Civic Education

Kay Henderson

A strong democracy requires citizens who are informed and engaged. We'll talk with two experts about the importance of civic education on this edition of Iowa Press.

 

 

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating more than 50 years on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, May 9th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Civics education has been one of the topics of discussion at the Iowa Statehouse this year. The Iowa House and Senate have voted to require graduating seniors to pass a civics test, and civics centers are being established at the three state universities. Our guests today are involved in this topic and discussion, and are here to share what they know about civics and education.

 

 

Kay Henderson

First, Josephine Gittler is the founder and president of the board for the Alliance for Civic Education in Iowa. She's a professor in the University of Iowa College of Law and holds secondary faculty appointments in the College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, and the College of Public Health. Thanks for being here.

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Thank you for having me.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Also joining us is Scott Peters. He is the department head and professor of political science at the University of Northern Iowa. He is involved with the new Center for Civic Education at UNI. Thanks as well for being here.

 

 

Scott Peters

Thank you.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Joining the conversation is Katarina Sostaric of Iowa Public Radio and Erin Murphy of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

 

 

Erin Murphy

So I want to get both of your take on this. And, Josephine, maybe we'll start with you. Just to kind of lay the groundwork here, how bad is it out there? Wha,t how much more civic education is needed? What does the data show you?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Well, I'm glad you asked that question to start with, because I think we have a really serious problem with civic education right now. There are multiple and recent surveys and polls that show that many American citizens lack the most basic information about the rights and responsibilities of citizens, as well as American history and government.

 

 

Erin Murphy

What kind of information are you talking about there when you say that? Like, what are people struggling with that may surprise?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Well, let me just give you an example of what one very recent reputable poll showed. A nationally representative sample of adults, 36% couldn't even name all three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial. Think about that. They don't even know that there are three branches of government and what their names are. I think that shows you the magnitude of the problem that we have. Can I give you one other statistic, please? 88% of eighth graders scored below the most recent national, Civics Assessment test. 88% below proficiency level.

 

 

Erin Murphy

And what's on that test?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Well, that is a series of questions about civics that one would think that, eighth graders could and should, know about. By the way, 76% of eighth graders scored below proficiency on the National American History, test. So we've got a problem.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Scott Peters, what do you see as high school graduates come to the Northern Iowa campus?

 

 

Scott Peters

I think, I think we see evidence of that, certainly. I teach an introductory American politics course once every couple of years, and I definitely see some, some gaps there. I'm not an expert on K-through-12 education, per se. But my perception is that with the emphasis over the last several decades on STEM education and with the way that learning is assessed in K through 12, with many tests on reading and many tests on math, that social studies in general is one of the things that has gone by the wayside.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

And the Iowa Legislature this year has passed a bill that will require students to pass the civics test to graduate. And it has questions on it from the U.S. citizenship test that people take when they're getting naturalized. Josephine, is that the solution to this problem?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

No, it's not the solution. It's a first step, I think, in addressing the problem. We need to make sure that high school graduates at least have minimal competency and information about American government and about American history. But the test really only examines sort of minimal information. Who's the first president of the United States? You know that kind of information. Good civics education has to go well beyond that.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

Scott, how…what are some strategies for, you know, going beyond a multiple choice test like that and ensuring that students have a really deep understanding of civics?

 

 

Scott Peters

Yeah. Civic learning generally is composed of four things. First, students do have to have a base of civic knowledge. And so we're talking about your basic government classes and history classes. But students need more than that in order to become good citizens. The other components of civic learning are civic skills. Students need to be able to learn what to do with that knowledge. Civic dispositions. We need to inculcate in people the values of democratic citizenship. And then finally, students need to be given the opportunity to practice all of that. Citizenship isn't something that just comes naturally. Students have to, just like any skill, just like any workplace skill, citizenship skills get better with practice. And so we need to make sure that we're giving students the opportunity to do that.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, Scott, I mentioned at the onset that there will be a center for civic education at the university. Sketch out for our viewers what it will do.

