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By Chester E. Finn, Jr.
As a longtime advocate for high-quality school choices for young Americans and a staunch booster of high-quality civics/history education for every American, I face a dilemma: should K–12 schooling in America offer a smorgasbord of civics and history curricula and make those offerings part of the choice menu, or should we seek to ensure that all our children gain a shared approach to those key subjects no matter what school they attend or what state they live in?
As we embark on the 250th anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence, I’m reminded how difficult it was for delegates from those very diverse colonies to unite in 1776 around both the unprecedented action they were taking and the wording of that famous document. I’m mindful, too, of the compromises built into their carefully chosen wording, especially the crucial assertion in slaveholding days that “all men are created equal.”
And it’s hard to forget Benjamin Franklin’s historic injunction on that hot July occasion that “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” That feels especially apt nowadays, too.
To me, the civil principles on which we all hang together, the shared devotion to the ideas, precept, and beliefs that undergird our polity—the United States as a credal nation based on shared ideals and values, not ethnic, tribal, or family connections—is much of what unites us. So too is our shared history. No, it’s not a perfect history of nonstop successes, it’s not uniformly shared—we came at different times and had different experiences—and of course it should be taught “warts and all.” Yet it’s a history of upward trajectory and near-constant improvement. Learning that, along with its regrettable moments, is also part of what unites us.
So, I’m strongly drawn toward a shared framework across the land for K–12 civics and history education. I believe our best example today is the nonpartisan, consensus-based but deeply thoughtful “roadmap” developed by Educating for American Democracy (whose steering committee I now find myself on).
How such a framework may best come to be shared without being mandated begins with the strong assertion that this has nothing to do with Uncle Sam. Yikes, no! It’s got to be state driven, just like the rest of K–12. And it’s got to allow for variation. Texas has every right to make Lone Star history part of the package. Oregon and Maine have their own sagas. The civil rights story as told in Alabama probably won’t be identical to what’s taught in Connecticut. Within a state, school districts may choose different sequences and emphases. So may individual schools—charter and private schools especially. Skilled teachers employ distinctive approaches.
Such pluralism—one might well say separation of powers—is part of American federalism, too, of local control, of professional judgment, and (I hope) of quality school choices that parents opt into according to their preferences and what works best for their kids.
Yet there does need to be a shared framework surrounding it all or—if you prefer—occupying the middle of it. Innumerable surveys show wide agreement across the majority of Americans on crucial elements of what kids should learn about civics and history—and even more evidence attests (unfortunately) to how little of it they’re learning today.
One example of a “shared middle” that an increasing number of states are taking seriously is the fundamental knowledge probed by the “citizenship test” that immigrants must pass in order to qualify as US citizens. Expecting K–12 students to pass something similar would be a reasonable starting place for every state. But it’s just the start, because good citizenship entails more than “knowing stuff.” It’s also about values and beliefs, principles and practices, engagement and activity. Nor is it just about governments and how individuals relate to them in a constitutional democracy.
No, good citizenship is also about how one participates in one’s communities, how one treats the neighbors and how one behaves when nobody is watching.
This isn’t about uniformity. People differ and so do communities. Getting the balance right between what we have in common and how we differ will forever call for adjustment. But so, too, did execution of the assertions they agreed upon in 1776.
As the great new Ken Burns documentary makes clear, that Declaration came early in a war for independence that was also in its way a civil war. A long, uncertain war—and one that was followed by a precarious governance arrangement for the former colonies that turned out not to work satisfactorily. So, back to the drawing board. The 1787 version was amazing, yet also far from perfect. It’s taken multiple amendments, adjustments, interpretations, arguments, and another horrendous Civil War to get to its present condition, which we’re still tussling about. The process, clearly, is ongoing, not something with a permanent resolution.
History and civics education will be like that, too. We’ll keep arguing about it, keep trying to perfect it, and keep adjusting both the parts we have in common and the parts that differ from state to state and school to school.
It’s worth it, though. I don’t know many people who today are satisfied with the condition of citizenship in America, and I don’t know a soul who thinks today’s students are learning enough history or civics (or much else.) We can do a lot better. And there’s no better time to add booster rockets to the improvement process than at the start of this celebratory year—provided, however, that we view it as the launch of renewal and revitalization, not something we’ll complete by December 31.
Please bear this in mind: when tackling history and civics education across this big wide country, as when tackling K–12 schooling itself, we need both pluribus and unum. We may never get the balance exactly right, but I can’t imagine a more important project to undertake and persevere.
Chester E. Finn Jr. is the Volker Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution and president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is the chairman of Hoover’s Working Group on Civics and American Citizenship within the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions.