Civic Preparation of American Youth: Reflective Patriotism and Our Constitutional Democracy

Polarization, Civic Decay, and Education for Engagement

After another national election cycle in 2022, we can note no improvement in the climate of prominent political and media elites who are strongly polarized and fostering mutual animosity across party and philosophical lines. Pervasive violent denunciations by elites, from extremes of both left and right, seem to feed now-regular acts of political violence. These civic failures join the ongoing general decline across recent decades in the legitimacy of, or public confidence in, many American institutions and professions directly related to politics; all save the military profession now are persistently underwater. Higher education itself has suffered a sharp decline in legitimacy and confidence in recent years, and in a partisan mode—with self-identified conservatives or Republicans registering the most doubts about the value to American life of this prominent sector (Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges 2018; Fischer 2022). From the vantage point of America’s largest public university, Arizona State University, this ugly political climate and disintegrating civic fabric seems to have fostered a sorting among university students into a small set of the politically engaged and activist versus a larger set of the disengaged who try to avoid the angry, seemingly pointless contestations of the engaged—both on campus and beyond. Among educators, in both K–12 schools and in higher education, we have reasonable grounds for responding by taking up the courageous path set recently by a few leaders: to consider that the widespread deficits of civic knowledge regularly measured across recent decades not only correlate with, but are a major cause of, this civically unhealthy stew of angry polarization among some Americans, lackluster civic participation among many more, and declining legitimacy of our civic order.

It is a glimmer of good news in a dark moment that recent years have seen some constructive academic responses—as well as civic and even governmental responses at the state and federal levels—that seek to diagnose and redress these twin deficits in civic knowledge and constructive civic participation. This volume of The ANNALS is one such effort. It is especially good that some scholars in political science and history, and courageous university leaders such as Bok and Daniels, have directed an accusing gaze at their own professions or communities. Daniels poses the crucial issue in the title of his 2021 book: What Universities Owe Democracy. The widespread abandonment of rigorous, knowledge-based civic education across most American universities and colleges in the past half century suggests that higher education’s failure by omission has been a major contributor to the widespread civic ignorance and concomitant civic dysfunction afflicting America. There are grounds for investigating a parallel failure of commission, in the lopsided emphasis on civic engagement and participation that is inadequately grounded—or not grounded at all—in fundamental American civic and constitutional knowledge. This priority for engagement in the recent higher education conception of civics, and particularly on activism for redress of one’s (or one’s professor’s) political grievances, contributes to a civic culture that elevates anger and passions over the sober civic virtues of civil disagreement, civic tolerance, and civic friendship across party and philosophical beliefs.

The American Political Science Association (APSA) links “civic education” and “civic engagement” in its website section on educator resources, but the clearly predominant theme is engagement. ¹ The most recent APSA report nominally on civic education is Teaching Civic Engagement across the Disciplines (Matto et al. 2017). This imbalanced view displaces fundamental civic knowledge of America’s constitutional order, principles, and development and also of the civic virtues one develops through discussion of the contending views and voices that have addressed these crucial topics. If one scans the panel and paper titles of recent APSA Teaching and Learning Conferences, there is occasional mention of deeper and broader ideas about citizenship, civic education, and civic culture; but the predominant focus clearly is democratic activism, engagement, change, mobilization, commitment, service learning, and tactics. For the most part, first-order questions about the meaning of citizenship and education for informed citizenship in America’s liberal democratic constitutional republic, if posed at all, are implicitly approached through a hyperdemocratic and present-centered lens. ² Missing is the liberal arts approach of addressing foundational ideas and ideals, and the perpetual American debate about them, which concomitantly develops civic virtues of civil disagreement and civic friendship across diverse viewpoints through the very study of, and discussion about, such essential topics (McAvoy, Campbell, and Hess 2019).

