What Should a Required Civics Course Look Like?

Given my academic background, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to discover that I’m sympathetic to calls for mandatory classes in American government. As a jobs program for political scientists, it strikes me as an excellent and badly needed intervention. Personal rooting interest aside, though, it’s trickier than it sounds.

The Inside Higher Ed piece about the University of Arizona trying to implement a requirement that would lead to a useful and thoughtful class raises a few of the key issues. The most basic is defining the goal of the class. Other than as a jobs program for political scientists—again, a fine and worthy idea—what problem is the class intended to solve?

I could imagine several answers to that question, each leading the course in a different direction.

If it’s about “civic engagement,” broadly defined, then I foresee it watering down into a service-learning requirement that could be met through any number of courses and/or activities. Service learning has its merits, but implementing a requirement at the scale of an institution like the University of Arizona is not a trivial endeavor. Without rigorous criteria and serious enforcement, I foresee some serious dilution of that requirement over time. And the political scientist in me wants to draw a distinction between volunteerism and a critical understanding of power. They aren’t mutually exclusive, but they aren’t interchangeable, either.

In an increasing number of states and universities, the point seems to be to push a narrative of the United States as a Christian nation with free markets and without any major conflicts that couldn’t be solved through more Christianity and/or deregulation. (The compatibility, or not, of the New Testament with economic Darwinism is a topic unto itself, but that’s for another venue.) This is variously packaged as anti-woke or patriotic education. It’s presented as an alternative to what its advocates consider the ideologically loaded critiques that acknowledge race, class and gender.

The obvious issue with that option is that its factual premise is simply false. The institutions of government in the U.S. have been formed through battles along lines of race and class. Anyone who has read the Federalist Papers should know that. Check out James Madison in Federalist 10, explaining the virtues of a large country with many factions: allowing factions to multiply will make them cancel each other out, thereby preventing “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or any other improper or wicked project.” “Improper” and “wicked” are not neutral terms, and he did not mean them neutrally. The Constitution was designed the way it was expressly to prevent egalitarian economic reforms. Municipal secession movements within states have often been carried out explicitly along lines of race and class. Measures like the indirect election of senators (which remained in effect into the 20th century) and the Electoral College were specifically intended to prevent the masses from wielding their collective power against the propertied. The basic structures of government that we take for granted—the Electoral College, state lines, municipal boundaries—only make sense when their context is acknowledged. And they continue to have countermajoritarian effects on policy long after their designers have passed away; at this point, it’s not unusual for senators representing over 60 percent of the people in the country to be stopped by senators representing fewer than 40 percent, even without the filibuster. Extra power for small states was a design principle, and its impact is still strong. The idea that the shape of our institutions has nothing to do with race or class is just factually incorrect.

A version of American politics that omits conflict will not provide understanding. It will prevent it.

Still another version would look at voting as the critical variable. We know that voter participation rates skew by age, with younger voters voting less than their elders. At least in this case the measure is straightforward: after a few years, either students’ voting rates went up or they didn’t. I’m a fan of improved voter participation rates, but this strikes me as a side benefit dressed up as a reason.

An argument based on “critical thinking” would come much closer to my own preference, but measurement is an issue. It also raises the question of whether the object of critical thinking has to be politics or institutions; presumably, the skills of critical thinking could be brought to bear on any number of subjects. My argument would be that critical thinking about the government is a foundational skill of democracy; it’s what we expect citizens to do. If they can’t, then the argument for democracy is weakened drastically. Building a course that would encourage students to develop the skills of thoughtful and engaged citizens would require an ideological pluralism in its design; we’d want students to disagree with each other and with the instructor, so they could learn the skills of democratic dialogue. That rules out the anti-woke version, and it requires a critical version to build in room for disagreement. Presumably, some would get bitten by the bug and become more engaged, though we’d run the risk that principled disengagement could happen, too.

I’d like to see an American Government class that draws not only on political science and history, but also on composition and public speaking. Have students learn to express themselves politically. I used to require students to write a letter to an elected official who represents them—local, state, or federal—about something that matters to them. They’d get extra credit if they got a response. I saw students’ attitudes toward the course change drastically when they got substantive answers. One student wrote to his mayor about drivers using his residential street as a cut-through between highways, maintaining highway speeds where they shouldn’t. The following week he saw police camped at either end of the street, ticketing drivers. After that, he was in. The attitude shift was palpable.

Designing and implementing a course like that at scale would take some work, but it might offer a politically acceptable way to address a real need. Over the last few years, it has become obvious that democracy is only as strong as our belief in it; there’s work to do. And if that work provides jobs for some of my colleagues, well, that’s great, too.