In the days leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the news was filled with partisan language and misinformation about the basic ways our country functions and how elections work.
Many adults, as well as the vast majority of my high school-age peers, don’t seem to understand how government works and as a result don’t trust it.
That’s why I’m convinced that we as a nation have to prioritize civics education in schools to encourage civic engagement, empathy and critical thinking to sustain our constitutional democracy.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.
Unlike the majority of my peers, I am receiving a robust civics education, but it is largely outside of school.
Last summer I participated in the VoxBox Civic Engagement course sponsored by the American Museum of Tort Law, an institution that focuses on civil justice and was developed by the political activist Ralph Nader.
As a member of Scouting America, I’m also learning what it means to be a good citizen. I have completed nearly all the merit badges required for Eagle Scout, including Citizenship in Society, Citizenship in the Community, Citizenship in the Nation and Citizenship in the World.
And as I began my freshman year of high school this fall, I joined the O’Connor Institute Ambassadors Online Civics & Debate Club. As a club member, I’m deepening my civics education, learning how to engage in civil debate and attending monthly meetings, where I’m also listening to guest speakers.
I’m beginning to connect with peer members to discuss and debate what we’re learning, including the institute’s recently published policy brief on ways civics education is no longer being taught.
These organizations have provided me with substantial civic knowledge, and they are helping me to understand modern politics. By comparison, the amount of civics education my peers are receiving in school or outside of school is limited.
This is partly because some aspects of civics have become controversial. Some schools and teachers have found that it is easier to cut civics education altogether to avoid parental complaints.
I think this trend was accelerated by the No Child Left Behind policies in the early 2000s, which tied school funding to students’ knowledge in English Language Arts and math.
More recently, in some schools, a new focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has sapped time dedicated to civics education. Our shifting priorities over the past several decades have resulted in students today graduating from high school having far less time to learn civics.
Related: COLUMN: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it
It is discouraging that my generation is faring worse than my parents’ generation did on civics literacy.
Public trust has been steadily declining in tandem with civic literacy. The Pew Research Center has been tracking public trust in government since 1958 and the decline in trust is very real. Through most of the 1960s, over 70 percent of the American people trusted the government. During the last years of the unpopular Vietnam war, over 50 percent maintained trust in the government. In 1974, after the Watergate scandal resulted in President Richard Nixon’s resignation, over 35 percent of citizens trusted their government.
Compare those rates to 2024, when polls show that only 22 percent of Americans currently trust their government.
Most people on all sides of the political spectrum agree that there needs to be a more rigorous civics education program for students, one that helps them understand what the government does and how it works.
What they can’t agree on is how it should be done. They disagree on whether it should include an emphasis on patriotism and even if schools are the right place to learn it.
This, along with political controversy, is stalling any attempt to reform and restore civics education.
We as a nation need to overcome these issues and reach across the aisle to find a compromise on how to provide civics education — for the sake of current and future generations.
Allowing partisanship to prevent us from educating youth will only encourage disengagement, deepen mistrust in government and allow misinformation to flourish for the foreseeable future.
Robert Gilbert is a freshman at the Quad Preparatory School in New York City and a Life Scout working toward the Eagle Award.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about civics education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.