Challenges faced by civic consciousness
Answers
Kathleen Hall Jamieson
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2001, is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of fifteen books, including The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Messages Shaped the 2008 Election (with Kate Kenski and Bruce Hardy, 2010), Presidents Creating the Presidency (2008), and unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (2007).
Abstract: This essay explores the value and state of civics education in the United States and identifies five challenges facing those seeking to improve its quality and accessibility: 1) ensuring that the quality of civics education is high is not a state or federal priority; 2) social studies textbooks do not facilitate the development of needed civic skills; 3) upper-income students are better served by our schools than are lower-income individuals; 4) cutbacks in funds available to schools make implementing changes in civics education difficult; and 5) reform efforts are complicated by the fact that civics education has become a pawn in a polarized debate among partisans.
Because, as John Dewey contended, “[d]emocracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife,”1 the quality of civic education has been a concern of those interested in the health of our system of government and the well-being of the citizenry. For much of the nation’s history, our leaders have viewed civics education as a means of realizing the country’s democratic ideals. In the past decade, low levels of youth voting and non-proficient student performance on a widely respected civics assessment test have elicited efforts to increase the amount and quality of time spent teaching civic education and have ignited a movement to create common standards in the social studies. Complicating these efforts is ideological disagreement about the content that should be taught and the values that ought to be inculcated. Validating the belief in the worth of civics education and underscoring the importance of reform efforts, data reveal that schooling in civics and other, related cocurricular activities are associated with increased knowledge of the U.S. system of government and heightened participation in democratic activities such as voting.
Reformers seeking to increase the quality and accessibility of civic education in schools confront five challenges. First, neither the federal government nor the states have made high-quality civics education a priority, a conclusion justified by evidence showing that the systematic study of civics in high school is not universal; that fewer high school civics courses are offered now than were offered in the past; that the time devoted to teaching the subject in lower grades has been reduced; and that most states do not require meaningful civics assessment. Second, social studies textbooks may not adequately convey the knowledge or facilitate development of the skills required of an informed, engaged citizenry. Third, consequential differences in access and outcomes between upper- and lower-class students persist. Fourth, cutbacks in funding for schools make implementation of changes in any area of the curriculum difficult. Fifth, the polarized political climate increases the likelihood that curricular changes will be cast as advancing a partisan agenda.
Throughout much of its history, the United States has “relied upon government schools as a principal purveyor of deeply cherished democratic values.”2 So interconnected are education and citizenship that some historians contend that “the most basic purpose of America’s schools is to teach children the moral and intellectual responsibilities of living and working in a democracy.”3 Consistent with this view, Americans “have expected schools to prepa
Answer:
Civil society organisations in the European Union (EU)
play a crucial role in promoting fundamental rights,
and so contribute to the functioning of democracies.
They give voice to people on issues that matter to
them, assist rights holders, monitor governments’
and parliaments’ activities, provide advice to policy-
makers, and hold authorities accountable for their
actions. Various forms of civil society engagement
exist throughout the EU, owing to different histori-
cal developments. The type and size of civil society
organisations (CSOs) also vary considerably, rang-
ing from large well-resourced international entities
to small, volunteer-based grassroots organisations.
The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) coop-
erates and regularly consults with a wide range of
such organisations. They increasingly report that
it has become harder for them to support the pro-
tection, promotion and fulfilment of human rights
within the Union – due to both legal and practical
restrictions.
While challenges exist in all EU Member States,
their exact nature and extent vary across coun-
tries. They include: disadvantageous changes in leg-
islation or inadequate implementation of laws; hur-
dles to accessing financial resources and ensuring
their sustainability; difficulties in accessing deci-
sion-makers and feeding into law and policymak-
ing; and attacks on and harassment of human rights
defenders, including negative discourse aimed at
delegitimising and stigmatising CSOs.
FRA’s full report on this issue looks at the different
types and patterns of challenges faced by civil soci-
ety organisations across the EU, and highlights prom-
ising practices that can counteract these worrying
patterns. This summary outlines the report’s main
findings and FRA’s opinions on the issues these raise.