10/24/2022

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal leads off with Andrew D. Carico’s piece at RealClearEducation, “Academic Statesmanship Is the Key to Our Civic Recovery,” which argues that in the midst of talk of a “Cold Civil War” and a general societal unraveling, civic education “could provide a soothing balm to America’s inflamed political passions.” The findings of a recent RAND survey point in this direction. It found that while most teachers reject an “activist teaching agenda,” they also “prize critical and independent thinking” – but they do this without connecting that thought to specific ends. Carico proposes the idea of academic statesmanship, which he says must be practiced by America’s K-12 teachers and administrators going forward. “In our own time, a civic education anchored in the universal principles of the American Founding, taught and perpetuated by bold teachers and prudent administrators,” Carico writes, “may yet temper our ‘Cold Civil War’ and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

At the Fordham Institute, Chester Finn dives into the recent squabbling in Colorado over its social studies standards and its rejection of the “American Birthright” curriculum produced by the National Association of Scholars. Despite the partisan rancor on both sides, Finn notes that when these standards are examined, “I doubt that the typical American (or parent) will find much of anything there that they disagree with or think ought not be taught to and learned by U.S. school kids.” As he concludes, if we left blind partisanship aside, we could “work to unify, to consolidate, to compromise, and to agree on what kids should learn in realms like civics” that considers the best ideas from the left, center, and right – which is exactly “what the American public appears to” want.