Thus, the fact that a few scholars and university leaders recently have undertaken diagnosis and proposed remedies about American civic education should not induce a reassuring view that the battle is well joined, with improvement in sight. The social forces and intellectual trends that led American higher education in general, and a few crucial disciplines more particularly, toward this abandonment of civic and intellectual duties are both deep and powerful. Those few awake to the problem, and working at national and local levels to reinvigorate a knowledge-first approach to civic education as the necessary foundation for constructive civic participation and renewed civic health, might need a touch of the grim humor often deployed by Arizona’s late Senator John McCain. He was known to warn friends and supporters against false optimism by noting that “things always look darkest right before [. . .] they go totally black.” McCain was a patriot to the end and would not lose hope in America even if optimism was misleading. As a graduate of one of the federal military academies, McCain had benefitted from serious civic education in American constitutional knowledge and principles of liberal democracy as the foundation for his civic virtues and commitment to civic duties. He thus embodied what Alexis de Tocqueville had observed about the new kind of patriotism in the new world: that the Americans practiced a “reflective patriotism”—blending gratitude for their country and its principles with insistence upon argument and questioning, pointed toward both government and their fellow citizens (1840/2000, “On Public Spirit,” vol. I, pt. 2, ch. 6, 225–27). This is the kind of civic education that American higher education now generally fails to provide to our future leading citizens and to our schools, thus disserving the polity that offers our profession so much freedom, support, and preeminence.

Educators Forging a National Consensus Approach on Civics

Amid the current reality that every dimension of civics and history education itself, in America’s schools and in higher education, is polarized between rival and sometimes incompatible views, there have been a few recent efforts at forging a national consensus approach. Alongside the perpetual contestations of liberal-democratic politics there remains awareness even among recent social scientists that concern about the need for a shared civic culture or civic norms—first raised by Aristotle—is salient in the twenty-first century (Goodman 2022). One such national effort among American educators was the recent study Educating for American Democracy (EAD; 2021) (see Figure 1). It is crucial to note that the study’s leaders brought together a diverse group of 300 educators from across the political and intellectual spectrum of progressive to conservative, precisely to develop national consensus guidelines for improved K–12 American history and civics education. I was one of the seven principal investigators (PIs) and coauthors; as a fairly obscure political scientist and constitutional conservative, I was invited by such notable figures as Danielle Allen and Jane Kamensky of Harvard, Peter Levine of Tufts, and the national civic education provider iCivics, led by Louise Dubé. The PI group then sustained, for two years, this intention to span center-left to center-right views among history, political science, and civic education experts in higher education, K–12 schooling, and further educational arenas. The larger project team sought to reflect several kinds of diversity and balance and capture the spirit of America’s national motto, e pluribus unum. The members of the steering committee, task forces, working groups, and advisory council included Democrats, independents, and Republicans; progressives and conservatives. We also sought to include people from every region of the country; educators in elementary and secondary school classrooms as well as in colleges and universities, museums, and other institutions; and civil society organizations across the ideological spectrum. Our racial, ethnic, age, and gender diversity approached that of America itself—even if, to be candid, the small proportion of conservatives involved mirrored their diminished presence in higher education and the K–12 ecosystem, rather than the general parity of conservatives and progressives in the country.

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Figure 1

The Seven Themes of the Educating for American Democracy Initiative

Across 18 months of reflection and deliberation, we forged meaningful consensus on broad guidelines for a reinvigorated and improved education in the civic knowledge and civic virtues America’s youth need and deserve in their schooling if they are to be prepared and motivated to sustain our form of self-government. In America’s spirit of federalism and reinforced by our aspiration to a healthy pluralism, we agreed that we would develop not a national curriculum but a framework—using the concept of a roadmap—such that states, localities, and schools could develop their particular paths toward shared destinations. Thus, particular curricular plans and lessons would be informed by the American balance between national republic and federal diversity. And we balanced the seven main content themes of The Educating for American Democracy Roadmap (EAD 2021) with five design challenges woven throughout them, so as to capture and emphasize for educators and their students some crucial points of tension inherent in American historical and civic life. The approach of EAD guidelines, and of those design challenges in particular, urges schools to embrace discussion and debate across the differing responses to these main themes and tensions. The approach thus sought balance between core knowledge, deep inquiry, and developing the civic virtues involved with how Americans should consider and discuss their differing views. This was an ambitious package; the study’s subtitle is Excellence in History and Civics for All Learners.

What we ultimately recommended for educators and students in K–12 schools is what we had to undertake, ourselves, in the author group as we worked to frame the fundamental terms of the study. One journey was finding consensus on the phrase “constitutional democracy” as the central term for understanding America’s complex political order and the histories that created it. Many conservatives insist the U.S. is a republic and emphasize the representative nature of the common people’s voice in government and the importance of stable, orderly institutions. Liberals and progressives prefer democracy—a term that emphasizes the power of the people, especially at the ballot box, and a spirit of change or reform. Both terms were in use when the Constitution was written. The EAD Roadmap uses both, but the lead team settled on “constitutional democracy” as capturing both agency and order—a compromise with integrity. Similarly, we settled on “American democracy” in our title rather than democracy alone. Many political scientists deploy abstract and transnational terms about government and education, and, concerned that its monolithic tone privileges the dominant Anglo-Americans while excluding native peoples and other players in the story of this place, many historians are wary of the term American for describing the political entity that became the continental forty-eight states of the union. The decision to embrace America and American points toward my main topic, the study’s approach to patriotism. The lead group decided that American was a word to be proud of—since America is a worthy political experiment—and perfectly safe when coupled with democracy as well as with a larger approach featuring the freedom and rational integrity of debate, discussion, and disagreement about fundamental terms.

