A Both/And Revolution in College Civic Education
Civic Thought for the Flourishing of America: Students and Democracy Together
What should a young American graduating from college look forward to? Finding a good job? Affording a home? Settling down with a compatible partner? Here’s a new, perhaps surprising item for the checklist: how about also joining society as a civic-thinking, participative member of American democracy?
That goal reflects a vision of a growing number of transformational academics, working today with quiet determination to reshape university experience for the next generation of young adults. What’s driving the professors’ aspiration is not just the interest and satisfaction they’re witnessing among students now engaging with civic topics, as they critically transition into adult life. Many of these teachers also believe that our nation deserves that kind of education and patriotic commitment from college graduates.
They’re on a mission with an innovative, win-win proposition for their colleagues: join a “both/and revolution”—build programs of civic thinking that improve our citizens’ human flourishing and also strengthen American democracy.
Today, that proposition is far from common in most of university life. But pioneering experiments pushing towards such a vision are cropping up across the nation. A growing number of faculty—and their students-- are now signing up for the cause.
The power of this dual-pronged movement hit me in a wide-ranging conversation I had with one of these new leaders, Jenna Silber Storey, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center for the Future of the American University at the American Enterprise Institute.
I called Jenna to discuss the “Civic Thought and Practice” conference she helped to organize in May, in collaboration with other AEI scholars and faculty from Johns Hopkins University. This summit gathered a network of professors, deans, policymakers and philanthropists, representing over 50 institutions, to discuss how universities could help students “cultivate the human capacity for thinking and acting like a citizen.”
Jenna explained that she and her fellow organizers discerned a growing trend to renew and rethink civic education in higher ed . They observed the recent launch of a few bellwether, dedicated institutions (e.g., ASU’s. School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, UT Austin’s School of Civic Leadership) as well as the more gradual expansion of civics-specific programs at other major universities (e.g. Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Yale). To build further momentum, Storey and colleagues wanted to gather leading and novice practitioners, to explore and “connect dots” of common purpose across their efforts. The conference aimed, as Storey noted, “to explore how universities might better help our students develop the intellectual foundations of civic life--so our institutions of higher education might better serve our constitutional democracy.”
Meeting face to face, the organizers hoped, could help practitioners break down the confines of current institutional siloes, and “generally lower the temperature” of some existing debates. The forum would enable faster consolidation of learning experiences, and open up the possibility that professors would discover a more common sense of direction. The conveners dreamed of adding some ripple effect to the wave they saw forming.
Wave Action
And ripple there was. Over the course of two days, the constructive buzz of the group was palpable. Attendees explored the why and hows of civic education in service of what they realized was a broadly shared cause. They swapped case examples of civic research and teaching in their institutions. The titular theme—civic thought and practice—served as conceptual umbrella for many related ideas that pointed towards potential for a common and collaborative movement.
Throughout the discussions, the dual elements of the emerging revolution—good for students, good for America-- appeared and re-appeared. Speaker and audience comments kept connecting the dots: Honoring the historic traditions of civic values while also making them relevant to America’s fractured politics. Managing diversity of thought and disagreements, and modelling civil discourse for application to everyday life. Infusing teaching with a sense that the right knowledge must be translated to visibly make democracy work better. Building bridges for collaboration with other subjects (e.g. economics, sciences) to infuse civic thinking beyond history and politics, and improve future citizens’ critical thinking. Rebuilding the reputation of universities with a clear recommitment to American values.
At the end of it all, people left energized, eager to spread new learnings to their home institutions, and beyond. (Check out the people, conversations, and front-line stories in the conference video recordings here).
Historical Need, Societal Readiness
As you’ll know from our book The Civic Bargain, I’m a Civ Ed enthusiast. Josh Ober and I detailed historically how the learning and practice of citizenship have been essential conditions for resilient democracies. We argued that intensifying America’s investment in civic education was now an urgent need for renewing its self-governance.
