Understandably, we’re interested in the economic well-being of our society and we want our kids to be able to get good jobs, but we’ve sidelined citizen formation in the process. We should aspire to make our students more than consumers and workers—we should strive to make them citizens, too.
In view of all of this, it is worth reminding ourselves why civics matters. Simply, the goal of a good civic education is to have thinking citizens. We’re all in charge in this self-governing society. We share the responsibility for this shared experiment in human freedom. We must learn how to talk about politics with one another, how to make sense of the Constitution, and why the American creed of equality and liberty is worth defending.
America is built on the radical notion that every citizen can and should be a good thinker—and the first step to developing the right habits of mind is a knowledge of our Constitution’s first principles. Civics is more than just teaching people that they should vote at election time. It is also more than just factual knowledge, like how many justices sit on the Supreme Court or the functions of the three branches of government. Civics is about reflective knowledge, or what Ronald Reagan called “informed patriotism.”
Hans Zeiger
While I don’t dispute that every citizen should be a good thinker, or that education should improve a person’s reflective knowledge, I do dispute the idea that the two ought to be grouped together. A good education will improve reflective knowledge. A knowing person will be an informed patriot. But it does not follow that the goal of education should be to create good citizens. That’s a side benefit.
In fact, creating “good citizens” has been the goal of American public education for almost two hundred years, and look where it’s gotten us.
As Chesterton said, the true patriot is not the one who says, “My country right or wrong.” No one who loves his country would say that. A true patriot wants his country to be right because he wants what’s best for his country. Of course, in order to believe that, the patriot must know what is right and what is wrong. And there we have the goal of a good education.
Christian Leithart 