Teaching civics helps to understand government — and how to change it for the better | Editorial

I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.

– President Ronald Reagan, Aug. 12, 1986

That rehearsed comment seemingly made extemporaneously nearly 40 years ago by a former Hollywood actor, still resonates with an American public that since before the Revolutionary War has resented what it believes are unwelcome government restraints and requirements.

Taxes remain the most unpopular government demand, but gun, environmental, and consumer regulations imposed to protect the public have also been myopically criticized by folks who agree with Reagan’s view that government is more of a problem than a solution.

Such disdain for a government that out of necessity may at times limit personal freedoms to ensure the well-being of our nation suggests a misunderstanding of why this country replaced an English monarch with a government not just “of the people” and “by the people” but, more importantly, “for the people.”

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Learning to appreciate our government requires more than history lessons that mostly cover who did what when. It requires a better understanding of how our government operates and the role ordinary citizens must play to ensure its correct operation.

It requires lessons in civics — a subject too often missing from school curriculums today.

That void has led to an ill-informed public in which 35% of Americans are unable to name all three branches of their country’s government. That statistic comes from an annual survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in which 40% of the respondents also didn’t know which parties control the U.S. House and Senate.

No wonder presidents get blamed for what Congress did or didn’t do when so many Americans don’t know how their government works. “Civics knowledge matters. Those who do not understand the rights protected by the Constitution can neither cherish nor invoke them,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the policy center’s director.

Unfortunately, recent efforts to place more emphasis on civics have been aimed at universities that conservative politicians have accused of being unpatriotic bastions of “woke” ideology. In North Carolina, Republican legislators are trying to pass a replacement for their failed REACH Act, an acronym for Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage.

Civics should be taught before young people start high school and instruction should not be tainted by partisan politics. Civics curriculums should provide students with a thorough understanding of their local and federal government’s structure, their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and how to participate in public engagement efforts.

Helping young people better understand how their government works would likely lead to their increased participation in elections. Across the country, the youth vote in the 2022 midterm elections was only 23% (Pennsylvania, 32%; New Jersey, 21%). That was a significant decrease from the 28% national turnout in 2018 but much higher than the 13% of young people who voted in 2014.

But it’s not just young people who need to get more excited about voting.

Only 37% of Americans voted in all three of the national elections in 2018, 2020, and 2022; another 30% didn’t vote in any of them. While the stakes seem higher with the presidential candidates this year being so starkly different, the eventual turnout may reflect the movement of those voters who have yet to make up their minds.

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Those still sitting on the fence may need a lesson in civics to be reminded that neither the government nor their responsibility as citizens should be feared. Too many candidates since Reagan’s presidency have waged campaigns that demonized the government even as they sought to become part of it. Civics teaches people how they can make the government work better for them by electing candidates who want to improve its operation instead of weakening its ability to act on their behalf.

It doesn’t help the public to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency, try to kill the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or deny the Internal Revenue Service the funding it needs to recover the billions of dollars owed by corporations and wealthy individuals who haven’t paid their fair share of taxes. The IRS doesn’t want to come for “your” money; it wants “their” money.

The government isn’t perfect, but neither is it the enemy. Making it better requires a proper understanding of how our government came to be and how we can make it what we want it to become. Those lessons can be learned in an eighth-grade civics class. All it takes is for more school districts to make those lessons available.

Do that and our elected leaders will be much better and our nation much stronger.