To get our political discourse out of the gutter, we need an engaged, informed citizenry.
If the election of 2016 has taught us anything, it's that civics education needs to be improved.
Civics education – the teaching of the basic principles and workings of American democracy and what it means to be a citizen – has been on the decline for decades. The situation has worsened in recent years as many schools focused on getting kids prepared in reading and math. A 2010 Pew Research poll showed that a large portion of Americans possess weak knowledge of how the legislative process works, and 44 percent of Americans can't name one of the three branches of government. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has dubbed American's lack of history and civics knowledge a "quiet crisis."
The smash-hit musical "Hamilton" and the education work being done around it by the Gilder Lehrman Institute is helping to turn the tide. Another organization, the Joe Foss Institute, is promoting an idea beautiful in its simplicity: have every high-school student in America take and pass the U.S. citizenship exam. The Foss Institute, through its Civic Education Initiative, is now leading a campaign to get all 50 states to enact legislation making passing the citizenship exam a requirement for high-school graduation.
Quietly and without much money, the Foss Institute's effort has become one of the most successful state legislative campaigns in history. In January 2015, Arizona became the first state to enact legislation requiring students to take and pass the citizenship exam. Since then, 13 other states have enacted similar legislation and several more are considering doing so. The Foss Institute's goal is to have all 50 states enact legislation by the 230th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 2017.
Inspired and founded by World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient General Joe Foss, the Foss Institute strives to "teach young Americans responsible citizenship and prepare them for civic engagement." Dr. Lucian Spataro, the chair of the institute's education initiatives, cites "bipartisan concern about the decline in civic knowledge" as the reason for the civic education initiative's success.
The U.S. citizenship exam is a 100-question test, mostly multiple choice. Immigrants are given 10 of these questions and need to get at least six correct to pass. It contains basic queries like: What does the Constitution do? How many U.S. senators are there? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? What did the Emancipation Proclamation do? Who did the U.S. fight in World War II? What did Martin Luther King Jr. do?
As the above questions indicate, passing the citizenship exam is not difficult. Yet, according to a 2012 study by Xavier University, more than one in three native-born citizens can't. If you raise the bar to seven out of 10 for passing, 50 percent fail. The same study showed the pass rate among those seeking naturalization was 97.5 percent. So the average naturalized citizen is better informed about American history, governance and principles than average natural-born citizen.
Conscious of the current backlash against testing, Spataro notes "the citizenship exam is not a standardized test. ... Students can take it in 15 minutes. It doesn't take away from teaching time." He also notes that the Foss Institute purposely leaves the details of the test's administration up to the states and schools: whether passing is set at 60 or 70 percent, whether they customize the test or break it up into pieces, whether they report the data or not. "All we want is for kids at some point in their high-school or middle-school education to take the test and it be recorded on their transcript that they passed it," explains Spataro.
The full 100-question citizenship exam is on the Foss Institute website. It can be taken online or a paper version can be downloaded. In a few weeks, the Institute will also be unveiling an online course with short videos that go along with each question. If a student gets a question wrong or wants more information, they can immediately click on a video that explains the correct answer.
Some education experts are opposed to the idea that students should take the citizenship exam. They argue that it's a simplistic test, one that doesn't foster a complex understanding of American history and governance. That's undoubtedly true. But as education scholar Robert Pondiscio notes, "There's no conflict between classes that seek to develop deep civic engagement and establishing a rock-bottom basic level of civic knowledge as a public school exit ticket."
Sept. 17 is Constitution Day, which commemorates the date on which the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the last time to sign the document they had created. Perhaps it could become an annual tradition for American history teachers use Constitution Day to give their students the 100-question citizenship test, review the answers and discuss the importance of being an active, informed citizen.
If we are to raise our political discourse out of the gutter of 2016, we'll need engaged, informed citizens to lead the way.
This piece originally appeared in U.S. News & World Report
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Charles Sahm is the director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in U.S. News and World Report