I’m also a general historian of ideas. Some of my most interesting exchanges with Jenna Storey (an intellectual historian in her own right) focused on broader questions about the cultural context surrounding this meeting, e.g., What’s driving this nascent movement? Why now? Where is the movement headed? What major challenges lie ahead?
Those sections of our discussion yielded some deeper insights-- about the state and future imperatives for America’s universities and our democracy. Here’s a brief sampling:
1. Societal and personal need. I came into the conversation focused on democracy’s struggles. Ms. Storey opened my eyes to the more personal struggles of young citizens today, which help explain the second element of the both/and revolution.
“In my teaching,” she reflected, “I see students feeling increasingly alienated from society. Loneliness is especially pervasive in the current post-COVID generation. Today, they want to recover societal relationships, and belong to something bigger than themselves. The idea of thinking and doing something for the greater good of our country is attractive—they see democracy going south and want to do something about it. Participating in civic life is also personally satisfying, because it activates a core human capacity.”
2. Moving beyond fading, negative ideologies in universities. Like many others, I believe our universities have become lopsidedly influenced by woke dogmas. And humanities teaching is overweighted with knee-jerk criticism of America and its history. Academia is overdue for a correction, and civic education is answering the opportunity.
Jenna underscored the point: “A generation ago, educators got good at challenging the greatness of America. Liberal arts faculty focused on pulling things apart, and attacking different pieces. But today, critiquing our country is not very interesting anymore. Students come to university, thinking ‘OK, I got all that in K-12-- now I want something new.’ And they also generally want something inspiring. They want you to show them a path to a good adult life.”
“To do so, the liberal arts need to recover something of their Ciceronian meaning—helping people become capable of exercising freedom well, and doing so in connection with others. Returning to that sense of the liberal arts suggests that good citizenship is critical to human flourishing. And that can be exciting to today’s students.”
3. Correct the knowledge fragmentation of the modern research university. Related, Jenna reflected on the problems created by today’s individualizing culture.
“Universities have increasingly celebrated the autonomy and independence of students--and done the same for faculty. For 150 years, academia has been professionalizing disciplines, emphasizing individual research, and rewarding ‘doing your own thing.’ That’s fractured our knowledge and civic-relevant understanding. Civic thought is a way to incorporate the expertise of several disciplines into a common endeavor, and help universities prepare people better to address the big questions facing the nation.”
4. Return to certain standard requirements. Notions of what specific content should be included in any civic thought curriculum are still evolving. Storey was wary of preemptively curtailing today’s lively debates on the question. But when I pressed her, she conceded her own personal “starter list” of likely topics: i) history of self-government ii) the American constitutional system of government, and why our founders designed it as they did; iii) discussion of its evolution over time; iv) the dispositions and practices necessary to live well in a community of citizens today; v) instruction in the economic and social scientific analysis that can help one understand policy debates; vi) the concept of civic thinking: what it is, why it matters.
She also mentioned that civic thought should be complemented by participative civic experiences.
5. Civic Thought and broader change. As our conversation began to close, we touched briefly on several other topics related to transformation: that civic thought and education is a wide canvass, which must involve not just universities but also K-12 education, business sector programs, and even public festivals (central features of civic learning in ancient democracies). Jenna also acknowledged that political pressure can be useful in aligning education more closely to the public interest. She noted that state governments have led the way in funding several of the new academic units devoted to civic education.
Jenna finished by returning to an idea that inspires her. “My hope is that civic thought can eventually be institutionalized as its own field of study—like history, English, or mathematics. I believe if it can become a dedicated discipline, we’ll have the best chance of infusing it into the general education we offer in the university.
“We’re all wrestling with how to get people to engage more productively with their country. There’s a virtuous circle between learning about something and loving it. If more of us learn how to think like citizens, more of us will likely come to love the work of living in this country.”
From where I sit, both our nation and our college students are more than ready for that.
