Led by iCivics, Arizona State University, Harvard University, and Tufts University, the effort will bring together more than 100 experts in civics, history, education, and political science to outline a strategy for teaching American Democracy in the 21st century.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov 1, 2019) — The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education, has awarded a $650,000 cooperative agreement to a collaborative of experts who will work together to design a roadmap to prepare K-12 students for America’s constitutional democracy.

Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education for All Learners will bring together more than 100 leading academics and practitioners in education, civics, history, and political science to set out a foundation for understanding and teaching American history and civics. And it will issue a roadmap that will outline high-priority civics content areas and make clear and actionable recommendations for integrating the teaching of civics and history at every grade level, along with best practices and implementation strategies that teachers, schools, districts and states can use to shape their instructional programs. 

The roadmap will develop the foundation from which to prepare all students to understand the value of America’s constitutional democracy as well as its past failures and present challenges. Our goal is to design a program that will secure a strong commitment to and sense of ownership of that democracy in K-12 students.

Educating for American Democracy is a cross-partisan effort led by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, and iCivics — the country’s largest civic education provider. 

The group has formed a Steering Committee, as well as task forces in History, Political Science, and Pedagogy that will hold two convenings over the next year — one at Louisiana State University and one at Arizona State University. It will then issue its report, which will be authored by Danielle Allen from Harvard University, Paul Carrese from ASU, Louise Dube from iCivics, and Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg and Peter Levine from Tufts University, prior to a National Forum on September 2020 in Washington, DC, which will be co-hosted by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and the National Archives and Records Administration Foundation. 

“As the United States looks toward our 250^th anniversary as a nation in 2026, it is critical that our K-12 educational system teaches the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the democratic principles on which the country was founded,” said NEH Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. “The National Endowment for the Humanities is pleased to be working with Educating for American Democracy to identify ways to improve the teaching and learning of American history and government so that all students gain an appreciation of the workings of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.” 

The Educating for American Democracy project responds to an NEH-Education Department call for proposals for a fifteen-month project that would highlight innovative approaches, learning strategies, and professional development practices in K-12 civics education, with an emphasis on activities and programs that benefit low-income and underserved populations.

Educating for American Democracy will rely on the expertise of the teams at ASU, Harvard, and Tufts and will utilize iCivics’ community of more than 100,000 teachers, as well as partner communities for field testing to ensure that the Roadmap is a practical and useful document in the classroom. It will draw upon the collective network of CivXNow, a coalition of 113 organizations and foundations dedicated to improving civic education in order to disseminate the curriculum. 

“Educating for American Democracy is an effort to provide guidance for integrating history and civics so that today’s learners form a strong connection to our constitutional democracy—and take ownership of it,” said Louise Dubé, the executive director of iCivics, which was founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2009. “We are very thankful that this cooperative agreement with NEH and the Department of Education will give our team of experts, academics, and practitioners the opportunity to design a trans-partisan roadmap for excellence in history and civics education.”

The Educating for American Democracy cooperative agreement is funded through a partnership between NEH’s Division of Education Programs and the U.S. Department of Education’s American History and Civics Education-National Activities program and is part of NEH’s newly announced “More Perfect Union” initiative focused on the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.

“Our republic is at a crossroads, facing deep partisan and philosophical polarization, while understanding of and trust in America’s democratic institutions are dangerously low – especially among younger citizens.  Our interdisciplinary and balanced team of scholars, teachers, and civic educators believes that the relative neglect of civics education in the past half-century is a major root cause of much civic and political dysfunction,” ASU’s Paul Carrese said. “We’re grateful to the NEH and Department of Education for marshaling the resources and attention needed to spur real reform.”  

National Endowment for the Humanities: Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.

The School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University blends a liberal arts education with civic education to prepare 21^st century leaders for American and international affairs, balancing study of classic ideas with outside-the-classroom learning experiences.  The School also provides civic education programs such as a podcast (Keeping It Civil), the Arizona Constitution Project, and the Civic Discourse Project – a national-caliber speakers program partnering with Arizona PBS to provide a space for civil discourse on pressing issues.  https://scetl.asu.edu/

The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University seeks to strengthen teaching and research about pressing ethical issues; to foster sound norms of ethical reasoning and civic discussion; and to share the work of our community in the public interest. The Center stands at the core of a well-established movement giving ethics a prominent place in the curriculum and on research agendas at Harvard and throughout the world. The Center’s Democratic Knowledge Project is a K-16 civic education provider that seeks to identify and disseminate the bodies of knowledge, capacities, and skills that democratic citizens need in order to build and sustain healthy, thriving democracies.

Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life and Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement: The only university-wide college of its kind, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University studies and promotes the civic and political engagement of young people at Tufts University, in our communities, and in our democracy. Peter Levine serves as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Tisch College’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), directed by Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, is a premier research center on young people’s civic education and engagement in the United States, especially those who are marginalized or disadvantaged in political life. CIRCLE’s scholarly research informs policy and practice for healthier youth development and a better democracy. https://tischcollege.tufts.edu/iCivics: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor founded iCivics in 2009 to transform the field through innovative, free educational video games and lessons that teach students to be knowledgeable, curious, and engaged in civic life. Today, iCivics is the nation’s largest provider of civic education curriculum, with our resources used by over 108,000 educators and more than 6.7 million students each year nationwide. Visit www.icivics.org to learn more

(My notes for a talk this evening at a Ludics Seminar at Harvard’s Mahindra Center on “The Role of Play in Human Evolution and Public Life: Work, or Play?”)

