More than ever, civic learning is needed to ensure each and every person across this country has the necessary tools to engage as a member of our self-governing society. However, schools are also a growing part of the culture wars. According to a 2022 National Education Association Survey, nearly half of schools reported challenges teaching about race and racism and practices related to LGBTQ students in the classroom. As we've discussed before on the show, book bans, funding cuts and teacher shortages are also making teaching anything — let alone civics — more difficult.
At this critical juncture, Civic Learning Week unites students, educators, policymakers and private sector leaders to energize the movement for civic education across the nation. This week's episode includes two experts who talk about the theory and practice of strengthening civics education in these polarizing times.
Emma Humphries is chief education officer and deputy director of field building for iCivics, the non-profit founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to reinvigorate civics through free, interactive learning resources. Humphries serves as iCivics’ pedagogical expert, ensures its resources evolve to a place of greater equity and deeper learning for all students, and advocates for more and better civic education across the country.
Ashley Berner is director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and an associate professor of education. She served previously as the deputy director of the CUNY Institute for Education Policy and as an administrator at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Her most recent book is "Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School."
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Episode Transcript
Chris Beem
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I'm Chris Beem.
Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.
Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are doing an episode that looks at civics education in honor of National Civic Learning Week, which is this week, the week of March 6, 2023. And we have two guests joining us on this topic. First, you'll hear from Emma Humphries, who is the chief education officer at iCivics, which is the organization that sponsors Civic Learning Week. And then we'll hear from Ashley Berner who is Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University.
Candis Watts Smith
I'm really glad that we have both of them here today. You know, over the years, we've had several folks to discuss all sorts of aspects of education and public education in particular. And for me, these two experts kind of help us think through the role and the necessity of civics education and considerations of educational pluralism. One thing I think is worth pointing out, is that, you know, one of the reasons why we focus on education so much is because these institutions are supposed to ensure the production and development of well informed citizens. And as a person with a fourth grader, we tend to do a lot of focus on math, and reading, which is great, because you need to be able to read your history and, you know, do all of these kinds of things, but we spend less time thinking about civics. And here I mean, the the means by which students learn to engage in civil debates with well informed opinions to become politically active. And others have noted, including our guests, that today the US spends about $50 a year per student invested in STEM education, and maybe only like five cent per year per student in civics. And, you know, for me, your budget reflects your priorities.
Chris Beem
Yeah, right. Oh, or, I would use a different metaphor. It's like the squeaky wheel gets the grease or the the squeaky wheel. And this gets ignored, right? Because STEM is something that is is not inherently controversial, right. And it also the argument has been made since Sputnik and continues to be made, that this is how we stay competitive against our economic adversaries, and competitive against our political adversaries. Right. And so if we are going to, if we believe in that, then that's a good argument for for funding stem. But I also think that is the issue, right, that these topics are more open to controversy, and in some ways, you have to accept controversy in order to teach the skills, right, you know, you're going to have to accept that there's going to be differences of opinion, that people aren't going to have the same attitudes about gun control, say, or, or, you know, abortion, whatever. And you have to move forward with that acceptance. Otherwise, you're not really teaching the skills and there are so many parents who are and school board members, and you know, whoever else politicians who are so distrustful of public institutions, and who are so distrustful of the likelihood that what's really going on here is some kind of indoctrination, that, that they just say, No, forget it. And if you're a beleaguered principal, or you know, a school board member who's getting, you know, three calls a week, people showing up your meetings, yelling at you, it's just a lot easier to say, You know what, let's let's spend some more time on math, and just let this go.
Candis Watts Smith
Which is why it's really great to have Emma and Ashley here because they're kind of thinking through some potential alternatives or some potential solutions to this issue. And so you know, from what I get out of, what Emma is is offering is about Yes, is about civics. Yes. Do we have to talk about controversial issues? Well, insofar as we're learning how to listen, and we're learning how to respect and reflect on what other people are saying, and that civics is designed to ensure that that members of communities not only understand the lever As a political institutions that are able to take part in politics, and the political making process, I mean, do we have to dwell on any particular policy issue to learn those levers? I don't necessarily think so. Ashley, on the other hand, offers this, you know, proposal of educational pluralism, which is more of an idea of, you know, what, we live in a huge country, with all sorts of people with different values. And maybe we can find a common curriculum, and some, you know, guiding facts and truths, but at the same time, we could allow more flexibility and funding and the way we kind of think about how we allocate resources across different types of schools.
