Spotlight – Is the New Civics Program Bad for America?

President Reagan once said,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

By this, he meant that unless we teach our children about the rights and responsibilities that come with being an American citizen, the next generation won’t be capable of halting—let alone recognizing—the inevitable encroachments of unlawful government power. Reagan’s statement merely expands upon Benjamin Franklin’s famous statement describing what the delegates had created at the Constitutional Convention:

“A republic . . . if you can keep it.”

We have relied upon our schools to create informed and engaged citizens since the earliest days following America’s birth. However, over the past few decades, a lack of emphasis on civics education, coupled with the progressive left’s takeover of many of our educational institutions, has fundamentally transformed what our students are learning. This has resulted in a generation that is ignorant of the basic facts about our government and the history of our nation. Even worse, it has created an anti-American bias in our young people, who have been fed a steady diet of leftist propaganda throughout their school careers.

According to a recent report titled Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics from the National Association of Scholars, when schools teach civics education at all, the subject merely serves as a vehicle to further progressive causes and provoke civil unrest. This new way of teaching civics, called “New Civics,” focuses on teaching young people to organize protests, stage demonstrations, and volunteer at (mostly) progressive organizations rather than instructing them on the American principles of self-government, law, and liberty. While this type of experience authentically qualifies a form of civic engagement, it cannot replace the knowledge gained in a traditional civics course.

Peter Wood, the president of the National Association of Scholars, lamented:

“Now ‘civic learning’ doesn’t mean what you would expect—straightforward things such as understanding the Bill of Rights, the three branches of government, and the Electoral College. Instead, this New Civics is all about ‘diversity,’ environmentalism, the LGBT movement, ‘global’ citizenship, and other liberal causes.”

History of New Civics

New Civics got its start in the 1960s and expanded in the 1970s. One of its founders, Kenneth Reardon, openly admitted to the movement’s leftist nature:

“Yes, we have a particular point of view, which is fundamentally looking at redistribution of resources and power within our society, bringing educational programs forward that help support the efforts of local communities to have the chance to participate in decisions and in the economy. It is political.”

Two main influences on the New Civics movement were constructivists John Dewey and Paulo Freire, who both believed that students learned more when they performed meaningful tasks as opposed to absorbing non-contextual facts from a book or a lecture. For these pedagogical leaders, the real purpose of education was to bring about a progressive transformation of society. As such, they saw school as a way to create vast armies of community organizers.

In 1967, William Ramsey helped coin the term service learning to describe this mixture of education and activism. Other terms that refer to New Civics programs include civic engagement and civic learning.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities gave an enormous boost to New Civics programs in 2012, when it released A Crucible Moment. This document championed the objectives of New Civics, suggesting that service-learning courses be mandatory, demanding that all classes contain a “civic” aspect, and guaranteeing that all faculty members be “civically engaged.”

The State of Civics Education Today

Because the administrators at the majority of institutions of higher learning share a similar ideology with the New Civics movement, many have eagerly adopted the changes A Crucible Moment called for. Consequently, the “strategic plans” at numerous schools now extoll the benefits of “infusing civic engagement” across the curriculum. New Civics is thus well on its way to transforming the purpose of higher education from the quest for knowledge into a means of political indoctrination.

As of 2010, 50 percent of all college students had participated in service learning for school credit. Massachusetts made civic learning a requirement for all institutions of higher learning in 2012, and Illinois students must now engage in a service learning course to graduate.

According to the National Association of Scholars report, colleges and universities spend roughly $40 billion on New Civics programs each year. This is money that could be better used to teach kids the fundamentals of government. Because, as recent studies show, American college students are woefully under-educated about these basic facts, performing worse on US government tests than the general population.

Moreover, students are investing a significant amount of time in service-learning endeavors. At just 400 schools, young people “spent 155 million hours on service rather than studying just in 2013-14, and the losses to their lifetime knowledge and earning potential must be measured in further billions.”

The New Civics curriculum is not just affecting the world of higher education; it is also influencing K-12 education. This is due in part to the lack of a prominent US history and civics curricula. However, a burgeoning number of New Civics experts are actively promoting service learning. These professionals not only influence teacher training and curriculum development, but they also affect government mandates. Eventually, New Civics program advocates aim to reach all areas of curricula.

What Is the Solution?

