WASHINGTON, DC, Apr 13 — The National Review calls it “The Greatest Education Battle of Our Lifetimes.” The leftist forces in Congress call it a way to promote the study of civics and history in the nation’s classrooms. The National Association of Scholars calls it “progressive activist training in disguise.” It is a proposed piece of legislation called The Civics Secures Democracy Act [CSDA].
Should CSDA become law, it will provide a billion dollars a year in federal grants for what it says is K-12 support for civics and history education. American schoolchildren are, indeed, deficient in their knowledge of history and civics, as the findings of the National Center for Education Statistics consistently report. Our nation’s students obviously need help. But there is skepticism that the CDSA will provide that help as well as authoritative concern that should Congress pass the bill, it can actually distort history and “weaponize” the study of civics.
One of the troubling phrases in the CSDA is “civic engagement.” It purports to be a way of describing the duties of citizenship. But some believe the intent of the law is to turn the younger generations into political activists.
David Randall is Director of Research at the NAS and has written extensively on the topic of civics education. In a recent article in the Epoch Times, he describes what he believes to be the meaning of civics education as it is framed in the proposed law.
He says that the bill’s true focus in the area of “civic engagement” is to allow activists to train America’s next generations to be radical protestors.
Meanwhile, Stanley Kurtz, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and an expert in the field of civic education, says that the CSDA proposes “supposedly evidence-based [educational] practices, which are essentially the menu of troubling teaching techniques favored by the movement for Action Civics (Bill Page 5, Line 16-Page 6, Line 5). These are the very same practices I have written model legislation to block at the state level. They include: 1) directing teachers to discuss current social and political controversies in class; 2) out-of-class political protests and lobbying (nearly always for leftist causes) for course credit (in the bill, called “projects” and “experiential learning”) and 3) internships with (invariably leftist) lobbying and advocacy organizations for course credit (in the bill, called “service learning”).”
Kurtz describes the bill as “a backdoor effort to impose a de facto national curriculum in the politically charged subject areas of history and civics.”
The NAS has created a new project aimed at countering the potential negative impact of the CSDA. It’s called The Civics Alliance, and it seeks to rally those Americans who wish to see a return of patriotic fervor by teaching our kids how to be responsible citizens. The initiative would promote “authentic civics education” and encourage our children to learn the U.S.’s unbiased history, the why and how our Founding Fathers came up with the idea of creating a unique self-governing federal republic.
NAS President Peter W. Wood put it this way: “This new alliance is a necessary step to ensure that the teaching of our nation’s civics and history accords with the principles of its founding and the reality of that history. Progressive action civics [referring to K-12 and college students being required to protest and lobby for political causes for course credit], while encouraging our students to become activists, fails to promote a full understanding of civics. It fails to teach the responsibilities of citizenship, how our federal republic operates, and the Founders’ reasoning behind America’s balance of powers, Bill of Rights, or encouragement of public education.”
It should be noted that there is no such thing as Action Civics. The teaching of civics in the classroom includes:
- Civic life, politics, and government
- The foundations of the American political system
- How the government established by the Constitution embody the purposes, values, and principles of American democracy
- The relationship of the United States to other nations and to world affairs
- The roles of citizens in American democracy
TO EVERYONE: Are you familiar with mother and education activist Niki Klann in Scottsdale, AZ and what she started online bondsforhthewin.com to educate average parents (anyone really) HOW they can easily and legally take on, hold accountable, back down and BEAT power-hungry, abusive school boards, principals and superintendents…up to and including forcing them to resign? This simple but powerful LEGAL REMEDY TOOL remained unknown (even to most lawyers) until early in 2022 in America. It also works for putting city councils, city managers, city planners, police chiefs, sheriffs, mayors, AG’s and even abusive governors IN CHECK.
I have been watching the education system slowly change then by leaps and bounds into something unrecognizable. We no longer really have public education. When the Department of Education was established in 1978 during the Carter Administration, things too a strange turn. Prior to that establishment curriculums were established by “local” school boards and tax paying parents in their home location. Who new better then than those people wat their children should learn for their particular environment???
After the US Department of Education was made a bureaucracy. politicians and office holders determined just what our children “must know’ regardless of their location across the nation. Cookie cutter curriculum that was designed to “teach to the test” and forget about learning a subject or use.
That being said…. we no longer have Public education…. We DO have GOVERNMENT education.
Where is it written in our constitution of the United States that anyone in the federal government has any power to decide what curriculum our children are to be studying in their state, school, church or home? Point this out to us, we don’t see it
The public schools my grandchildren attend, teaches more about alternate lifestyles, than it does history and government. What a farce our public education system has become. They don’t teach handwriting anymore. They can’t even read handwritten notes I send them. What a shame our education system has become. God almighty help us.