This was written by Sophie, one of our summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.
“Who is the Father of the Country?”
“George Washington”
It’s one of the few questions that students at the International Institute universally get right. No matter if the student has been in class for five years, five weeks, or five days, when I ask who the Father of the county is, I inevitably get George Washington as the answer.
He is one of the few historical figures who live up to their enlarged status. The 100 civics questions that all naturalized citizens are required to know find him so important that they ask two questions about him: Who is the Father of the country and who was the First President?
Our first president is the cornerstone of our nation’s civic education. Despite the failings in the education system, even people who have never attended a day of school in their life (at least immigrants) can name the first president of the United States. People know his name and they know his role.
The problem is, while they know his name, while they know he was the first president and the father of our country, if I put a picture of George Washington on the board, people would have no idea who the white man with the wig was. Being the Father of our country does not grant automatic facial recognition or the ability to understand the civics lessons he left us.
Because George Washington did a lot more than be our first president or the leader of America’s fledgling militia turned military or even be a slave owner. All of those are facts that a student might recite in a presentation, memorized and then discarded somewhere down the line or used during trivia nights.
All of those memorized facts do nothing without the historical context surrounding them: why was George Washington our commander? What are the important lessons of his presidency? How did he govern as president?
Unfortunately, our civics education stops at rote memorization; it stops at those 100 questions we ask immigrants during their citizenship interviews. Modern Civics education is asking the who and maybe the how but never the why and when and the significance of what happened. It’s names and events, not context and effects.
To put it bluntly: civics education is lacking the history behind it to actually call it an education.
“Name your U.S. Representative.”
“Lacy Clay”
Statistically, civics classes are required in 36 states although only 8 of those states require a year long civics class. Nineteen states require a student to pass a civics exam in order to graduate. In comparison, 40 states require history classes, 28 of those are year long classes, but only 15 require the passing of an exam to graduate.
What I hope these statistics say is that our education system is failing our students when it comes to BOTH history and civics. All 50 states should require history and civics classes, in an ideal world these courses would build on each other and be so integrated that one fails to see where the history ends and the civics begins.
Additionally, while most students take American history classes, fewer students take World or European history classes. Students across America have no access to African, Asian, or Latin American history until college and even then the classes might be taught by professor not directly engaged with the community being discussed.
The lack of multi-cultural perspectives and the emphasis on white perspectives heavily skews historical perspectives and thus affects civics classes. Taught from a white male perspective, America has always been the land of hopes and dreams (as long as you had a little money.) For the most part, you could always vote, you always had the chance to become a landowner, and the laws of the land worked in your favor.
Taught from a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant perspective, America was always exactly as billed: a land where anything was possible, where you could leave the constraints of European society and become the man in charge.
Taught from a white immigrant perspective America is a story of triumph; after a little trial and tribulation things worked out. Slowly but surely, by adopting the culture, immigrant groups like the Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Bosnians became respectable members of society. They became the blueprint of success for other immigrants.
Taught from a black perspective America has never worked like it was supposed to. There has never been a land of freedom, a land of equal opportunity, a land where every person’s voice mattered equally. Civics meant marching, being beaten, demanding equal rights as policemen beat them, dogs tearing at their clothing and skin, and people yelling obscenities.
Taught from a Mexican American perspective, land and sea ports were taken unexpectedly, without warning. They didn’t move, the border did, leaving them straddling two distinct cultures, two distinct worlds, and two distinct countries. Suddenly, they became second class citizens in places they had lived their whole lives and the white people who had been their neighbors pretended nothing had happened.
Taught from a Japanese American perspective history meant naming them as a way to stop the flow of Chinese immigrants. It meant fighting for their nation in World War II while being imprisoned in internment camps. Civics was a debate about resisting the draft until they were freed or fighting a war to prove their loyalty. It meant waiting for the right to vote.
Taught from a Native American perspective it is a tale of genocide, loss of a continent, forced relocation, humiliation, and erased history, language, and culture. History is still unfolding as America celebrates a conqueror as the first person to discover America and as the federal government continues to own reservations, making it impossible for the people living on them to dig their own wells.
What I mean to say is that history is not one thing to all people at all times. It is instead, a matter of perspective that requires context, multiple points of view, and a cause and effect narrative that is not limited to just one group of people.
America has no common history. This lack of common understanding has been exploited to create divides between socioeconomic, racial, religious, and political groups. When we teach our students American history from a purely white perspective, we fail to educate our students on the whole context and reality of our nation.
