareh Frouzesh Bennett confirms my unsystematic impression of the leading high school textbooks for civics and government (pdf). Bennett analyzes the big three, which are published by Prentice Hall, Glencoe, and Holt. She finds that they present American government as a well-organized system for implementing what the people want. Voting is by far the most commonly mentioned form of civic engagement, which makes sense if the government is basically satisfactory, and majority-rule is the essence of democracy. Since the existence of profound disagreement is not acknowledged in any of the leading textbooks, little is said about tools available to electoral minorities, such as “boycotts, lawsuits, protests, and civil disobedience.” Because the government is portrayed as capable of handling all public issues, virtually nothing is said about citizens’ roles in social movements, voluntary associations, and (more generally) civil society. “The Holt text refers to civil disobedience during the section on the civil rights movement and indicates that the method was used in the past to defy laws that were thought to be wrong.” Overall, politics is portrayed as a formal system that offers a limited role for citizens (basically, voting). It is not described as a struggle over contested issues.

If young people study the three branches of government and the Bill of Rights, but they are not made aware of any particular controversies about economics, war, or moral issues, I would predict no impact on their interest in politics. Surveys tend to find a positive relationship between taking a civics class and political participation. Perhaps that relationship is misleading. (Maybe students who are already interested in politics are more likely to take civics classes.) Or perhaps courses really boost interest in politics–but no thanks to the textbooks.

Bennett’s findings are consistent with our surveys, which find that most students are taught about the excellence of the American political system. Only 5.2% recall studying “problems facing the country today.” Contrary to the fears of conservatives (who dwell on scattered anecdotes about leftist teachers), most students receive a civic education that is “conservative” in a particular sense. Textbooks do not introduce them to right-wing ideas, such as reducing the size of government or banning abortion. That’s because textbooks contain few political ideas of any kind. Instead, students are taught that the status quo is desirable and uncontroversial–a form of conservatism that both right and left should reject.

Major trends have worked against civic participation in America, although a network of dedicated people has struggled to improve our civic life. Fortunately, new national political leaders will emerge between 2006 and 2008. We can hope that at least one of them makes “empowerment” a leading theme in his or her campaign. Or perhaps candidates will speak of “true democracy at home and abroad.” Or they could revive populism, along the lines Harry Boyte proposed here on Monday. In any case, the big message would go something like this:

American citizens have been pushed out of all our major institutions–the government, schools, health care, environmental protection, crime prevention, city planning, and the news media. That’s partly because lobbyists and other rich people have bought too much power. Sometimes it’s because courts and bureaucracies have made decisions that should be left to communities. Often it’s because experts claim too much authority. Although we should respect the expertise of lawyers, economists, regulators, and professional educators, these people don’t know right from wrong better than anyone else. Nor do they understand everyone’s needs and experiences. We must find ways to tap the energy, creativity, and values of many more Americans if we are going to address our communities’ problems.

To be credible, any such message must be backed up with reasonably specific policy proposals. Appropriate policies might include the following:

1. Putting communities back in control of education. Whole communities educate kids, not just the professionals who work in k-12 schools. Although the No Child Left Behind Act has some merits, it is making standardized tests all-important, thus empowering the testing industry and preventing communities from deciding what they value most. Often, people prize moral and civic education as well as, or above, reading and math scores. The Act needs to be revised so that a core of reading, math, and language-arts remains, yet communities can set other priorities and participate in educating their children.

2. Reforming Congress to check the power of professional lobbyists. Although basic ethics rules are important and must be enforced, the core problem is that lawmaking is not transparent. Therefore, well-placed insiders can obtain too much power. Dramatically simplifying the tax code on a revenue-neutral basis would reduce opportunities for special interests to seek special breaks. (The current code is about 10,000 pages long and generates about 4,000 pages of forms.) Congress should also create a bipartisan commission to simplify and regularize the Code of Federal Regulations, which is about 150,000 pages long.

