NAIS - On My Mind: How to Prepare Students for Civic Engagement

In 2017, PwC released the ADAPT framework, outlining the top five global challenges predicted to affect all types of organizations through 2025:

Asymmetry: increasing wealth disparity and the erosion of the middle class
Disruption: the pervasive nature of technology and its impact on individuals, society, and the climate
Age: demographic pressure on businesses, social institutions, and economies
Polarization: breakdown in global consensus and a fracturing world, with growing nationalism
and populism
Trust: declining confidence in the institutions that underpin society

Although it was a forecast at the time, this framework identified challenges that have been accelerated because of the pandemic and are at education’s doorstep today. Most notably, pandemic-induced isolation has increased polarization and mistrust in school communities, challenging leaders and teachers as they roll out teaching and learning strategies to prepare students for a changing landscape.

Erosion of Trust

In 2018, Pew Research Center studied the state of trust in core institutions. Eighty percent of respondents had relatively high trust in K–12 education leaders; however, growing partisan divides were visible, with 85% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents and 74% of Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents saying that they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in school leaders.

In other core institutions, there were larger trust gaps politically, with Republican and Republican-leaning respondents having the highest trust in the military and police, while Democrat and Democratic-leaning respondents trusted more in scientists and college and university professors. For one core group—elected officials—respondents of both parties had low levels of trust.

In a recent survey, Gallup—which has been studying confidence in 14 core institutions since 1973—reported a brief uptick in confidence in the medical system, public schools, small business, organized religion, and banks during the early part of the pandemic, but more recently, in a July 2021 survey, that confidence was edging downward. Although private schools aren’t ranked in this survey, Gallup identified that 32% of respondents said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in public schools in 2021, down from 41% in 2020. Like Pew, Gallup also noted political differences in the degrees of trust, with the widest gaps between parties in confidence in the presidency and the police, and significant gaps in confidence in organized religion, organized labor, and the public schools.

Perhaps even more concerning is the declining trust we have in each other. The Pew study noted that 71% of respondents believe that interpersonal confidence has worsened in the past 20 years, and 49% believe that a major driver is that Americans are not as reliable as they used to be. Other comments on causes of the decline include harmful social circumstances like the isolation and loneliness of some citizens, personally harmful behavior like greed and dishonesty, or persistent social ills such as crime, violence, drugs, and scams.

How do we turn this around? Pew study respondents suggested an array of strategies including increasing government transparency, improving community cooperation, and performing individual acts of kindness. Many felt that the place to start was with elected officials, citing that “more political compromise on national issues could restore trust both in the federal government and in interpersonal relationships.” Still others believe that we must change our relationship with technology, calling out that “the degree to which people, especially younger Americans, spend time with their screens means they have withdrawn from interacting with others and that personal trust takes a hit.”

In a January 2021 interview in Berkeley News, Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, says: “The republic is as frayed as it’s ever been since probably the mid-19th century, in the period just before, during, and after the Civil War.” He has long conducted research on trust in America and noted that we began to see declining trust in core institutions about 40 years ago when politics began focusing on issues related to culture, such as prayer in schools, same-sex marriage, and abortion. This has led to polarization in people’s attitudes toward institutions that we have traditionally seen as nonpolitical, such as the military, religion, and education.

Like many of the Pew study respondents, Brady suggests that we design a new way to engage with technology, noting that, “We can’t continue to have a mechanism that, on a daily basis, can be used to break down norms or defile American democracy. I don’t think government regulation is the answer, but I think we might want to try to see if we can’t figure out ways to create a more civic-minded social media.”

The Role of Schools and Civic Education

In her article “The Need for Civic Education in 21st Century Schools,” Brookings Senior Fellow Rebecca Winthrop dissects the causes of waning trust, citing research by Matthew N. Atwell, John Bridgeland, and Peter Levine on the rise of “civic deserts” where there are few to no opportunities for people to “meet, discuss issues, or address problems.” The researchers suggest this is a problem in both rural and urban America, and combined with declines in participation in religious organizations and unions, point to the need to create new forms of civic networks in communities. Winthrop says that, as social institutions present in virtually every community in the U.S., schools are uniquely poised to fill this role.

She applauds the 21st century skills movement that is taking place in schools, with its emphasis on social and emotional learning, and suggests that this movement should be expanded to incorporate an explicit focus on social values, saying, “While a number of competencies that are regularly included in 21st century skills frameworks, like the ability to work with others, have implicit values such as respect for others’ perspectives, they do not explicitly impart strong norms and values about society. In a democracy, however, the values that are at the core of civic learning are different. They are foundational to helping young people develop the dispositions needed to actively engage in civic life and maintain the norms by which Americans debate and decide their differences.”

CivXNow, a national cross-partisan coalition of more than 100 organizations focused on improving the nation’s in- and out-of-school civic education, suggests that schools focus efforts in three areas:

Civic knowledge and skills: where youth gain an understanding of the processes of government, prevalent political ideologies, civic and constitutional rights, and the history and heritage of the above.
Civic values and dispositions: where youth gain an appreciation for civil discourse, free speech, and engaging with those whose perspectives differ from their own.
Civic behaviors: where students develop the civic agency and confidence to vote, volunteer, attend public meetings, and engage with their communities.

There is much at stake here. Independent schools can be leaders in driving civic engagement in their communities. They can collaborate with private and public schools locally as well as other civic-minded organizations to educate and connect students and adults alike. They can be centers for combating civic deserts in their communities. As Brady says, “We have to get beyond the anger and start asking not what’s best for me, but what’s best for the country.”

Let’s do what we do uniquely well—build community. Frankly, we can’t afford not to.