As the two-year study unfolded, we saw that the negative or affective polarization gripping our national political discourse, and large sectors of academic and intellectual discourse, only deepened. This can be encapsulated in The 1619 Project of The New York Times and the presidential 1776 Commission Report, the bookends to our journey from formation of the lead author group in summer 2019 to the release of the study in spring 2021. We consciously avoided those polarized and polarizing approaches. My own views fall toward the side of the 1776 Commission, but I recognize that the truth of America’s civic principles and historical experience is more complicated and also that a civics and history education in schools should better prepare adult citizens for debate and discussion across divergent viewpoints about America. The Educating for American Democracy report avers that debate and disagreement about the meaning of America’s civic principles is very American and also that debate and disagreement about the meaning of American history is very American. A robust K–12 education can balance core knowledge of civic and constitutional principles, and core knowledge of historical moments and achievements, with questioning, debate, and even a perpetual state of disagreement. This is not a bug or failing of America and of education toward being a thoughtful and engaged citizen. It is instead a feature of American self-government and of preparation toward mature citizenship. Study of many great American statesmen and stateswomen alone can reinforce this balance; figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King Jr. promoted critical reflection about the American experiment by balancing love of America with criticism about our failure to live up to our high ideals and demands for reform. King’s “I Have a Dream” address balances demand for, and the building of pressure toward enacting, improvements and remedial measures for America while still praising “the architects of our republic” and their “magnificent words” in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (King 1963).

An example from the beginning of the EAD Roadmap can illuminate the gains intended from the approach of interweaving basic content themes in American history and civics with design challenges that capture the tensions and grounds for disagreement inherent therein. Civic Participation is Theme One, and it is immediately followed in the Roadmap outline by Design Challenge One, “Motivating Agency, Sustaining the Republic.” The larger point is that civic participation is both a right and a duty in America’s constitutional democracy. The Declaration of Independence invokes both the right and the duty of a people to overthrow a government that threatens the inalienable natural rights endowed in each person by their Creator (Declaration of Independence 1776). This means that civic education entails a mode of knowledge in which the knowing substantially incorporates, and points toward, practice and action—in contrast to, say, mathematics. But this American kind of civic knowledge, traditionally anchored in self-evident truths derived from a fixed source in the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, points to a tension between foundations and agency, tradition and progress. Thus, we recommended that teachers and students grapple with the design challenge of striking a balance between sustaining our American republic—its foundations and core principles—and motivating new generations of citizens to engage in the work of debate, reform, and insistence that we live up to our principles. The journey through the remaining themes and challenges is meant to provide a coherent and comprehensive framework for K–12 American history and civics education that balances civic knowledge, civic virtues, and preparation for civic participation. Because it is not a national curriculum, the EAD approach calls for educators and civic leaders in America’s states and localities to use the framework as a guide for particular development of standards and curricula. The EAD report itself argues, of course, for the coherence and comprehensiveness of this complex approach. Interested readers also could consult the explanatory essays on the EAD themes and design challenges I coauthored recently with my Arizona State University colleague Adam Seagrave, commissioned by the center-right political news and media resource RealClearPolitics (2022) for its American Civics portal.

If the constitutional conservatives involved in the EAD study had to accept many compromises in the delineation of these themes and tensions, I congratulate my colleagues to the center and left for accepting that one of the design challenges would explicitly invoke patriotism (the fourth, “Civic Honesty, Reflective Patriotism”) and, even more, for accepting this quiet invocation of arguably the greatest work written on America’s constitutional democracy, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Just as mature American citizens and educators need to confront, for example, whether America’s many reforms amount to transformations and even refoundings (Theme Five)—hearing out, digesting, and respectfully responding to that more progressive approach—so progressive educators should confront the practical question of whether a free polity can be sustained and perpetuated if a large proportion of its citizens do not love it and thus are not fundamentally grateful for it, failings and all.