3. A national service agenda. Instead of cutting or trimming the federal voluntary service programs (Americorps, Senior Corps, Peace Corps, and others), Congress should expand their funding while keeping them competitive and demanding evidence of results from grantees. The next president should also name a highly respected and famous director for USA Freedom Corps who will not only seek adequate funding for all the service programs, but also fight to give responsible, meaningful roles to volunteers. FEMA, the Defense Department, and all agencies should use talented and experienced volunteers to their maximum capacities.

4. Preparing a new generation of active and responsible citizens. People form attitudes and habits related to civil society when they are young and keep them for the rest of their lives. But civic education has been cut in most school systems, and there are too few opportunities for young people to learn through service and extracurricular activities. Congress should double the small Learn & Serve America program that provides competitive grants for service-learning. Congress should also preserve the Education for Democracy Act (slated for elimination in each of President Bush’s budgets) and add a new competitive program for school districts that agree to implement district-wide civics programs and collect outcome data. The next president should name an interagency task force on youth civic development that includes the Defense Department, Homeland Security, and the federal research agencies as well as the departments specifically concerned with education and service.

5. Rethinking government service. According to the Partnership for National Service, we would need about 800,000 new federal employees to replace those who are eligible to retire before 2010. Even if we assume that the federal workforce can be cut deeply, we still need about half a million recruits. Many younger people do not view the federal civil service as a desirable lifelong career. To meet the desires of college students as documented in a recent poll, we must create federal jobs that feel less bureaucratic and more interesting. (Raising pay is much less important.) This requires a new round of “reinventing government.” This time, the goal of reinvention should not be to improve customer service but to find ways to make stints in the civil service feel more creative, collaborative, and rewarding.

6. Charter schools: The charter-school movement is not a Trojan Horse designed to undermine public education. Charters are public schools–funded with tax dollars and authorized by the government. In fact, they stand to rejuvenate public education by giving more people opportunities to serve and innovate in the public sector. If there is any way to create the equivalent of charters in other areas of federal governance, that would be worth an experiment. An example might be community development corporations (CDC’s) that can manage development assistance.

7. A public voice in policymaking. Hurricane Katrina showed that the federal government is not ready to convene citizens to deliberate when we face crucial public decisions. Yet we know how to bring diverse citizens together in face-to-face and online settings and harvest their views. The federal government should create an infrastructure that is ready to organize public deliberations when needed. This infrastructure would consist of: standards for fair and open public deliberations, a federal office that could coordinate many simultaneous forums and collect all their findings, and a list of vetted contractors that would be eligible to convene public deliberations with federal grants.

The Wyden-Hatch “Health Care that Works for All Americans Act” would organize large-scale public deliberations on what to do about the 41 million Americans who lack health insurance. It would be a great pilot for future conversations on other issues.

8. Increase public deliberation through e-rulemaking. Only paid experts can possibly follow the thousands of new federal regulations that are proposed and enacted each year. That means that special interests that can afford expertise have a huge advantage, and many actual regulations benefit them alone. Proposed regulations should be issued in a searchable online format with threaded comments, opportunities to vote on the importance of proposals, and opportunities to add links and explanations. Then citizens will sort through this mass of material and add value.

9. New public media. Without government help, citizens are creating more diverse and interactive forms of media–mostly online–to counteract the consolidation of the commercial news and entertainment businesses. But there are big holes that require federal attention. First, radio has dramatically consolidated. The FCC must support alternatives, including low-power radio. Second, it is increasingly difficult for people to make fair use of copyrighted media in documentaries, hip-hop, and other cultural forms that rely on borrowing. Congress must protect fair use. Third, most kids aren’t learning sophisticated media skills. They must have opportunities to work with media in schools. Television is hardest to improve, but the next president should at least appoint leaders of public broadcasting who are willing to create an entirely new model to replace the current system of using membership drives and corporate advertising to support marginal programs.

10. Incorporate immigrants into civic life: The many millions of new immigrants need civic skills and opportunities. The INS citizenship exam should be revised so that it is not longer a set of trivia questions but instead tests the knowledge that new citizens will actually need to participate. Immigrants, legal or illegal, should have access to education and service opportunities.