 

 

Scott Peters

Yeah. So there already is a Center for Civic Education. I'm currently co-directing it and on a sort of soft launch. We’re mainly focused on campus this year. So we've been doing a series of professional development for faculty. At UNI, we've had a team of faculty working on civic education for about 4 to 5 years now. We have a civic education curriculum in place for the last year, year and a half, that allows students to develop the civic skills and knowledge and inculcate those civic dispositions. The center has a three part mission. And I should say that we have a full time director coming on board in, July.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Okay.

 

 

Scott Peters

So, the center has a three part mission. First is to develop the best curriculum possible for students at UNI and to train faculty in the best practices in teaching civic education. Second is to give students and the public the opportunity to practice good citizenship by having a series of co-curricular and public events that allow people to engage civically. And the third is to enhance K-through-12 education in civic education across the state of Iowa. And so in all of those things, we will also be doing research to try to determine what is the best, what are the best practices, taking evidence, testing to determine what are the best ways to teach civics, both at the university level and in the K through 12 level?

 

 

Erin Murphy

And Scott, there are, there's legislation that would require these sorts of schools at all of the three Regents campuses. Will UNI kind of, how will this work logistically? Will they each be independent of each other? Will UNI, Iowa State and Iowa's schools work with each other in any way? How will that look?

 

 

Scott Peters

Some of that is still to be determined, I think. I think there will be elements of each of them that are distinct. We, our focus on enhancing K through 12 education throughout the state, I think, is that is natural I think given UNI’s historic role as the teachers college in the state of Iowa. We already have a partnership. Our Center for Civic Education has a partnership with the National Center for Civic Education that, among other things, puts on the We the People program for junior high school and high school age students. It's a national civics competition. And so we'll be aiming to get that off the ground in Iowa, or rather bring it back, because it was a statewide program in Iowa in the past. And so we're looking forward to that. And I think there will be a lot of opportunities for the centers at all three universities to cooperate, cooperate on research, cooperate on programming. And so we look forward to exploring all of those avenues.

 

 

Erin Murphy

And, Josephine, what's your take on this? Is this a good path to take to address this? Do you see these centers being helpful?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Oh, I absolutely see the centers at all three of the Regents institutions as being helpful. I would also note that not only has the legislature and the Board of Regents mandated these three centers at the three Regents institutions, but the legislature also directed the Iowa Department of Education to review the social studies curriculum and make recommendations as to revisions of the social studies curriculum to the governor and to the legislature by the end of this year. And I think that's another very important step in improving civics education. Let me just follow up on one thing that Scott said. We can't, we don't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to civic education. There is an enormous amount of very good resources, web based resources by different organizations, including icivics, which we mentioned a minute ago. They have lesson plans, videos, all kinds of really good resources for teachers and students.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, we asked Scott what the center was. What is the Alliance for Civic Education of Iowa?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

The Alliance for Civic Education, acronym ACE, is a nonprofit, tax exempt organization. And its mission is to encourage, contribute, do whatever it can to assist Iowa citizens to acquire and enhance the knowledge and the skills that they need to carry out their duties and responsibilities as citizens and to effectively participate in government at all levels and in their communities.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

Scott, how much do you think the just sort of polarized political climate that we find ourselves in… how much does that contribute to the lack of civics education, or vice versa?

 

 

Scott Peters

I don't know how much, but it definitely contributes. This is one of the things we're really focused on on campus this year. A lot of the professional development we've been doing for faculty is to help faculty carry out productive conversations, discussions in class about controversial issues. We hear from students that they are reluctant sometimes to speak about issues because they're concerned about how their viewpoints might be perceived. And I think that's true across the ideological spectrum. I don't think one side has a monopoly on that fear. The polarized nature of politics makes those discussions risky. And faculty have to have the tools to know how to design those discussions. You know, I think sometimes people have a misperception about what discussion looks like or should look like in class. When we're teaching classes, it's not a debating society. This isn't a place where people just come and spout off about things. We have particular learning objectives in mind that we want students to learn. And if you're going to do that, then you've got to structure your all your class activities so that students can achieve those learning objectives. Structuring class discussions in a way, the choice of topic, the instructions that students get, how you go about doing them. These are extremely important choices that instructors make in the course of planning these things. And we need to train faculty how to do that. So we've been doing that a lot on campus this year. In fact, we've got just in the next couple of weeks, we've got about three dozen faculty on campus going through a three day long workshop on that very topic.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