Chris Beem
What Ashley and Emma, both offer is something more than just us wagging our finger at the American electorate and saying, you know, you're skipping civic education, and it's important, and shame on you, they're actually thinking about this strategically, how do we advance these concerns, these issues that we care about, in the climate in which we find ourselves and, and it's for that reason that, you know, I think it's really great that they're here.
Jenna Spinelle
So, yeah, lots to unpack here. And I'm excited to get into this conversation. Just one practical note, since we do have two guests here, we'll hear first from Emma Humphreys of iCivics, and then maybe a quarter of the way through, we'll bring in Ashley burner from Johns Hopkins. So let's go now to the interview.
Jenna Spinelle
So we are talking for an episode that will be out as part of civic learning week, which is organized by iCivics, the organization that you work for. And so I just thought we could maybe start with a definition of civic learning. Can you tell us what that is, in your view, and how that might differ from some of the stereotypes that we have about civics education, you know, the three branches of government, how a bill becomes a law, those kinds of things?
Emma Humphries
Sure, yeah, that's definitely part of it, but doesn't even begin to scratch the surface surface. So civic learning is any kind of instructional activity, where students are given opportunities to prepare for their roles as citizens in our democracy. And I always make the caveat that I'm not using the term citizen in a legalistic way, that just being a member of a community, whether it's a school community and neighborhood, a city, county, state, our country, our world, that we are all citizens in these spaces. And so civic learning is about preparing to be more engaged and more involved in those spaces. And that requires a few things. It requires knowledge. It also requires skills and dispositions. Yes, it's important to know the three branches of government and how it all works, right. So you have to know the systems and institutions or processes. That's part of what we call the knowledge. But that knowledge also includes history. It can include political theory, if you're getting into more advanced classes, it can include economics and geography, understanding your place in the world. So it's not just how a bill becomes a law. It's not just federalism. Yes, we want students to know all those things, but we also want them to care about those things. That's the disposition, the disposition to pay attention, that disposition to look at a problem and say, How can I help? How can I make that better? The disposition to think beyond yourself, and to think about the community and not just how something impacts you but impacts the common good. And then, of course, the skills to actually put that knowledge and those dispositions into action and to do something so when you when you see that something's wrong, or you think, gee, we could make this better, to not say, Well, I, there's nothing I can do about that, or I don't know what to do about that. Civics is about helping students know what to do, and to feel that they actually can do something that they have some agency to make things better.
Jenna Spinelle
And if I read your bio correctly, you began your career as a classroom teacher yourself. Can you I guess, talk about how you started to form these ideas yourself as as an educator and and how your experience in the classroom how, you know, went on to inform the broader work that you're doing in civic learning. Yeah, absolutely.
Emma Humphries
I think the story actually starts a little bit before that, as a high school student, myself and I got a world class education at a public school down in South Florida in Broward County, Florida. We had wonderful social studies teachers, and so I left high school, caring a lot about our form of government wanting to be involved knowing that I would have some sort of career that merged government and education and civics. So I got my undergrad in political science. Now most undergraduates litical science just, you know, say we're gonna go to law school like me, I don't want to do that I think I want to be a teacher. And so I went, I got my master's in education to become a teacher and began my career as a high school American government, American history and economics teacher, in a semi rural county in North Central Florida. had the time of my life, it was certainly the most challenging, but most rewarding thing I've ever done. And I learned a lot, I learned a lot about people, I learned a lot about students, I learned a lot about education and pedagogy and what it means to help students care about things. And that time, a few things that I learned, one is that if you can see it, you can do it. And if you can do it, once you get over that initial hurdle, then you're more likely to do it again. And so the challenge with civics is that a lot of the processes, a lot of the activities of civics aren't available to young people, or maybe even really, even older people. So like, I will never run for president. But I do need to know how the Electoral College works. I will never be a Supreme Court justice. But I do need to understand how they make decisions and how they fit into the larger framework of government. So what I learned is that simulations are the way in to allow that to happen. Now, I had to get really creative coming up with simulations when I was a classroom teacher in the early 2000s. But teachers today are lucky because they have resources like iCivics, that have video games that allow students to experiencing experiences, processes, to be a Supreme Court justice, to be a county manager, to vote, to do all these things that they couldn't otherwise do, either yet or at all. And to see how it works.
