While progressive educators claim that they are developing new methodologies to prepare young people for the 21st century, there remains one vital area where students are woefully behind: civics.

As a result, the U.S. population lacks basic knowledge of government structure, the Constitution and U.S. history. Both the Trump and Harris campaigns exploit this ignorance for their own benefit while the nation suffers the consequences.

The Washington Post noted in 2023, “There are no federal standards for teaching civics or social studies … in many school districts, civics is taught only once, often in a semester-long high school class.” This semester-long course (five months, or approximately 90 school days), is usually an Advanced Placement class for high-achieving 11th or 12th graders. That means that most students are receiving no formal education in the establishment of their nation and, more importantly, the structure of the U.S. Constitution.

A recent University of Pennsylvania survey showed that only 47% of those polled could name the three branches of government, meaning a large percentage has no concept of this vital part of constitutional government designed to limit the damage that Trump, Harris or any president could potentially wrought. Consequently, lack of historical context and a woeful gap in Americans’ knowledge of the Constitution seems to be a driving force behind much of the harmful rhetoric emanating from both campaigns’ supporters.

This misunderstanding stokes fears that a President Trump or Harris would use the office to pursue a nefarious agenda that would undermine the Constitution and destroy the Republic. Undeterred by the fact that this did not happen during the first Trump presidency, many on the left consider Trump a threat to democracy who seeks to indiscriminately put his political rivals in prison and subject immigrants to extrajudicial abuse. Meanwhile, some Trump supporters seem to believe a Harris presidency would herald in a Mao-like “cultural revolution” that would cast the country into a Hobbesian jungle populated by overzealous transgender activists and stray dog eating illegal immigrants.

That the Founders established the Constitutional separation of powers expressly to avoid such scenarios is lost on a citizenry whose education system has failed them. Consequently, too many Americans have decided to abandon reason and embrace an irrationality fueled by ignorance. It is this irrationality – much more than a Trump or Harris administration – that could bring about the end days of the republic; let us not forget that Orwell warned, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

This glaring lack of historical understanding is highlighted by the debatable claim that November’s election is “the most important” in U.S. history. All elections are, of course, important, but one might consider the peaceful transfer of power after Jefferson defeated Adams in 1800 (the Europeans had predicted a bloodbath), Lincoln’s victory in 1860 which sparked a long simmering civil war, or Kennedy’s triumph in 1960 that inspired generations to do service for their country, to be more consequential.

The notion that the upcoming election is the most important in U.S. history is not only the result of historical ignorance, however. It is also the natural consequence of the education system’s hyperfocus on the individual at the expense of the common good. What else would one expect when children are educated to believe that their ideas and desires trump those of greater society? It is not hard to imagine that citizens educated in such a way would gravitate toward any party that endorsed these narcissistic tendencies. On the other hand, any candidate that challenged them would be cast as an existential threat. In such a toxic environment, all elections would appear to be vital for the survival of any one side and, consequently, the most important in history.

It is exactly this struggle between individual liberty and the common good that Horace Mann and John Dewey tried to combat by instituting civic education into schools. Mann’s “Common Schools” movement in the 1830s aimed at building a strong citizenry based on nationalist loyalty regardless of social status, gender or religion. Dewey took the concept a step further, arguing that civic education might encourage students to “share in the interests of others” and help wear down and transcend “divisions of race, class and ethnicity.”

Mann implemented his vision at a time when universal manhood suffrage was being advocated by the supporters of President Andrew Jackson while Dewey’s efforts reflected the reaction to the influx of millions of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century.  Such an approach, tailored to contemporary ethnic, social and economic realities, is needed now to move the country toward a renewed recognition of the exceptionalism that continues to make the United States a haven for desperate and oppressed peoples seeking a better life.

Sadly, however, Harvard’s Democratic Knowledge Project’s (DKP) webpage highlights that only 32% of American adults feel pride in their political system while 25% of young people believe that “choosing leaders through free elections” is unimportant. Perhaps more frightening, the DKP says that less than 30% of Americans under 40 believe that it’s important to live in a democracy. Combined with the University of Pennsylvania finding that only 24% of those polled could identify freedom of religion as a First Amendment right, any thinking citizen should be alarmed.

Getting civics back into schools’ curricula would be a good first step toward defusing the often misguided and harmful rhetoric that emanates from both sides during presidential campaigns. It could also instill again a pride in the institutions that make the United States what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”

Without the reintegration of a vigorous civic education in our schools we jeopardize what Benjamin Franklin said was painstakingly established at Philadelphia in the summer of 1787: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

 Dana E. Abizaid taught in universities and high schools for over 20 years.  Currently he is an education consultant and freelance journalist.

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