To address the current problem with New Civics, we must define what an ideal civics education should look like. The National Association of Scholars proposes that we must teach our children the history of our nation, describing how and why our nation’s institutions developed as they did.

We must also teach classic civic virtues, including a love of country and a respect for our nation’s first principles. Civics courses shouldn’t encourage resentment or disillusionment among students. Most importantly, they shouldn’t attempt to get students to join a particular political cause or divide students along partisan lines.

Once we, as a nation, declare our support for traditional civics education, the next step is to defund the multitude of New Civics programs in academia. Only then can we rest assured that the following generations will be able to “keep” our republic.

Speakers Focus on the Importance of Our Founding Documents

The Donald Koch Foundation hosted a presentation by Howard Bay and Clark Beim-Esche at the Principia School in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 2017. During the talk, the speakers discussed the history of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and why these documents remain important today.

The speakers both have strong ties to the Principia School, as well as a thorough knowledge of American history. A retired teacher of history and economics at the school, Mr. Bay is also a former Principia student. Mr. Beim-Eshce worked in the English and History departments at the Principia Upper School for more than 30 years. A winner of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum Creative Teaching Award, Mr. Beim-Esche is also an author. His 2015 book, Calling on the Presidents: Tales Their Houses Tell, is available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Mr. Bay spoke first, describing the Declaration of Independence as America’s birth certificate. He went on to say that “no American document has had a greater global impact” than the Declaration of Independence. In fact, over half of today’s United Nations’ member countries have taken inspiration from our founding documents to create their own declarations of independence. All but two of these documents lack the passage from our document’s preamble, which states that “all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable rights, including ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our Declaration of Independence was a radical document, according to Mr. Bay, because it marked the first time that a government was formed on the basis of a set of “truths.” It also asserted that a government’s power comes from the people and not the other way around. This meant that Americans were now “citizens” and not “subjects.”

Toward the end of his presentation, Mr. Bay described the harrowing journey that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution took during the Revolutionary War and throughout the decades before ending up encased in glass at the National Archives. The fact that we could have easily lost these valuable documents is frightening. According to President Truman, “Liberty … can be lost, and it will be, if the time ever comes when these documents are regarded not as the supreme expression of our profound belief, but merely as curiosities in glass cases.” Mr. Bay concluded his portion of the talk by warning that in order to preserve the principles of liberty, each new generation of Americans must not only understand the truths expressed in our founding documents, but they must also cherish them.

Mr. Beim-Esche begins his portion of the presentation by comparing the Bill of Rights to the Ten Commandments. According to Mr. Beim-Esche, both documents are basically lists of “thou shalt nots.”

Subsequently, Mr. Beim-Esche detailed the timeline of the drafting of the Constitution, from the Declaration of Independence and the release of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1776 to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He goes on to describe the addition of the Bill of Rights in 1791.

The 10 amendments contained in this document list 24 limitations on government. Among these are restrictions on laws that diminish the freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, religion, press, and petition. The government also cannot force citizens to house soldiers in their homes without their consent or infringe upon people’s right to have and bear arms.

Additionally, the Bill of Rights prevents the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures and requires probable cause before issuing a warrant. The Bill of Rights also guarantees citizens freedom from self-incrimination, double trial for the same crime, arrest without indictment, and loss of property without just compensation. When a citizen is arrested, the government must deliver a just and timely trial, an impartial jury, notice of all charges, and legal representation. The accused also has the right to confront any witnesses. In a civil case over a certain dollar amount, citizens are entitled to a jury trial. Moreover, the government cannot impose excessive bail or fines, or any cruel and unusual punishment.

To further secure against government overreach, the 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights denies the government any powers that the Constitution does not specifically mention. The 10th Amendment takes this one step further by stating that all rights not delegated to the federal government in the Constitution are reserved to the states and the people.

At the end of his presentation, Mr. Beim-Esche pointed to the bottom of a copy of the Bill of Rights that Donald Koch would later hand out to junior students in the audience. He said, “This copy of the American Bill of Rights is a gift to the students of Principia by the Donald L. Koch Foundation as a timeless reminder that the freedom entrusted to their care is a challenge to their generation—a test of them as individuals to preserve and protect or ignobly to lose.”

