The fight over teaching history and civics

For years, policymakers have worried about the teaching of history and civics in the United States.

The idea that kids — and adults — don’t know enough about this country’s history and government is well-established. An article last year in the Washington Post said only seven states teach a full year of civics education. So, I’m sure Iowans of all political persuasions would welcome a renewed emphasis on these subjects.

However, just as Americans have wrung their hands over our failings in these areas, we’ve also disagreed how best to teach history and civics. Too often, it has become a tug of war between liberals and conservatives.

We’re about to fall into that trap again.

This week, the House Education Committee advanced a bill to overhaul the teaching of U.S. history and civics in Iowa schools.

Large sections of the bill’s text are copied, practically word for word, from model legislation and definitions you can read in this report by the National Association of Scholars and the America First Policy Institute.

The institute is run by former aides to Donald Trump and has figured in articles about preparations for his second term, if there is one. The association of scholars is a conservative group.

The legislation, House File 2330, includes a ban on “actions civics,” an approach that teaches civics by getting kids involved in civic activities; by doing things that can include going to polling places or lobbying policymakers. One scholar called the approach a “new term for an old idea.”

In a 2011 article, Obama administration Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Sandra Day O’Connor, the late Supreme Court justice appointed by Ronald Reagan, touted this approach along with a strategy that O’Connor championed that used web-based education projects and interactive activities to teach civics. Among the exercises: Students could play the role of a Supreme Court justice to decide a school dress-code case.

Duncan and O’Connor wrote it was time to develop a “reinvigorated and updated” civics education rather than just rely on the old ways. Some research says this approach works.

Over the years, however, action civics has come under attack by conservative organizations. Just this week, a member of the National Association of Scholars co-wrote an essay in the Des Moines Register claiming action civics is a “tool for the radical left to use taxpayer dollars and classroom time to teach vocational training in progressive activism.”

Instead, the House bill prescribes teaching a lengthy list of concepts, documents, events and people in U.S. history and western civilization, referring to some quite specifically.

As a middle-aged guy who loves to read history, I appreciate the undeniable importance of this list. But it’s also selective. It commands teaching about the “free enterprise system and its benefits,” the failings of the economic systems of communist regimes and the differences with capitalism. But it makes no mention of capitalism’s drawbacks.

It calls for teaching the “civic virtues” exemplified in the lives of famous Americans, but not their flaws. Some owned slaves. Meanwhile, the list of these two dozen famous Americans includes just two women, Susan B. Anthony and Abigail Adams.

The House bill requires “the study of and devotion to the United States’ exceptional and praiseworthy history.” But what about other parts of our history? Nowhere do you find the words “Jim Crow laws.”

Conservatives have long complained American education focuses too much on this country’s flaws, and I suppose in their eyes, this critique would qualify me as a liberal. Which is a fair description of my political views. But I also favor a balanced approach to teaching our history, of examining the good with the bad, of seeking the whole truth.

Of course, the $64,000 question is how to find the right balance.

First, I don’t think you do it by cutting and pasting into a bill language that comes from one side of the political equation. And I don’t think you do it simply through the exercise of raw political power. Legislative Republicans could muscle this bill through, but they shouldn’t.

Instead, the smart way would be to ask Iowans what they think. We learned with the governor’s proposed AEA overhaul that relying too heavily on an out-of-state consultant can backfire; that it’s smart to involve a range of Iowans on the front end.

I would rather see a cross section of education scholars, practitioners and thinkers, and Iowans from a variety of viewpoints, get involved to put together standards that fit Iowa.

I realize involving professional educators is anathema to certain legislative Republicans, who don’t trust some teachers. But I also know there are Republican lawmakers who believe in teachers.

Iowans also believe in their teachers and public schools. A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll last year said 72% of Iowa parents with kids in school believe their school district’s values match their own.

I think Rep. Steve Holt, R-Denison, is right. We have lost opportunities to teach history and civics due to the overemphasis on STEM education. We need to make an adjustment. But we need to go about this the right way.

I don’t know if this includes action civics, the Roadmap for Educating for American Democracy, which has been promoted by a bipartisan group of former U.S. education secretaries, or House File 2330. Maybe we draw from all three.

We are at a precarious time in our history. Americans of all political beliefs know this. We must take an honest approach to telling America’s story, one that recognizes the richness of our history and the challenges we’ve overcome — as well as the ones that remain. And we need to find innovative ways to engage young Iowans, so they want to learn, so they want to get involved in writing the next chapters of our story.

I think we do that by working together as Iowans. By listening to each other and putting together a plan that uniquely reflects our values.

This is the approach the Legislature should pursue.