And I guess in addition to the politics and the political issues, there's also the functioning of government as part of civics. And, you know, we look at Congress, it seems like there's always gridlock at the federal level. They can never pass a budget. There's always a government shutdown looming. Josephine, is government not functioning because people don't know how it's supposed to function?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

I think that's part of the problem. I really do. Ignorance about our government, about the about the Constitution, about what's involved in upholding the principles that our Constitution set forth in 1887, I think is leading to some of the dysfunction that you see. I don't think it's the whole reason for the dysfunction. But I think it's part of the dysfunction. Because everything actually always in our system of government gets back to voters. Right? We we're a democracy. And people vote for elected representatives in Congress as well as in state legislatures as well as the presidency as well as governors. And so it's up to the voters to vote in a way that is going to uphold the principles of our American democracy and make it to function effectively and efficiently.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

But they have to know what the principles are, you’re saying.

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Yes.

 

 

Erin Murphy

And I guess I'm curious to get, as we talk about this and polarization, I'm curious your perspective. I like to ask it as a chicken or the egg question. Right. Do we have polarization because we have maybe an ill informed electorate, or does the polarization cause the ill informed electorate? I'm curious if either of you have a thought on which came first, effectively. Scott?

 

 

Scott Peters

That's a very complicated question. I don't know. So, I would say that first of all, we can look across the political landscape in democracies, and we see that most Western democracies are increasingly polarized. So that's not anything that's unique to the United States by any means. I'd also say that information in what we consider an ill informed electorate, that in itself is a pretty dicey question to get into, because in many ways people are more informed than they ever have been. And in fact, some people who are fairly well informed, some of the most well informed people are, in fact, the people at the poles of the spectrum. So it's a very complicated question, and I don't think we can do much to unravel here.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Yeah.

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Well, let me, let me say that I think one of the modern challenges of civic education is for it to address the challenges, what I'm going to politely call misinformation in the media and what is often now termed media or social media illiteracy. So I think it's really important to educate people in that, in that area.

 

 

Scott Peters

That would be one of those important civic skills, right, is media literacy and how to read the news, how to make judgments about what you can trust and what you can't trust.

 

 

Erin Murphy

That's great. We're going to come back to that later. I appreciate that. I wanted to also circle back on something. You both have mentioned social studies kind of curriculum. And Josephine, you said there's a wealth of resources available. Scott, you mentioned maybe it's been de-emphasized in the current curriculum. Is it just the case then, a lot of this, of refocusing, Scott I’ll start with you, of refocusing curriculum and education and kind of prioritizing social studies again, in your view?

 

 

Scott Peters

I think it will help. I definitely think that'll help. I do think we have to recognize that there are all kinds of societal factors that are putting us less in situations, putting us in situations less often where we have to talk to people who disagree with us. There's a variety of factors. There's, some, some political scientists and sociologists talk about people increasingly sorting. So neighborhoods today, you're very likely to live near people who think the same way as you do, in a variety of ways. All kinds of different factors influencing that. Public schools are one place where students mingle with a lot of other people. And I do think that introducing some of those basic skills early on can be helpful.

 

 

Erin Murphy

Josephine.

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Well, you know, our founding fathers, George Washington, who led the soldiers that won the Revolutionary War and became our first president, Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of Independence, were strong advocates of civic education. And in successive presidents and political and governmental leaders have been strong advocates. So I do think that part of the problem we're having today with civic education and in schools, K through 12 as well as colleges and universities, is a de emphasis in civic education. And what I'd like to say is that every citizen who graduates from high school, any citizen that graduates from a college or university, is going to remain a citizen for the rest of their life. And they're going to have responsibilities of citizenship for the rest of their life. So while things like math and science are important, other things are also important to be taught. I think we need to return to a time when we put at the top of the list in terms of priority, civics.