Jenna Spinelle
Ashley, Berner, I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about American education and how it pertains to civic engagement, and all all sorts of things that we'll get into. But I wonder if you could just start by talking about your own background as an educator, and maybe how that informs some of your perspectives on the American education system.
Ashley Berner
I have taught in every age group I've taught in a preschool Jewish preschool, I've taught high school, I've taught university level and now I work with PhD students. And, and I think, being in that space, and then actually studying that space. So just a little bit more about me, my doctorate is actually in history in the history of social movements in the history of ideas, and so forth. So much of that I did overseas. And so my working as a teacher, and also as a student, really opened my eyes to some ways that other countries do things that we could learn from. And I think more than anything else, it's been my experience as a student of other countries, and you know, someone who is constantly learning more, that's informed what I you know, my take on American education. And just to jump to the headline, I think there's, there are a lot of things we could learn from how most democracies manage education and civic formation.
Jenna Spinelle
So are you I think, some a lot of these learnings or perhaps some of them up in the idea of educational pluralism, that's at the heart of your book, no one way to school, can you lay lay out the thesis there for us? What is educational pluralism?
Ashley Berner
Sure, so educational pluralism is just a different way to structure public education, that involves the government's funding lots of different kinds of schools on equal footing, and also having a common body of knowledge that all of those schools have to have to teach. So, you know, whereas in our country, we're used to this public versus private charter versus district, you know, very, very strict divisions about what counts as public education. You know, other democracies, I think, assume education can't be morally neutral. So we need to, you know, fund a lot of different kinds of, of systems, you know, whether they're Jewish or Montessori or socialist or whatever. But at the same time, we have the public trust that education is about all of us. It's about the next generation. It's not just an individual pursuit, so we have to ensure a common quality of education. So this looks very different. It's it's a plural structure, but a more I wouldn't say uniform content, but more common body of knowledge that all kids have to learn. And I think what that does for democratic formation is it allows families of all different incomes to kind of find a school that that meets their needs, their children's needs, whether it's religious or pedagogical and style or the size of the school, whatever it is, and It also ensures kind of the Democratic purpose of a shared conversation and social cohesion. And this is difficult, but it's very different. It's very different from our, our way of looking at things. It's actually more like our schools looked in the early 19th century we used to be Yeah. When used to have, we used to democratize the liberal arts for all kids. And we used to fund all different kinds of schools
Jenna Spinelle
To help people kind of visualize what you're saying about how things work in democracies outside of the US. Can you give an example particularly, I'm thinking about how you square this notion of a choose your own adventure, for lack of a better term when it comes to schooling with the idea of a shared sense of democratic citizenship and civic engagement?
Ashley Berner
Yes, great. So there are all kinds of theoretical groundings here. But we can talk about the philosophic the philosophy behind, you know, this democratic theory of what education should look like. But let me just start with a practical so the Netherlands is the most plural country in the world, they fund 36 Different kinds of schools on equal footing. And they also fund teacher preparation on equal footing, you know, different, you know, Montessori prep for Jewish teacher prep, and so forth. But they require all kids to pass exit exams, you know, regularly and have your exams that look at common content. And so for example, they fun, this is a this is the most extreme example, but they fund creationist schools, schools that teach creationism, but those kids still have to demonstrate competence of evolutionary theory at a certain point. And to take a more common example, that's true across most European countries and Canada, and so forth. Most democratic governments require that kids learn comparative religion and ethics every year, not because that's in doctrine Natori, but because it's important for an informed citizenship, that you know, what other people believe and what theories what Marxism teaches, and so forth. It's an important part of being an educated citizen. So in England, where I did my doctoral degree, my children can go to Jewish schools, but they have to learn about Hinduism. They can go to a, you know, an Islamic girls school, but they have to learn what Judaism teaches. And it's not. I think, I think the wonderful thing about this, it's not, it's not perfect, but it, it kind of helps adults understand the difference between exposure and indoctrination. And that's actually the subtitle of the book I'm writing right now, exposure versus indoctrination, that when, you know, the kind of trade off here is families, not just wealthy families, but every family theoretically can find a school that meets their needs, within reason there are boundaries, but their kids are going to be exposed to common content. And let me just pull back for a second and talk about the research on this. There is, you know, pretty compelling research that when schools are clear about their mission and purpose, and all the stakeholders in the school are aligned on what that means, and what they're doing that has a really positive impact on student outcomes. And at the same token, there's very compelling research that a common curriculum or probably I don't mean a lockstep curriculum, same page, same textbook, but that requiring a common body of knowledge, AX is an incredible equalizer across income levels, across immigrant status and so forth. France used to close its achievement gaps. By sixth grade, when they had a very strict curriculum that their Catholic schools, Protestant schools, jeweler schools had to teach.
