Free Republic

The Civics Secures Democracy Act making its way through Congress threatens to create a national curriculum that would virtually compel teens to plunge into politics. It’s a horrible idea.Ever since the “don’t-trust-anyone-over-30” countercultural movements of the 1960s, we have been living in a culture that increasingly valorizes youth. In the view of the noted Harvard University cognitive scientist and author Steven Pinker, a technological change — the advent of television — is what propelled this social change.The baby boomers of the 1960s, the first generation to grow up en masse with a TV at home, received unprecedented access to each...

We have just the perfect solution for American kids' deep ignorance about their nation's founding principles, system of government, and history. It's making them into political activists!It’s deja vu all over again. A coalition of government- and billionaire-funded nonprofits has a “bipartisan” plan for national curriculum goals, this time concerning U.S. history and government. Today this “state-led” coalition is releasing a major report they hope will get the attention of the Biden administration and state governors to “collaboratively” enact their vision nationwide. Remember, these sorts of national plans are supported by people on the right and left, so there can...

“Action Civics” Replaces Citizenship with PartisanshipState lawmakers must protect education from activism.Advocates of “Action Civics” are poised to press a novel practice on every state education system in the Union. Bills mandating Action civics will soon be introduced in state legislatures across the country; it is already required in Massachusetts and Illinois. The Biden administration is likely to support that effort with federal carrots and sticks, using the model of the Obama administration’s support for Common Core.Unfortunately, widespread adoption of Action Civics will definitively politicize an already politically tainted K-12 educational system, irrevocably cementing the partisan Left’s hold upon our...