It is very common to distinguish politics or civic life from both work and play. (The words “politics” and “civic” have overlapping meanings, coming respectively from Greek and Latin, and I’ll use them interchangeably here.)

Aristotle provides an early example of the distinction between work and politics. He begins with the premise that “the citizen’s function” is “deliberating and judging (whether on all issues or only a few).” In other words, to act as a citizen means to talk, to listen, and to vote. It is discursive and cognitive. Citizens, understood as deliberators and judges, must be free from doing the necessary tasks of life, which are done by slaves (who work for individuals) and by mechanics and laborers (who work for the community). Aristotle advises: “The best form of city will not make the mechanic a citizen.” Note that the mechanic or laborer is not defined by poverty, for some are very rich, but by participation in the marketplace. Working distorts people’s values and goals and makes them bad at deliberation about the public good, perhaps because they focus on their economic interests. Governance is best reserved for a class that has enough wealth not to work.

I cannot think of anyone today who would openly disenfranchise workers for the reasons that Aristotle cites. However, the same distinction between work and politics is evident in several political traditions that make the opposite value-judgment from Aristotle’s. Like him, they presume that politics is about talking, listening, and deciding, and it’s done outside of work. But unlike Aristotle, they think that only those who work are worthy of politics, because they alone have the appropriate values or because their productive labor gives them the right to rule.

One version holds that people of industry and thrift are worthy of governing a republic. This idea is familiar from the English Revolution, the Dutch Republic, and Colonial New England. It associates the bourgeois work ethic with republican virtues.

A different version is agrarian populism, which sees the stalwart farmer as the most legitimate citizen. Like Cincinnatus, a republican farmer puts down his plow to govern and fight, but he hastens back to his fields when his civic duty is done. Jeffersonian American populism and Russian Narodnism are examples.

A third version is Marxist. The workers form a class, distinguished from the bourgeoisie, who merely claim a “work ethic” while they exploit the actual laborers. The working class should rule. Marx offers the resonant ideal of unifying work with Aristotelian politics, removing the alienation between ruling and making. But my impression is that Marxist reforms–from mild democratic socialism all the way to Maoism–have hardly ever realized that ideal. Instead, they have tended to distinguish–just as Aristotle did–between work and governance, but they make the workers into the governors. You work in the factory by day, and after the whistle blows, you attend a workers’ council meeting to make decisions. In fact, the problem with socialism, according to Oscar Wilde, is that it occupies too many evenings.

Two additional strands of reform have developed since the Industrial Revolution. I endorse both, but they are not my main subject here. One aims to democratize the workplace by creating co-ops and other alternative enterprises that are governed on the basis of one-worker, one-vote. The other puts democratic pressure on the workforce by forming an independent association of workers than can negotiate and strike–a union. Both reforms narrow the gap between work and politics, but not in the way that I will describe.

My friend Harry Boyte advocates a different ideal, which he calls Public Work. He has uncovered many precedents for it from around the world.

Please Join MassForward for “Advancing Democratic Innovation and Electoral Reform in Massachusetts” (Register Here)

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Continental breakfast will be available at 8:00 a.m.

The Edgerley Center for Civic Leadership at the Boston Foundation 75 Arlington Street, 3rd Floor, Boston

Please join the Boston Foundation for the release of new research by MassINC and Tufts’ Tisch College of Civic Life that examines the health of our Commonwealth’s democratic processes and institutions. From increasingly strong one-party rule to lack of representation for communities of color, this report new provides data to illuminate acute challenges and presents a comprehensive set of reforms and innovations to fortify our democracy at the state and local level. This opening presentation will be followed by a panel conversation with leaders who can offer a wide-range of perspectives on workable solutions to these pressing challenges.

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Paul S. Grogan, President & CEO, The Boston Foundation

Presentation of Report

Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs & Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University

Panel Discussion
Jay R. Kaufman, Retired State Representative (D), 15th Middlesex District, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Founder & President, Beacon Leadership Collaborative
Beth Lindstrom, Former Executive Director, Massachusetts Republican Party
Keith Mahoney, Vice President, Communications & Public Affairs, The Boston Foundation (Moderator)
Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson, PhD, Interim Director, Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy; Interim Director, Gender, Leadership, and Public Policy Graduate Certificate Program at UMass Boston Pavel Payano, Councilor-at Large, City of Lawrence

Closing Remarks
Juana Matias, Chief Operating Officer, MassINC

For additional information, please contact Michelle Hinkle at 617-338-4268 or michelle.hinkle@tbf.org

By working in collaboration with a wide range of partners, the Boston Foundation provides opportunities for people to come together to explore challenges facing our constantly changing community and to develop an informed civic agenda. All of the Boston Foundation’s civic leadership activities are supported by our annual campaign for Civic Leadership. Visit www.tbf.org/civicleadership to learn more about this important campaign. Visit www.tbf.org to learn more about the Boston Foundation and its activities.