On Crooked Timber, Harry Brighouse has replied to my previous post about patriotism in schools. He is skeptical, mainly on the (reasonable) ground that patriotism causes or excuses partiality toward one’s fellow citizens, and such partiality is particularly problematic when one’s nation happens to be very rich and powerful. Harry’s post prompted several substantive replies: a good discussion in the Crooked Timber comment field. I’d only add that I feel somewhat awkward defending patriotic education in schools. I still think the arguments in favor outweigh those against, so I’m not ready to strike my flag (so to speak). However, instilling patriotic sentiments is far from the center of my own work and concerns. Apart from anything else, there is no evidence that young people lack patriotism, whereas there is plenty of reason to fear that they lack the confidence, skills, and interests necessary to be effective participants in democracy.

(En route to Baltimore and New York City) In general, Americans are abandoning our obligation to prepare young people for active and responsible citizenship, but there was good news last week for those who want to revive civic education–which includes service opportunities, extracurricular activities, and whole-school reform as well as social studies classes.

Last Monday, as I already reported, the national advisory committee of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools met. C-Span broadcast speeches by its co-chairs, former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and L.A. School Superintendent Roy Romer. The same meeting also generated a very nice syndicated column by David Broder entitled “Saving Democracy, Pupil by Pupil.” Broder writes that “No Child Left Behind,” the major education reform act of 2002,

was not intended to push other subjects out of the schools, but, Romer said, ‘Quite often, the tests that states will use for No Child Left Behind will be only on certain core subjects, such as language arts and math and sometimes science, and school systems, if not careful, can be warped into the neglect of social studies.’

O’Connor and Romer are the national spokesmen for a concerted pushback against these trends calling itself the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools (http://www.civicmissionofschools.org/). Twenty-nine national organizations and a dozen notable private individuals have lent their support; foundation money as well is behind it.

Those 29 organizations and “notable” individuals then met on Friday for the semi-annual steering committee meeting of the Campaign, which I chaired. We approved a white paper on high school reform that we had debated and revised for more than a year. I like the final version, which the Campaign will soon release. We also discussed our position on No Child Left Behind, without (as yet) reaching agreement about what should be done.

On Thursday night, Justice O’Connor attended the annual awards dinner for Streetlaw, an organization that provides curriculum and training for civic education. In giving an award to Mrs. Cecilia Marshall (Justice Thurgood Marshall’s widow), she noted her own work for the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools and said that “civic education is very much part of my concern these days.” So it must be: in addition to giving the two speeches I mentioned above, the Justice also met privately with David Broder and chaired a meeting of the American Bar Association’s committee on civic education–all in one week.

I had the honor of giving Streetlaw’s Educator Award to an excellent high school teacher from Brooklyn, Patrick McGillicuddy. He has achieved remarkable success in a school reserved for students who have dropped out or been expelled from other institutions. He teaches the whole of American history as a series of mock trials. The kids not only have fun and learn debating skills; every one of them passes the New York State American History Regents Exam.

Today was the public launch of the advisory committee of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. The committe’s co-chairs, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Gov. Roy Romer (now the head of the Los Angeles public schools), spoke at the National Press Club along with Senator Harris Wofford, Judge Marjorie Rendell from Pennsylvania, and others. C-SPAN and Fox News had cameras running; I don’t know whether or when the event will actually air.

Senator Harris Wofford told an amusing but telling anecdote. To paraphrase: When he ran for the Senate in 1990, his consultant, James Carville, told him that his worst fear was that Mr. Wofford would go off talking about Gandhi, service-learning, and civic education. Those topics are “out there on the periphery,” Carville told his client, but no one can make them central. Indeed, Wofford famously won his Senate seat on a health-care platform. But there are ways to weave themes of active citizenship and democratic renewal into mainstream politics, I believe.

I also spoke. I’m having computer problems the last few days, but when I’m able to retrieve the file with my speech, I’ll paste it here (below the fold).

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