A Powerful Administrative State – Why You Should Fear It

Neither Democrats nor Republicans realize what the true threat to our liberty is. As a result, both parties spend all their time and resources attacking the wrong things. For example, conservatives complained loudly when President Obama agreed to the Iran nuclear deal and cut the defense budget, citing these actions as proof of his contempt for American exceptionalism. While today, liberals assert that President Trump’s proposed immigration restrictions and his distrust of the national press corps amount to an assault on the Constitution.

However, both sides are ignoring the very large elephant in the room. The biggest danger Americans face is actually the administrative state—a sprawling, executive-branch bureaucracy made up of hundreds of federal agencies, sub-agencies, and departments. Often referred to as the “deep state” or the “regulatory state,” this bipartisan behemoth exercises powers once held only by royalty. These include the authority to create, adjudicate, and enforce laws that affect almost every aspect of our lives.

Americans should fear an overly powerful administrative state for a variety of reasons. First, it is nearly impossible to hold these bureaucrats accountable for their actions. These officials are unelected and thus don’t have to please their constituents to keep their jobs. Adding to the unaccountability of the administrative state is its status as a nebulous entity.

Nobody can even say for sure how many agencies actually exist, because there is no definitive list. The spring 2015 edition of the Unified Agenda of Federal Deregulatory and Regulatory Actions publication, for example, lists 60 federal agencies. However, the Administrative Conference of the United States claims the number is 115. Meanwhile, The United States Government Manual states that there are 316 federal agencies.

If we can’t even figure out how many agencies there are, how can we tell who is making all the rules we must follow, or for that matter, how many rules even exist? To make matters worse, these agencies constantly produce a multitude of what amount to undocumented regulations, otherwise known as “regulatory dark matter,” through their bulletins, memos, and guidance documents. A US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voiced its alarm over these “non-legislative” rules in 2012, stating

“Guidance documents, while not legally binding or technically enforceable, are supposed to be issued only to clarify regulations already on the books. However . . . they are increasingly used to effect policy changes, and they often are as effective as regulations in changing behavior due to the weight agencies and the courts give them.”

Another reason to fear the administrative state is that it has assumed the powers that were once the exclusive domain of Congress and the courts. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), for example, not only creates laws that govern employer-employee relations, it also investigates rule violations, decides the fate of the rule-breakers, and enforces the consequences of its decisions. However, according to Article I, Section I of the Constitution, all legislative powers are supposed to reside with Congress. In fact, the Founding Fathers thought it was extremely important to separate the judicial, legislative, and executive powers into different branches of government. James Madison explicitly states in Federalist No. 47 that

“the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

In his 2014 book Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger claims that today’s administrative state has essentially “gutted” the Constitution. One supporting example is the use of administrative courts, which deny citizens the right to a fair trial. These proceedings, which judges on the agencies’ payroll oversee, often lack a jury and fail to follow full due-process procedures.

According to Hamburger, the framers of our Constitution would be appalled by the abuses we see perpetuated by today’s administrative state. In fact, they drafted the Constitution specifically to avoid the possibility of a corrupt head of state, like King James I, ever governing America. James Madison even went as far as to say that the Constitution was a means to guard against “the danger to liberty from the overgrown and all-grasping prerogative of an hereditary magistrate.”

King James I believed that his divine right of “absolute power” allowed him to dismiss laws or make them not apply to certain people without having to obtain approval from Parliament. James also made his own laws, bypassing Parliament and the court system. He issued proclamations and established tribunals, which, like modern administrative agencies, commissioned expert reports and issued and enforced decrees.

The federal agencies of today are essentially doing the same thing. The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for instance, exempted a number of politically important companies, like McDonald’s, from certain Obamacare provisions. However, in place of royal decrees, the administrative state issues rules and sends out “guidance” letters. One particularly infamous letter is the one from an Education Department official in 2011 that stripped college students of due process rights when someone accuses them of sexual misconduct.

So, how do we reign in the administrative state and the overreach of the executive branch? According to Hamburger, there are several practical things we can do. One is to hold agency officials financially accountable for exceeding their constitutional authority. Until the 19th century, the American people could sue these individuals for damages. Today, thanks to a “qualified immunity” doctrine, government officials are safe from repercussions of their actions.

Other ways to restrain the power of the administrative state involve requiring Congress to approve any new laws and to review all existing regulations to decide which ones should become laws. Additionally, the president could make certain agencies try cases in regular courts rather than relying on administrative judges.