Is Civics Really Not Taught Anymore? What A 5th Grade Teacher Noticed This Year
The crinkle of construction paper and the smell of cherry Kool-Aid filled my classroom last October, when we hosted our annual 5th grade mock election. I’d taped up candidate posters along the cinder block walls and set up a cardboard voting booth by the bookcase, and the kids were buzzing about our race for the local school bond that would actually be on the ballot the next week. When I paused to ask how many of them could tell me what a school bond actually pays for, the room went quiet. Half the kids stared at their shoes. One boy raised his hand and said, “It’s something expensive that adults argue about.” Then Mia, who sits in the back row and rarely speaks up, said, “My mom says it doesn’t matter anyway. Nothing ever changes no matter who you vote for.”
That question stuck with me. A week later, I was grabbing tacos with a high school social studies teacher after parent-teacher conferences, and she complained that she only has one semester of required civics for 12th graders, and half that time is eaten up by end-of-year testing makeup and college application workshops. When I brought it up to my sister, who has a 10th grader in a different district, she immediately asked the question I’ve seen all over parent groups: Is civics really not taught anymore?
I’ve been teaching elementary school for 12 years, and it’s true that formal civics instruction has been on the decline for a while. Most states only require one year of civics for high school graduation, and since it’s not tested like math or reading on the state standardized tests that decide school funding, it gets pushed to the side. I’ve seen it in my own district: 10 years ago, we had a dedicated civics week every fall, now it’s just a side note in our social studies textbook that we get to if we have extra time after covering the required units. Last year, I asked my class how many of them knew what our city council does, and only two kids could answer. Most thought the president decided whether our potholes got fixed.
But what I’ve learned over the past year, since that mock election, is that civics doesn’t have to be a formal unit in a textbook to count. It doesn’t require extra planning or big field trips to the state capitol, though those are nice. The best civics lessons happen in the 5 minute gaps of everyday life, for both parents and teachers. After Mia’s comment last fall, I started adding a 5 minute “civics check-in” to our Friday morning routine. It’s nothing fancy. I just pull up a small local story or issue that affects us, and we talk about it. When our district proposed changing the start time of middle school, we talked about who gets to make that decision, and how parents could weigh in. When the PTA started collecting ideas for the new playground, I had the kids write their own suggestions to turn in at the next meeting – that’s a civics lesson, right there: learning how to ask for what you need from people in charge. It’s way more useful than memorizing the order of the amendments on a test.
For parents, it’s even easier. You don’t have to plan a lesson. Next time you’re driving past the park and you see a sign for a public input meeting about the new crosswalk, point it out and say, “Adults get to tell the city what they think about this before they build it – that’s how civics works, right here.” When you go vote in November, bring your kid with you, and explain what you’re marking on the ballot and why. You don’t have to be partisan about it; just say, “I’m voting for this because I want more buses that go to the grocery store for people who don’t have cars, and that matters to me.” Even talking about the rules you set at home can be a civics lesson: when you and your kid compromise on a later bedtime in exchange for keeping their room clean, that’s how compromise works in government, too. It’s the same idea, just on a smaller scale.
It doesn’t always go smoothly. Last month, one of my students brought up that he hears his dad say all politicians are liars, and asked me if that’s true. I didn’t give him a perfect answer. I just said that some people do good work and some don’t, just like in any job, and the only way to get more good people is to care enough to show up. We still have awkward silences sometimes in our Friday check-ins, and I forget to do it every few weeks when testing or picture day throws off the schedule. But the kids have started bringing their own topics now. Last month, Mia reminded me we hadn’t done a check-in in two weeks, and she wanted to talk about the proposed dog park on the west side of town. Her family had just adopted a golden retriever puppy, and she wanted people to know it would give kids a place to play too. She ended up going to the city council meeting with her mom to speak, and her mom voted in the local election for the first time in 12 years because Mia kept asking her to.
People often ask me if civics is really not taught anymore, and I tell them it’s not that it’s gone, it’s that we’ve stopped looking for it in the small places. We wait for schools to add it to the curriculum, we wait for the state to change the requirements, but we don’t have to. It’s still there, in the PTA meeting, on the side of the road on a public notice, in the conversation over dinner about what needs to change in our neighborhood. I don’t know if all of my kids will grow up to vote every election, or run for office, or even remember what a school bond is. But I think a few of them will remember that their voice matters, even if it’s small. That’s the whole point of civics, anyway.
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