Jenna Spinelle
You were saying earlier, Emma, that you're you you taught in Florida, which as we know, now is is in many ways, the epicenter of some of the the ways that education is part of the culture war, particularly when it comes to race and issues of gender identity and these sorts of things. How do you think about some of these culture war issues in relation to the mission of civic learning that you were talking about earlier?
Emma Humphries
Yeah, you know, it's interesting is that there's a lot of there's an increased attention paid to civic education. And we really like that people are talking about civic education. People are caring a lot about civic education. And this is this is Cruz true sort of across the ideological spectrum. So we're seeing legislation pop up all across the country, where we're folks are paying attention to what and how and how long we're teaching. And we like to see that ultimately, the states are going to decide what they teach what's in the standards, what courses they require, how much instructional time what graduation required. are immense there are, for our part, we are promoting as much instructional time as possible. We want to see we want to see rich, robust civic education that begins in kindergarten and spirals all the way up through 12th grade that teaches history in an integrated fashion with civics, their learning, these two students are learning these two things together, they're so interconnected. You know, the culture wars. This is just a, you know, some we've seen this over and over again, it's not anything new. Anyone who studies, history of education can can go through the various history wars we've seen, and that's okay. That's a feature of democracy, to debate to debate, what schools should be teaching. That's fine. What we want to see is more and better civic education. You know, speaking of Florida, I mentioned that I that I mentioned this I did, I mentioned that I grew up in Broward County, Florida, where we had a really strong social studies department in my high school. Another school in Broward County is Parkland is Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. And regardless of how you feel about the students that sort of rose up in terms of leadership after the worst possible thing happened there, with the Masteral, shooting, Valentine's Day 2018. I believe, regardless of what you think about those students and what they were fighting for, I think we were all sort of just impressed that they knew what to do that the day after the most unthinkable thing happened at their school, they immediately took action. And it's not a coincidence that they knew what to do. They knew what to do, because they go to school in Florida. And in Florida. In 2010, the state legislature passed the Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Civic Education Act, requiring at least a semester long civics course with an end of course exam. What that means is that in the Sunshine State, every kid in middle school is learning about civics. And that is not true across the country. And so what I tell people is, those kids in Parkland knew what to do, because they weren't taught what to do. And that's what we need more of.
Jenna Spinelle
I think that's that's maybe a good segue into talking about some of the the culture war, the the modern day 21st century culture war, which is perhaps sounds like something maybe you're working on with your book that's in progress. We're seeing a lot of this play out with a debate over AP African American Studies, for example, or some of the moves we've seen to ban books from libraries, I would argue, is maybe an extension of this as well.
