“This is a critical time in our nation’s history, and our future is not assured. We have to work at it, and that work most certainly includes more and better civic learning” Les Francis concludes in his essay for the Huffington Post this morning.
The report Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools reports on the failure of our education system to produce critical and engaged public citizens. Among the highlights of the report are findings that a third of students believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that George W. Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack. The report, sponsored by the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, offers a long list of solutions for dealing with the appalling lack of civic knowledge and engagement. At the center of it all is the need for schools to make civic education an integral part of their mission.
It makes the decision by the CSU Board of Trustees this summer (to exempt some students from the American history and institutions requirement for graduation) all the more ironic. As the co-chairs of the committee that generated the report–former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Congressman and Chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton–point out in their opening remarks “Knowledge of our system of governance and our rights and responsibilities as citizens is not passed along through the gene pool. Each generation of Americans must be taught these basics.”
With the decision to allow students in “high unit majors” to be exempt from the American history and institutions, the CSU has done precisely the opposite of what the authors of this study suggest. The CSU Board of Trustees and the Chancellor have begun the process of removing civic education from the mission of the California State University.
The decision made by the Trustees can be reversed and should be reversed. It will not be reversed, and that is a sad commentary on the direction that this Chancellor and this Board is taking our university.