Reflective Patriotism, Civic Friendship, and Civil Disagreement

The final report of the Educating for American Democracy study was released in March 2021, not long after the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that sought to disrupt the nearly unbroken American tradition of an orderly, peaceful transfer of power after a national election. The author group decided to open the report by calling for this balanced view of patriotism and education:

The United States stands at a crossroads of peril and possibility. A healthy constitutional democracy always demands reflective patriotism. In times of crisis, it is especially important that We the People unite love of country with clear-eyed wisdom about our successes and failures in order to chart our forward path.

This call was not a change of principle or tone on our part; we already had chosen “reflective patriotism” as a central concept of the study’s proposed framework of curricular concepts and approaches. The EAD report argues that civic and historical knowledge is fundamental to, and should inform, constructive civic engagement and civic participation. We also argue, however, that civic knowledge—constitutional and historical understanding about the American experiment of the last four centuries—is incomplete without civic virtues. Students need study of, and encouragement to develop, the demanding civic habits and graces necessary to sustain the e pluribus unum of America. The social scientific language of attitudes and dispositions is not fully accurate; it does not capture the reality of that civic challenge. The EAD report and Roadmap particularly emphasize three civic virtues and weave them throughout the seven main themes and the five design challenges: the trio of civil disagreement, civic friendship, and reflective patriotism. The effort and continual practice required to form these higher habits is captured by the traditional term for moral excellence, for a higher plane of human choice and action. Even a progressive institution like the American Bar Association, and its Human Rights magazine, recently recognized the need for democratic citizens to rise above minimum levels of civic responsibility toward the higher capacities denoted by civic virtues, if America politics is to restore some degree of civic health (Callaway 2018).

Tocqueville sees in Americans a distinctive kind of patriotism he terms “reflective” or rational in contrast with the Old World patriotism of sentiment and mythic history focused upon emotional bonds to blood and soil. He notes that Americans are fiercely proud of America and thin-skinned about any criticisms from a foreigner, but he also discerns that the basis of that pride is only partly sentiment and bonds of fellow feeling. The pragmatic American spirit moves from the founding ideals about natural rights of individuals to a realization that one’s self-interest can only be secured through exercise of civic duties and the activity of self-government. The American citizen regularly calculates that civic participation, and the health of America’s political system, directly benefit one’s own family and friends. This discussion of reflective patriotism occurs in Volume I of Democracy, while in Volume II, Tocqueville deems the American utilitarian attitude toward civic participation and duties an “enlightened self-interest.” In that later, fuller discussion of the complicated psychology of the new democratic citizen, he notes that while the Americans claim to act only on rational, self-interested grounds, in fact they undertake “disinterested and unreflective” acts of magnanimous, altruistic conduct (1840/2000, vol. II, pt. 2, ch. 8, 502). Tocqueville’s full picture thus sees Americans as blending a rational orientation of argumentative demand for results—from government, fellow citizens, and the entire political order—with love of country and commitment to civic duty (Atanassow 2014; Shelley 2022). I was happy to see a serious philosophical defense of patriotism and civic education published by Yale’s Smith (2021) almost simultaneously with the release of our final report and Roadmap; a welcome independent validation that at least our EAD approach was advancing a worthy hypothesis.

The civic virtue of reflective patriotism is, in a sense, fundamental for the other two; a free, rational people who believe their politics is founded on self-evident truths will love their polity and be grateful for it but also be argumentative. In their freedom, they will disagree about what their fundamental principles mean or require and about the meaning of their history. Such a people thus will need an Aristotelian kind of civic friendship across philosophical and partisan divisions if they are to sustain an e pluribus unum, a polity unified enough to sustain itself and their argumentative freedom (Ludwig 2020). That civic friendship in turn calls for the third civic virtue in our EAD set of these concepts: civil disagreement. Only fellow American patriots, sharing this basis for civic friendship, can blend gratitude for America and its ideals with perpetual yet civil argument about what those ideals mean, how they fit together, and how we can live up to them.