Ashley Berner
I think everybody's pretty much wants what's best for kids in their eyes. And we have to at least approach people we disagree with with that basis. That look, I know, this is what you think is really good for kids. And I have a different view, you know, back to your point about civil tolerance. I don't I don't think it's right. And books, I have very bad feeling about censorship. And I think that what that does is that returns the whole thing to the question of power, who has the power? Who gets to control it? Would you like it, if someone you disagreed with we have that power? I think we have to be extremely careful in how we use power. And I think that's equally true of left and right. But I do not do not have a good feeling as a democratic citizen about banning certain ideas. I just I just can't go there. However, part of I think you're one of your comments just now hit on something I think is true, which is it's not quite accurate to say that education is neutral, and non and doctrine Ettore. It when you when you pull back and reflect on it, one of the premises of pluralism that I think is true is that education can't be neutral with respect to values that, you know, even if the every time you you have a disciplinary code, every time you hire staff, every time every curriculum, every pedagogy, it is all chosen, it reflects normative values of some kind. And even the questions that we're not allowed to talk about in school is informative for kids. So once you accept that, then you then you do have to raise the question of funding different kinds of schools that are clear about their aims. So I think they maybe you're right, you know, clarity about what schooling can and can't do cannot be neutral. Not really, I mean, even saying, this is, for example, this is a school that is aiming for individual autonomy, and, you know, whatever, that's still a position. So, I think that the power of who decides what is taught is something it's it's some it's a needle that you have to thread at some point anyway, you know, that democratic pluralistic systems still someone still has to say, Look, you don't have to teach that Islam is true. You don't have to believe it, but you have to know about it. Someone still has to make that decision. And what I worry about is that right now, you've got this side of the school choice group that wants to use educational choices as a Escape From ideas they don't want to confront, which I think is highly problematic. And you have the other side that says, here's the district school, this is the only way to this is the only legitimate district school. So I really I think there's the word the ideal for me as someone who really likes educational pluralism as a practice and is that theory, it's somewhere in the middle? You know, education is can't be just an individual pursuit. And yet there is a risk and seconded thing, the entire operation to the state. We know from history, there is a risk of that. So how do we inhabit this civil society? How do we how do we also ensure that we're really educating people and, you know, so that we now have several generations of American adults who have not had that kind of liberal arts experience, where they're wrestling with different ideas. And so ideas that we disagree with can feel alien. And yet it's incumbent on us as democratic citizens to just practice this lean into it put our weapons down, and schools play a really crucial wall here, no matter what kind of school it is,
Jenna Spinelle
This issue of parents right has become a big talking point. You know, and we've seen that play out in in several different contexts. But when it comes to civics, you know, what, what does that balance look like between teachers, educators, and parents?
Emma Humphries
Yeah, we believe that parents have a really important role to play, we want to invite them in as active participants in their kids education as a whole. And of course, in terms of their civic education, you asked a lot of engaged young adults and older adults, where they really learned civics, and a lot of times it was at home, it was around the dinner table, or it was because they went out volunteering or canvassing with their parents. And so we know historically, that parents play a critical role in a kid's civic development. But you know, we've done some polling with parents. And we know that the vast majority of parents regardless of how they feel, about politics, regardless of their partisan identity, that they just want their kids to learn about our about our system about our history in a sort of full and honest and comprehensive way. And, yeah, you know, the sort of culture wars, what we're seeing on the news, what we're seeing on campuses, it has an impact, I don't want to say that it's just noise, it does have an impact. And the impact that worries me most is the chilling effect that it has. So when you see those headlines, when you see state legislatures trying to ban the teaching of certain topics, or to maybe just manage how we teach certain topics, regardless of what gets passed, regardless of what sort of in the final bill, that becomes law. Teachers, they see that and they hear that and they think, I'm not touching it, I don't want to get in trouble. They don't pay me enough. It's been the hardest three years with the pandemic and everything else. So you know what, I'm just not going to teach the election or I'm just not going to teach that issue. When that's a real shame. If kids aren't learning about presidential elections in their social studies classes, I mean, where are they going to learn it, hopefully, around the dinner table as well. But they should be learning that in their social studies classrooms, the other thing they should be getting in their social studies classrooms has opportunities to talk about interesting, relevant, and yes, sometimes controversial topics that they care about, and to engage in civil dialogue with their classmates. That is, knowing how to do that. That requires practice. And the classroom, the civics classroom, I think is the best laboratory for that kind of experimentation and civil dialogue and civil discourse.
Jenna Spinelle
And do you think that social studies, teachers realizing that you can't obviously speak for all teachers everywhere, but based on the teachers that you speak to and work with? Are they prepared to do those two things one, to, you know, take on issues that might be divisive in our polarized times, and to foster civil dialogue in the classroom?
Emma Humphries
I think a lot of teachers are, I think a lot have brought up through teacher preparation programs that really emphasize that they've had pre service and in service professional development to prepare them for this. But there certainly could be more. And especially if we have more and more teachers going through alternative certification pathways, they're not getting that practice, or that sort of education around how to foster those conversations in those teacher preparation programs. So so we need to invest more money in teacher professional development, so they have more opportunities to learn the frameworks. And it's not even just about fostering. That's that discussion. It's about the preparation that happens before, which includes, by the way, letting administration know that you're going to be tackling these issues. I always, I always tell my teachers listen. The first time the principal in the hears that you're having a controversial discussion with your students should Don't be when a parent calls to complain about it, it should be ahead of time because you told them, hey, listen, this is what we're doing next week. Here's my lesson plan. Here's my objectives. Here's how I'm going to structure, the discussion, the dialogue, the debate, the seminar, whatever it is, and nine times out of 10 not eat now, I mean, 99 times out of 100, the principal's will say, that sounds great. And also, if you communicate that to parents ahead of time, they're they're typically on board with it that, you know, you know what, that sounds good. I appreciate what you're trying to do.
