Meira Levinson has written a wise and insightful case for the proposition that schools should be “helping today's students grow into democratically minded and empowered adult citizens in the future” (p. 385). She uses the definition of good civic education adopted in “The Civic Mission of Schools,” a report that is too long to quote here in full but whose goal is “helping young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives” (p. 43). This aim is important, she stresses, not just for the sake of the students but for the sake of us all and our democracy, which can function soundly only if all its citizenry participate.
In her book, Levinson makes a compelling case that schools should be the primary place for civic learning. But she is equally persuasive that this goal is not being achieved in most schools across the country. By contrast, she notes that a half-century ago, high school students regularly took three civics courses, while today they may take only one in their senior year, by which time many of the students most in need of civic learning—especially poor and minority students—have dropped out of school.
The civic learning that Levinson endorses is not what she terms “old school ‘civics’” (p. 53), but rather “action civics” in which students are engaged in “guided experiential education” (p. 216). She gives a number of examples of what she terms “doing civics” (p. 279), ranging from serving on a jury for mock trials argued by law school students to various programs in which students engage directly in advocacy to promote improvements in their communities, in the process feeling empowered to participate in democratic processes instead of marginalized, as is so often sadly true. In so doing they can gain the vitally important “skill and habit of viewing the world from multiple perspectives” (p. 85).
Levinson weaves her own experiences as a public school teacher into her arguments for civic education. From the very first page, she demonstrates with powerful examples how challenging the teaching of civic learning can be, particularly in a classroom filled with poor students of color. Why is it so important for those students to learn to be active, engaged, responsible citizens of their communities? It is because they will otherwise fail to be empowered to participate in the functioning of these communities. “[T]he civic empowerment gap harms all Americans,” she wisely writes, “because it weakens the quality and integrity of our democracy” (p. 48).
The author's arguments seem so compelling. Why then are our schools, with few exceptions, not following her counsel? This is certainly not because she is the first to make the case for civic learning in the schools. John Dewey made that case powerfully in his great book Education and Democracy, written almost a century ago, although Levison does not even include Dewey in her index. In fact, I failed to find more than a passing reference to his influence. Dewey, like Levinson, argued that our democracy requires an engaged citizenry to realize the civic potential of its citizens and that schools should be center stage in civic learning.
Unfortunately, Levinson leaves two crucial questions unanswered in her otherwise thoughtful and persuasive volume. I can suggest a possible answer to the first but am at a loss in terms of the second.
First, why did civics largely disappear from secondary school curricula in the era after the 1960s. A similar disappearing act occurred in higher education and I suspect the reasons may be the same, though I have no firm evidence. To take an example from the institution where I now teach, in the late 1920s and 1930s freshmen at Stanford University were required to take a year-long course called “Problems of Citizenship.” The course was one-fourth of the normal first-year undergraduate curriculum, and was rooted in the judgments of the university's founders, Jane and Leland Stanford, that education for civic leadership should be a primary goal of an undergraduate education. In the words of Mrs. Stanford, “While the instruction offered must be such as will qualify the students for personal success and direct usefulness in life, they should understand that it is offered in the hope and trust that they will become thereby of greater service to the public.”
In the opening lecture in 1928, the first year the course was offered, Professor Edgar Eugene Robinson told students that “citizenship is the second calling of every man and woman. You will observe as we go forward that our constant endeavor will be to relate what we do and say to the facts of the world from which you came and in which all of you will live, and to correlate the various aspects of the modern scene, so that it will appear that citizenship is not a thing apart, something to be thought of only occasionally or left to the energies of a minority of our people, but that its proper understanding is at the very root of our daily life” (based on Chapter VI in W. B. Carnochan, The Battleground of the Curriculum, 1993).
What a contrast is this course, as well as many others like it that were taught at colleges and universities around the country in the first half of the twentieth century, with most contemporary courses in political science today. So what happened? A number of forces probably led to the shifts, but I suspect that one was particularly important. In the post–World War II years, disinterested, disengaged analysis increasingly became the dominant mode of inquiry in political science and other social sciences and quantitative methods became the primary tools of that analysis.
I think it likely that this perspective had a powerful effect not just on political science as taught to college students but also on the teaching of civics in secondary schools. A primary aim of high school civics courses had been to prepare young students to be actively engaged, responsible civic leaders in their communities, involved in politics at every level. The new trend, fueled by the new approaches in political science, may well have drained the civics courses of their activist aims. Learning about government was substituted for participating in it, as logical positivism became the mantra among the social sciences in American higher education.
The second question is raised by Levinson near the end of her book. She reports that she participated in writing a “Civics in Action” curriculum for her school but did not follow it because it failed to adopt her views on what and how students needed to learn. “Given this, “she asks, “what reason do I have to expect that my own ideas will have any greater traction?” (p. 257). Unfortunately, she does not suggest an answer to this troublesome question. Rather, she engages in an extended riff on standards, assessment, and accountability in schools and, while her thoughts on these issues are insightful, they do not respond to her question.
My own civic-education focus has been college students and, given the extensive literature on civic learning in higher education, I am surprised that the author does not refer to that literature or the insights it may provide for K–12 civic schooling. She cites several national organizations that do sponsor civic education in schools, but gives them only passing reference (p. 246). Admittedly, there are many differences between K–12 and higher education, but I think that lessons could be learned from organizations like The American Democracy Project of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and Campus Compact.
To regret that Levinson is not able to offer strategies for effectively implementing her sound ideas for “action civics” is not to diminish the major strengths of this fine work. She charts a way forward for those who care about future generations learning to be responsible citizens of our democracy. That is a great gift.