The EAD Roadmap (EAD 2021) gives prominent place to these civic virtues; thus, Design Challenge One asks, “How can we help students become engaged citizens who also sustain civil disagreement, civic friendship, and thus American constitutional democracy?” The report defines reflective patriotism as “appreciation of the ideals of our political order, candid reckoning with the country’s failures to live up to those ideals, motivation to take responsibility for self-government, and deliberative skill to debate the challenges that face us in the present and future” (EAD 2021, 12). The report concludes on this very note: “Passing on a love and understanding of American constitutional democracy to future generations is an urgent civic necessity. We are all responsible for cultivating in ourselves and the young the reflective patriotism needed to navigate the dangerous shoals we now face as we chart a course between cynicism and nostalgia” (EAD 2021, 22). An appendix on civil disagreement and civic friendship argues that “civic education is less about learning answers to a set of contested and contestable questions than about learning to disagree well with one’s fellow citizens” (EAD 2021, 26). This means “engaging in debate with a commitment to honesty, trustworthiness, charitable interpretation, and moving forward together.” Civil disagreement doesn’t necessarily mean “civility” in the sense of polished manners, “but it should be characterized by a commitment to the well-being of one’s interlocutor as well as oneself.” It thus means “using reasonable speech and writing when criticizing views or policies we oppose” (EAD 2021, 26). The report further argues that the “closely related virtue of civic friendship reminds us that we should all regard one another as fellow Americans capable of sharing ideals, principles, and constitutional forms of self-government even as we vigorously debate our philosophical or policy differences.” The EAD Roadmap’s ambitious call for this kind of “excellence” in civics and history education is, in fact, “grounded on the belief that students and teachers can practice these civic virtues in every classroom session and debate about U.S. history and civic principles, and that all Americans can practice these virtues as we undertake the work of self-government” (EAD 2021, 26).

Forging a Higher Consensus for Rebuilding the K–16 Ecosystem of Civic Education

As noted above, higher education leaders as well as leaders in the disciplines of history and political science (among other fields) should confront the reality that K–12 education in American civics cannot be adequate, let alone robust, unless higher education commits to actively and broadly supporting such schooling. The K–16 ecosystem, interconnecting schools and higher education, is a reality; it can be either healthy or inadequate, but the feedback loop persists. The policy reality of the K–12 American civics and history terrain today is that, after three decades of polarized conflict among educators and elites over standards and curricula, the conflict itself is one cause of the steady decline in the quality of, and priority for, civics in our schools (EAD 2021, 9–10). Since the widespread criticism in 1994 and 1995 of the National History Standards developed by the National Endowment for the Humanities with support from the U.S. Department of Education—including the U.S. Senate vote of 99-1 against the largely progressive standards—civics and history have been more trouble than they are worth to local education authorities and schools. Clear national standards, thus testing regimes, have been developed in recent decades for various STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects and for reading and language arts, although the latter has occasioned some controversy, but not standards and tests for civics and history. Conservatives long took the lesson from their role in the 1990s conflict that blocking any national standards would protect a more traditional, sentimentally patriotic approach to civics and history education in those places where it remained. Progressives, who dominate the K–12 and higher education landscape—and especially the teachers colleges and schools of education in American universities—for their part have continued to push for education in “democracy” and civic engagement, confident that their control of the teacher pipeline portends eventual triumph. Neither side, certainly not the leading voices in either camp, is much bothered by the concomitant downward trajectory of the priority for funding of, testing of, and quality of teacher preparation in, American civics and history (and the basket of other social studies disciplines for schools—geography and economics included). In this culture war, neither side can see a Pyrrhic victory for what it is. The absence of national consensus on even an outline of priorities and approaches means the social studies, civics, and history teachers in the schools are more isolated, with less funding and support for the time, materials, priority, and professional development opportunities needed. The ultimate casualties include rising generations of citizens and aspiring citizens who inadequately understand, and care about, the extraordinary American experiment in self-government and constitutional democracy. Committed culture warriors, among teachers and students, continue their work but thereby perpetuate our national polarization and civic disintegration, at least among elites and the most active citizens.

The center-right education policy expert Checker Finn, president emeritus of the Fordham Institute, recently called the contending sides to work toward accommodation and consensus (Finn 2022). If there still is room in political science and other social sciences to have regard for hard-earned practical wisdom about policy matters, Finn certainly is worth considering as he has developed his judgment of the national educational landscape, especially American history and civics, across 40 years as scholar, officeholder, and policy leader. The poles of the current national debate on K–12 civics are represented by the Pulitzer Center curriculum developed from the 1619 Project of The New York Times and the more recent “American Birthright” curriculum developed by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) and their Civics Alliance (National Association of Scholars 2022; Pulitzer Center 2020). As a conservative, Finn finds more sensible elements in the latter approach, but he notes that the leaders on each side largely are preaching only to the converted. This commitment to perpetual conflict leaves behind—according to a recent University of Southern California study he cites, confirming his own judgment—a majority of parents and a majority of the broader American citizenry, who altogether support a blend of the progressive and conservative views about appropriate approaches and topics. I would add that the past decade suggests that America’s disintegrating civic order arguably needs something other than greater zeal from already polarized elites, including our educators. The recent culture of mutual denunciation, and polarizing approaches to curricula and standards, portends more polarization of the American citizenry into a further division of a small but vocal set of opposing zealots ranged against a broad set of disinterested, and ill-educated, citizens disgusted by the vitriol. Finn laments that the leaders on each side cannot discern this bleak landscape in which there are no winners, neither the students nor America’s civic culture: “Some love culture wars and earn their livings and get their grants by fanning flames, picking fights, calling names, donning armor, and lobbing arrows, missiles, and fireball drones into what they want you to believe are enemy camps” (Finn 2022).