Jenna Spinelle
Let me end here. So are my colleague at Penn State, Brad Vivian was on the show. A few months ago, he has a book out called campus misinformation, which looks at how these issues of education, particularly higher education, and free speech and viewpoint diversity are portrayed in the media. And he argues that, you know, some, there's more hype created by stories in the media than that that's not reflective of what's actually happening on campuses, right, people kind of latch on to a few key examples, and then they get spread far and wide. And people think that the problem is more systemic than it really is. You work with, with K 12, educators all day long, from what you've described, I wonder if there's a similar phenomenon happening here, where we see a particularly raucous school board meeting somewhere and that clip, you know, spreads on social media and elsewhere, or we hear about a particular school or set of schools and their debates over a curriculum. But that's not really if you drill down to it. That's not actually representative of what's happening in schools more broadly, is is that is there? Is there a parallel there that you see?
Ashley Berner
Sure, I mean, that's well put there are most of the partners that we have are, are focused on educating kids giving them a balanced perspective. And it's it's not is not we it is not, it's, the world is a lot saner than our our media would have us think, yes, there are issues that we have that we need to work on. And I have real concerns about the fragility of our democracy. And there are real concerns that those of us in this space have to address, but most of the time, teachers are getting up in the morning doing the best job they could possibly do, to, you know, to educate the next generation. And there's a lot of most people have very goodwill, most people are, you know, willing and able to work together. So it's what we hope is that we can create the conditions for the next generation to do a better job than we're doing.
Jenna Spinelle
We will again, link to civic learning week in the show notes for folks who want to learn more, and maybe tune in to some of the virtual events that you're holding. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Emma Humphries
Thank you, Jenna.
Ashley Berner
Thank you for having me.
Chris Beem
So, I found that very interesting. And, and it is a bespeaks a condition of my psyche that I'm arguing with her them both in the same way that I'm arguing with myself, that I have this part of me wants to just stand up and cheer and say, yes, absolutely, that's great. Let's go. And there's part of me that just thinks this is never going to. And, and it's, it's in my it's in my with my own work. And it's here too, because I just, I think we are in a different state where, you know, I just I looked it up when I graduated from high school 1979. I know, I know. The the the Gallup asked for the first time, what is your, how many people have a great deal of faith and trust in major institutions? And the answer was 48%. And now that number is 27%. And so I think there's just been this widespread decline in trust in all American institutions. And so when high school says, or when a school district says, We really think we should be teaching students, preparing them for their roles as future citizens, there's going to be a lot of people clearly the majority who are suspicious about that in that initiative, and and that makes me doubtful about their ability to pull this off, despite the fact that I'm absolutely behind the objectives.
Candis Watts Smith
So I think that if we look closely at the data and you ask people if you trust American political instead intuitions a lot of people will say no. If you ask them, if they trust their representative, they will say yes. You ask them if they trust their county people to do their elections, right? They will say yes. If you ask them, if they trust their child's teacher, they would say, yes. So there is definitely a mismatch between what people say about American institutions writ large, and what they say about their own local institutions. So I mean, I think that's one thing to point out, I think the second thing to point out is that a lot of the crying sobbing drama is among a few very loud people. And I civics data shows, just like other we brought in other folks that say, like, look, when we, when we look in the middle, there is a lot of agreement on issues. And so you know, I think a lot of our intuition is to follow the thing that we see most frequently in the media, and not necessarily what I see, for example, on the playground, when I'm going to pick up my kid from school. You know, I trust those parents, I trust the teachers, I trust that community to do right by my son. And so then the question becomes, if we really leaned into what Emma is talking about, might we have gotten ourselves someplace different. And one of the examples that she pointed out that just really resonated with me is the example of the Parkland students, that they have excellent civics education, and they're in Florida. And so we can all say all of the things that we want to say about Florida, but apparently, they're doing something that is producing well informed, active young citizens. And so you know, in that situation, I mean, we also they also have, I mean, we can go back, and we can say like, well, then they also voted for this one guy, but he barely won. But you know, men, I don't know, we can go back and forth on these things. But one of the things I think that is a parent, is the necessity to think about how to fully implement an education about how to be a good citizen, a well informed citizen, no matter your views.
