4/19/2022

This past week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with Jacob Howland’s report at City Journal on a recent conference held at Saint Vincent College, “Politics, Policy, and Panic: Governing in a Time of Crisis.” Howland writes that speakers “addressed the atmosphere of crisis and panic that has driven the policies of government and private organizations and transformed educational and cultural institutions since March 2020.” They assessed how these development “have damaged constitutional government, the rule of law, and the well-being of the American people.” He notes that this conference ironically received push back from Saint Vincent’s administration, which “issued a groveling letter of apology for the alleged sins of one of the speakers.” Additionally, at the time of the piece’s publication, they also forbid the Director of the Center for Political and Economic Thought, Bradley Watson, “to post videos of any of the lectures.”

Also at City Journal, Samantha Hedges of Heterodox Academy writes that the true purpose, or telos, of education is inculcating civic education. She argues that civic education satisfies “both the private and public function of schools and the various stakeholders of public education.” Rather than making “social efficiency,” “social mobility,” or “social justice” the ends of education, schools must teach students to think as citizens. “For schools truly to be emancipatory,” she writes, “they need to teach about how American institutions function, rather than reject them outright.”

At the American Civics portal, Mary Grabar argues that in celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, we should “take our cue from the Tulsa Star, a now-defunct black newspaper,” which stood for “the principles of true Democracy as promulgated by the patriot, Thomas Jefferson” and fought “for an honest, impartial application of these principles to all men regardless of race or color.” Rather than tearing public statues of Jefferson down, which Grabar says “are attacks on our American principles,” Americans should instead return those statues “to their pedestals, so that his image can remind us of his words and the principles for which they stand.”