 

 

Katarina Sostaric

And I'm just curious, you keep mentioning kind of the responsibilities of a citizen. Could you just list some of them? I mean, I'm guessing voting is one of them. What are some of the things that you think adults, adult citizens should be doing?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

I think voting is at the at the top of the list, again, in terms of priorities. And being informed and responsible when you vote so that you know how to research candidates and research ballot issues. I think participating either in running for office, volunteering in campaigns. I think participating when there are issues that your community faces of all different sorts. Going to meetings, going to town halls. There are myriad of ways in which you as a citizen can and should participate in your communities and in your local, state and federal governments.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Scott, the list of things that she just shared with our viewers cause fear and sometimes loathing in some of our viewers. How do you counter that?

 

 

Scott Peters

I guess I'm not sure what you mean by that.

 

 

Kay Henderson

They don't want to be involved. They don't want to be involved in campaigns. They don't, that is not a priority for them as they live their everyday lives.

 

 

Scott Peters

Sure. I mean, I would emphasize that there is a wide range of ways in which people are active citizens, right? And voting is one and it's a very important one. Paying attention to issues. Talking to friends and family and colleagues about issues. Not everybody has to go out and get involved in elections. Not everybody has to go knock doors and encourage people to vote. But healthy democracy does depend on some people doing that. And healthy democracy depends on citizens who are paying attention and who are… Democracy is not just about electing our leaders, right? We exercise democracy in all sorts of ways on a day to day basis when we come together and make decisions collectively, both informally and formally. And so a healthy democratic fabric sort of depends on people doing this in all kinds of variety of contexts.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Josephine, over the past few years at the Iowa Legislature, there have been legislators who've questioned whether free speech is allowed on the University of Iowa campus. Since you're there, what can you tell us?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Well, I'm, first of all, I can't speak for the university as a whole. I'm on the faculty of the College of Law. I think that I and my colleagues who are law professors try very hard in our classroom discussions to encourage a diversity of viewpoints. I mean, particularly for law students, it's very important to know how to marshal arguments on all sides of questions, because they are going to have clients that they're going to have to do that for. And, I, I think I can fairly say that I and my colleagues really try to teach students to disagree without being disagreeable.

 

 

Erin Murphy

We're down to our last couple minutes here. Scott, I'm going to circle back, as promised. You talked about media consumption. And we're well beyond the point where it's just your newspaper or radio station and local TV station. Social media, partisan media. How much of that media consumption is a part of this conversation that we're having today? How important is that?

 

 

Scott Peters

I think it's very important. And I think it's one of the more challenging things in terms of teaching students. And it's challenging because of the media landscape has changed so much. There are very few local newspapers around anymore. There are very few locally controlled radio and television stations that actually give a good amount of coverage to local events beyond crime. And so, what that means, that's been replaced, right? That creates an information vacuum. That gets replaced largely through partisan sources, national sources. And so we get what we start to see partly as a result of that is that even local issues are increasingly defined on national terms. And so trying to help students wade through all of that, try to figure out where they can get good information, and trying to help them understand how the algorithms governing social media influences what they see, that's one of our big challenges.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Josephine. We have less than half a minute left. What would you like viewers to learn from watching this show?

 

 

Josephine Gittler

I would like them to understand and be of, the importance of, and the need for, improving civic education in our public and private schools and in our colleges and universities. I would like them to commit in whatever way they can to making our American democracy, our system of government, fulfill its promise by, which requires informed and responsible and active citizens.

 

 

Kay Henderson

Well, our active conversation has to come to an end because we are out of time for this episode of Iowa Press. Thanks to both of you for being here today.

 

 

Josephine Gittler

Thank you.

 

 

Scott Peters

Thank you.

 

 

Kay Henderson

You can watch every episode of Iowa Press at IowaPBS.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS. Thanks for watching today.

 

 

Announcer

Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility Infrastructure.

Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at Iowa bankers dot com.