10/22/2024

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with a new interview from the Jack Miller Center’s Elliott Drago. JMC Network Member Melinda Zook discusses the Cornerstone program at Purdue University. Zook, who has a PhD in early modern British History, says she was charged with developing an integrated liberal arts program at Purdue in 2016. Cornerstone is built around teaching transformative texts, she notes, with the goal of inspiring “our young people with a love of learning.” “These transformative texts are literature from around the world that changed the world and have the power to change the individual, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Federalist Papers to the poetry of Langston Hughes,” Zook states. Since Cornerstone’s founding, she says that the program currently teaches “over 5,000 students with over 100 faculty participating on our West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses,” a clear success. Zook concludes that “our Liberal Arts faculty constantly amaze me with their creativity, their willingness to teach challenging texts in fun and interactive ways, the ways they encourage and support each other, and how they go out of their way to help our first-year students.”

At Hechinger Report, Liz Willen writes about Retro Report’s “Citizen Nation,” a four-part documentary that began airing on PBS earlier this month. “The series follows teenagers from across the country competing in We the People, the nation’s premier civics competition,” Willen writes. “The competition stacks teams of students from 48 states against one another, and they must argue their points before a panel of judges acting as members of Congress.” The episodes depict students from all walks of life asking difficult questions about the Constitution, self-government, and the 2024 election as they prepare to compete in a national civics competition. In closing, Willen notes, “There will be many other efforts and court arguments in the months and years to come no matter who wins in November, but let us hope for now that the voices of students will carry the day.”