What was civic education, and what can it become?
From Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University's Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life.
Peter originally delivered a version of this essay to open Civics in Higher Education: A National Summit in April, hosted by The Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and the Alliance for Civics in the Academy (ACA), with support from GBH.
Any civic education program typically reflects a diagnosis, a core problem that the organizers seek to address. When I got into this business around 2000, which is also when Tisch College was founded, a prevalent diagnosis could be found in Robert Putnam’s bestselling book Bowling Alone.
In those days, many educators assumed that our political system—a constitutional democracy with a market economy—was stable and would be around for the whole of students’ lives. Meanwhile, the official policy was pretty narrow, with not that much room between the two Bushes and President Clinton. But participation in civil society had gradually declined. Therefore, many colleges, universities, nonprofits, coalitions, and a whole federal agency promoted community engagement, which took the form of service or service-learning and community partnerships. Many of us also worked on encouraging youth to vote, because they voted at much lower rates than other generations and were just embarking on their lives as full citizens.
As we will see, those efforts continue and have deepened and strengthened. In my opinion, unfortunately, the thesis of Bowling Alone still applies today. But now we are facing even graver problems in our civil society, and institutions are launching or expanding ambitious programs to address the current crises. I would classify many of the programs based on their main activities:
Community engagement and experiential learning through partnerships with organizations or groups in neighborhoods near a campus
Curricula for civic thought or civic studies, from around the globe and across historical periods, mainly offered in the classroom
Research and innovation for civil society and democracy, with students doing some of the innovation.
Discussion, discourse, and listening across ideological divides.
These flavors of civic education at the college level often reflect different diagnoses of the current situation.
For some today, the problem is polarization and an inability to talk productively across differences. That problem may relate to social media and now AI.
For some, the problem is ideological homogeneity, which usually implies that the left is too dominant in academia.
For others, the problem is authoritarianism, or authoritarian populism, mostly (but perhaps not only) coming from the right.
For some, it is a failure to understand and appreciate the heritage of the US republic.
For some, it is the negative impact of social media and now artificial intelligence on the inner life. A public space is better when the participants develop rich and distinctive private thoughts.
For others, it is our inability to address grievous current social and environmental problems at a global scale.
And some would emphasize the dramatic loss of trust in a whole range of institutions, including schools, colleges, and universities.
Of course, an individual can endorse more than one of those diagnoses. For instance, I happen to believe most of them.
Differences in diagnosis explain some of the differences among the civic learning and engagement programs that are being formed or expanded today. These programs also differ in scope: some focus on the immediate surrounding community, while others aim to strengthen our republic or even global unity. Some turn their attention to the past, while others are working to change the present or the future.
You might also ask what basic scene comes to mind when you envision civic education at the college level.