Chris Beem
Well, and you know, let's face it, we didn't get into this hole overnight, we're not going to get out of it overnight, either. And, and so, you know, just working towards a more, you know, thoughtful, deliberate strategic frame of reference for thinking about civics? And how, you know, we have to engage these questions with the, with the level of importance and seriousness that they deserve. If we want to sustain our democracy, we have to attend to this. And, and I'm actually thinking of Tom Nichols, who just says, We're not a serious society anymore. And you know, whether or not that's true, or how much you think that's true, it is true, that a democracy requires a serious electorate. It requires us to take seriously our roles as citizens.
Candis Watts Smith
So one of the things that actually brings up is that perhaps one way, another way to do that is through educational pluralism, or this kind of idea that maybe we can use public funding for a broader array of types of schools, so that parents can have a greater selection of opportunity, you now have a greater range of opportunities to match their child's education with their values. What do you think?
Chris Beem
I think it's an interesting idea. I think it it might I worry, that it is a step back from, you know, kind of the insistence on the, you know, the hegemonic model of the public school system, that public schools ought to be first among equals, because it is meant to be an opportunity for everybody to come together and have these experiences. That said, I also think that it's it's an interesting strategy that maybe some evangelical Christians say or Hasidic Jews say would be open to right. I do think that you're gonna get a lot more buy in on questions of science than you are. are on, you know, how do you teach the Civil War, for example, and I don't think those problems are trivial. But I also think, as long as we engage these questions with good faith, and I'm not assuming that, but if we can get all the parties to engage this question in good faith, we ought to get somewhere. Right, we ought to be able to say, you know, here are some features about the civil war that we need, that needs to be included. And, you know, that includes the fact that just about every state constitution among the civil or the Confederate States of America celebrated slavery as being part of the reason for this separate nation. You know, if we can't agree to that, then then we're not being we're lying in our in our in our pedagogy. And so, you know, I don't know how far we get. But I do feel like, you know, it's, it's worth a try.
Candis Watts Smith
I really, I always do think it's important to think about how other countries do things. I mean, it's easy to feel like the way that we do it here is the way that it should be done. And so I really kind of appreciate it the comparative perspective.
Chris Beem
It was good Netherlands, right? I should remember
Candis Watts Smith
One of several, several examples across, you know, across the globe. One of the things I think that stood out to me, and what I struggled with is that each of those places also has a very particular context, their demographics, and what that particular thing means in their history. And so while I, you know, can appreciate the notion that, you know, maybe, you know, maybe people can just go into their own separate units, and there's some kind of core curriculum, and then there are some differences. I mean, I, I'm a little, I'm a little shaky on that issue. But the thing that really gets me is that putting this into the context of the American in the in the context of American society and American history, where when we let people take public funds to do what they want, they often exclude, they often discriminate, they often hoard resources. And so while I can begin to walk through the kind of principles of educational pluralism, I guess, my issue here is your issue about the thing we were talking about before is the idea of its execution. In our particular context, that's, I think, the thing that I have a hard time getting over
Chris Beem
The fact that these two are so focused on. Alright, let's try this, you know, let's talk about this instead of, you know, the bigger problems that, you know, they call it eat your spinach kind of kind of arguments. All right, well, that's when that's going to get nowhere. So let's just put this forward and see and see whether or not we can, you know, move towards a better solution than no solution.
Candis Watts Smith
I think that we have managed to come all the way back around to our optimistic selves. I mean, essentially, here's the best news is that there are a lot of people who want to make it better, and who are thinking really hard about trying to think through different options of getting us over these humps that we we know are there. And we know we have to navigate and they're doing the hard work. So with that, I want to thank Emma and thank Ashley both for, you know, taking the time to introduce their ideas and also to provide some optimism and some imagination around what we could be doing better hear,
Chris Beem
Hear, hear. Yeah. And so cynicism is comfortable, but it's not a good way to sustain a democracy. So I'm trying for Democracy Works. I'm Chris Beem.
Candis Watts Smith
And I'm Candis Watts Smith. Thanks for listening.