What happened to Civics?

Rasmussen Reports found that 26% of Americans think that the president should be able to override the decision of the courts.  Yikes. Our country was designed to function at the behest of civic-minded citizens. Do you know anyone who took civics as a course in college or even as a high school lesson?  If you do, you are probably well in years.  For the most part, we don’t’ teach civic lessons to our children, certainly not in a systematic way.  Why is that? 

We can start to untangle this question by looking at why civics became important in the first place.  Prior to the American Revolution there wasn’t much of a need for universal civics.  Rich kids had their tutors and were usually taught about the Divine Rights of Kings.  Poor kids worked the farms if they were lucky and formal education was not in the cards.  

Some of those uppity rich kids turned to the philosophy of John Locke and other figures of the “Age of Reason,” when King George III decided he wanted more cash from the colonist that was their chance. Divine rights went out the window.  They had other ideas about creating a new kind of society. Those darn humanities…

After the American Revolution, *everyone* (notice the asterisks) was now an American citizen, a position with much better perks than British colonist -- nobody could now kill or imprison you because they feared you, were jealous of you or wanted your property; you could do what you wanted with your life for the most part; and most amazing of all, you had a right to find your happiness.  Look at the condition in Europe at the time to know just what a revolutionary set of ideas those trouble-makers came up with.   

As an American citizen, civic responsibility was critical to the whole Nation-building affair.  The people were now in charge, at least that was the brilliant idea central to this new vision of society. The reality, however, was not quite like that.  *Everyone* only included men who had the fortune of owning land and sporting a certain skin color.  That darn elite problem.   

Now, elites have a role to play, the founding fathers were definitely elites of their times.  Many people critical to the functioning of society, doctors, engineers, financers have some kind of elite status.  The problem is that political elites, corporate elites and a smattering of bureaucratic elites work in tandem to find ways of making rules that benefits them at the expense of everyone else.

Purposefully or not, the founding fathers did that as well, but they also drafted a governing document of great genius, which so far has helped us avoid what normally happens to democracies… they turn ugly, really ugly… emperors and dictators take over, usually under the guise of populism. 

Another cool thing about the constitution is that it allows for change. Over time the rules loosened up, in the 1830s, all white men not just land owners were considered full citizens.  After the civil war, all men 21 or older got in the club at least during reconstruction.  It didn’t take, the name Jim Crow comes to mind. I imagine you all know something about that ugly history, as you probably know about the women suffrage movement in the early part of the 20th century.  It took a civil rights movement to democratize the country in what most of us would consider fair and just today.  Of course, many of us feel that work is incomplete, but the trendline, although bumpy, has been in that direction.

What does all this have do with why schools don’t’ teach civics today?  The effort to give full citizenship to all adults required a great deal of blood, sweat and tears by everyday people and changed people’s beliefs. With all these emancipatory efforts, the constitution began to be seen as an anachronistic document, not as important and flawed.  The price you could say was the reputation of the founding fathers and their handiwork. For many civics came to represent part of the “elite” problem. 

As an undergrad, I took classes in black history, Feminism and Marxism, and I can tell you reverence for the constitution was not high on the list of topics.   One notable course, however, taught by a graduate student, we nicknamed “the great white dead German men class.”  Most of us groaned about it. It wasn’t just about Germans but the rest was right, and it was a requirement. Try reading Hegel, ouch.  The instructor insisted that it was critical to understand the philosophical underpinnings of our nation and Western Civilization at large.   Looking around today, she appeared to have a point.

No matter the reasons for the decline of civics, we have become a nation of consumers rather than citizens.  We live in a democratic republic and most people don’t really know what that means. That a quarter of Americans believe the president has the power to ignore the courts is a dangerous thing.  

 As citizens we have the responsibility to understand that our system of government is federal, meaning power is limited and shared, and for good reasons.  The voter participation rate is so low that only a quarter of the population usually elects a president. If you do the math it’s not pretty.

I’m not a professional philosopher by any means, more of dabbler in philosophy.  Consider me a fellow citizen groping in the dark and trying to fulfill my civic obligation. With all that in mind, I’ll be posting more about this issue in the days to come.  I hope some of you join me in working this through.