And when we fail to properly teach history, we automatically fail trying to teach the civics side of the equation. How can a student accurately describe the right to vote and the responsibility Americans have to vote if they do not understand the sacrifices certain groups had to make in order to receive that right?
Without history, who cares that George Washington was the first president of the United States? That Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves? That before he was a president, Eisenhower was a general in World War II?
Context matters. History matters. Because without it, civics is just rote memorization of facts that mean nothing.
“What is one promise you make when you become a United States Citizen?”
“Obey the laws of the United States”
Let’s take for example the 13th Amendment. Without history, the 13th Amendment reads:
“SECTION 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. SECTION 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
In a purely civics environment, the 13th amendment abolishes slavery for all people living in the United States from the point it was enacted till the present day. Any student would believe that slavery no longer takes place and was, in fact, ended the moment the amendment was enacted by Congress.
But historically, the context of this amendment is incredibly important. Because the 13th Amendment bans slavery except as punishment for a crime, a loophole that Southern plantation owners exploited in order to reinslave the recently freed black population.
Historically, the 13th Amendment required the 14th and 15th amendments in order to fully enfranchise freed slaves. The three amendments which, from a governmental perspective, achieved the heights of equality, historically failed to adequately enfranchise a population that was supposedly free from bondage.
Civics education teaches the 13th amendment freed the slaves, an historical education teaches that it would take another hundred years and an entire Civil Rights movement to achieve what the 13th Amendment was supposed to accomplish. Even now, economic, social, and political parity was not and has not been achieved between the black population and the white.
Civics teaches one thing, history teaches another. Without history, our civics is empty promises taken as truth.
“There were 13 original states. Name three.”
“Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey.”
More importantly, is the lack of a service component when it comes to civic education. According to the Brookings Institute, only 11 states require a service component to their civics education. This means that of the 36 states that require civics, 25 require no hands on learning.
One of the biggest problems with teaching both history and civics is the potential inherent biases that can be brought into the classroom. People believe the version of history they want to believe, just like they receive their news from sources that likely share their opinion. Who your teacher is plays a big role in what you get out of the class: the debates you have, the issues you discuss, the angles your information comes from.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that you can have a neutral teacher who does an excellent job disguising their own beliefs and encouraging students to look outside of their perspectives. My own AP Government and Politics teacher provoked, pushed, and prodded the 11 of us who took her class to see things from all perspectives, not just the one we entered her class with.
But not all students are lucky enough to have that kind of teacher. Chronic low pay, decreasing education incentives, and increasing teacher burnout means some students will never have a civics teacher that pushes them outside of their comfort zone or forces them to think beyond their own perspective.
The problem becomes that parroting beliefs is not learning and teaching the political process does not work without applying the knowledge. If you take a civics class and do not actively engage with the process, then you simply memorized some facts, you did not learn civics.
Civics, like math, requires application. In order to be a true student of civics you have to vote, write your representatives, call them, and engage in the issues that affect you and your community. You have to engage with civics because it is first and foremost a process that has been refined throughout the course of American history.
This, of course, requires that you know the history of the issues and communities that you engage with.
“Who did the United States fight in World War II”
“Italy, Japan, Germany.”
Civics without history is like a house divided against itself: it cannot stand. You need the history to provide the context for how to be civically engaged. Without civics, history leaves you voiceless, unable to protest, move past, or confront the past. Without history, civics leaves you blind and vulnerable to the manipulation of political parties and other people.
Both are required to be good citizens. Both are required to be an active participant in your community and in the issues you care about. Both are required of immigrants who want to be naturalized. Both should be, but rarely are, required of American citizens born in the United States.
When teaching kids to read, we teach them to look for context clues surrounding words they do not know. When teaching kids civics, we deliberately make it difficult for them to find the context clues that would make it easier for them to understand the concepts they are being taught.
America is failing her students by failing to teach a synthesis of history and civics, yet we wonder why engagement and empathy has decreased recently. Perhaps it is because we are divorcing civics from action and turning it into who can memorize the most amendments while at the same time we remove the context of certain events, leaving people unable to articulate their place in a modern society.
Without a common history, America cannot have a civics education that actively engages all students. In fact, without history, America cannot have a civics education program at all. History is the Second Amendment, the 13th Amendment, the 19th Amendment, and all the struggles and context that surround them. But simply knowing those amendments does not explain history and it certainly does not equal civics.
“Name one U.S. territory.”
“America Samoa.”
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