Older readers might respond that Finn himself has played the gladiator role in many a skirmish about education policy and curricular content. This concern, I suggest, points precisely to the value of his recent call to consensus—a call he primarily, though not exclusively, directs toward his own side of the intellectual spectrum. Finn notes that he generally supports, and contributed to the development of, the Educating for American Democracy report and its Roadmap outlining national consensus curricular themes and approaches. As a conservative, he also praises the American Birthright proposed civics curriculum as being—in its actual kindergarten through twelfth-grade standards of content in civics, history, geography, and economics—much more sensible and representative of a latent national consensus than is the combative apparatus and introduction in the NAS document. Thus, as a conservative, he proposes that if we could get elites to move past the culture of combat, it is even possible to see the EAD and American Birthright approaches “as complementary.” If the former emphasizes broad themes and an inquiry mode for developing civic knowledge and civic virtues to guide informed participation, and the latter emphasizes knowledge mastery as the foundation for patriotic devotion to America, Finn notes that “each can be faulted for what it leaves out.” But he calls for better angels to come forth on each side: “Both should be praised for how much farther they would take us toward a society in which high school graduates actually know something about how their country works, what have been its strengths and weaknesses and successes and failures, and why they should care about these things and work to make them better.”

For the sake of actually improving state standards and classroom learning, and responsibly redressing America’s disintegrating civic culture, Finn thus calls for magnanimity from the progressive-dominated, but still pluralist and national-consensus oriented, EAD community and also from the patriotic conservatives of the NAS and its Civics Alliance. I will add, given that progressives dominate in K–12 and higher education, especially in the fields compromising social studies, there is a need for responsible center-left voices in our civics education debates to follow Finn’s lead. They could call to those farther to their left to assess the casualties of the culture war approach and accommodate the reasonable concerns of the center-right about adequate space in American citizenship preparation for a rich and deep civic education. This should include reflective patriotism, foundational history and civic knowledge, and gratitude for America as the essential basis for constructive participation in America’s constitutional democracy.

Martin Luther King Jr. deployed the then-national consensus view that held in high regard America’s framers and our founding documents in his 1963 call to enact national civil rights legislation as necessary reforms if we were to live up to our ideals and foundational laws. If educators on the left or right cannot now, a half century later, find similar grounds for consensus, then we will fail to head the prescient warning of the great American “in whose symbolic shadow” King chose to stand to deliver his great address. We should recall today that Lincoln had warned, two decades before a civil war erupted, about the deficit of fundamental civic education that was leading to increasingly violent political rhetoric and action. American elites today should heed this 1838 warning about the perpetuation of our political order. If America were to fail, Lincoln argued, it would not be by foreign conquest but by “suicide”—caused precisely by civic ignorance about our laws and Constitution, combined with decline in the civic virtues needed to sustain civil disagreement and civic friendship amid the divergent views in our republic.

There is enormous work to do for all who care about American civic education and the health of our democratic republic. The EAD report argues that the entire ecosystem of education in civic and historical knowledge, from K–12 through to universities and colleges, must be renewed and rebuilt. That comprehensive effort must work in parallel with efforts in states and localities to assess deficits in standards, resources, priorities, curricula, and teacher preparation. But as Lincoln warned, when the threat or the failing lies within, it is difficult for Americans to mobilize a national consensus to redress it. The Sputnik threat of the early Cold War drew forth a consensus on education reform and priority resources; and in the early phases of that effort, funding and support for American civics balanced the support for STEM subjects. As Tocqueville might say, the record of recent decades indicates that it would be in the enlightened self-interest of leading center-left and center-right voices in our education debates to forge the grounds for national consensus compromises, before the damage to America’s civic fabric descends to still more dangerous levels.