Did all of that fade away or do I just, you know, looking back saying in my time, we?

No, no, no.

From the 1950s onwards, from the 1950s until 2020, civics had the most precipitous decline on minutes in the classroom out of all subjects.

And so there's not like one way we do it throughout the United States.

Every state does it different within a state.

Private schools do it different than public schools, than religious schools, whatever.

But there is a modal form of delivery.

all of this, but is it hard for parents to pick up the mantle of civic education and promoting civic engagement?

Yeah

...

in the sense that we had 12 or 13 years where we're sort of, like, under the Articles of Confederation, and then we learned and said, "You know what? I think we can do better." And that's kind of how I think about government, is yes, there's things that I like to complain about, but inheriting a government is not like inheriting something that you can just point out the flaws.

It's something where, like, you have to see yourself as a part of it to be able to change it.

And one of the reasons I think it's important to talk about the upsides or the positives is if I was on a team that was losing or if I was in a company that wasn't doing well, I don't think I would motivate everyone else by being like, "Sorry, you guys are losers, and this system is rigged, and it's always just gonna suck."

Oh, yeah

... that all the other women in the houses of presidents changed.

And when we think about that governing question that you just brought up, at the early Republic, a lot of founders, or a lot of early governors, or a lot of people who are nominated to Congress and end up showing up think that they can't hang out with each other because it'll look like they're corroborating behind the scenes or they're trying to, like, figure things out in a way that's unbecoming of a Republican man who, like, has his own sort of ideas on things.

How did you learn about it? And how did you end up, you know, how did you end up on the community board?

So I think that first point, though, about like how there's a lot of interesting spots to do that.

I think that's very true.

And oftentimes these things go unfilled, these like appointed positions, which are, you know, usually they're volunteer, not paid.

They're going to take your time.

But there is a really interesting solution that I know of because I have an undergraduate student who's working on it right now called Find Your Seat, which is essentially he's trying to figure out like here's all the different places in the United States where there are boards, commissions, whatever, with vacancies and sort of like showing people like, look, you just have to toss your hat in the ring to do it.

Then maybe you'll get on that board or commission.

So remind me, I wish I wrote it down when I heard it, but remind me of a couple of questions that you might ask in order to open up dialogue and learn about the human being in front of you.

[dramatic music]

In Congress, July 4, 1776: The unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Why is that happening, do you think?

There's a lot of reasons.

It's not because teachers aren't capable.

Oftentimes, it's because there's not enough time in a classroom day to do this.

When we think about some policy implements that have been enacted in the last 30 years, we are really trying to say we wanna get things that are tested and measurable.

And when we look at the high school age, the thing that really matters is that SAT or that ACT.

Neither one of those tests have any government social studies civics components.

What are your thoughts about how we can tackle this, this soup that they're growing up in?

How did she build that influence and shape politics behind the scenes?

So in some ways, her route to being such like a political nexus is by seeing what our republic needed at the time.

So if we go back to that time period, there's this notion that men were good politicians if they were sort of like loners, or they couldn't be bought by others or corrupted by sort of friendship, and women didn't have that sort of constraint.

Women had to do that social work, and so they're calling on each other, they're coming to each other's houses.

And the way that I like to think about Dolley, or something I, I love about talking about her as a political figure, is women are formally excluded from most political power.

But she says, "You know what? If we're gonna build a civic culture, we're going to have to do something around the symbols that we use, the rituals that we have, the rooms that we're gathering people in." And so her power is not just by seeing she has to do it.

Every Wednesday night, she holds a party, like what we would now call like a soiree, but they were called crushes or squeezes.

So why do you think Dolley Madison then still resonates in American memory more than really any other early political figure, including some who actually held office?

How would you capture the components of a robust civics curriculum? What are we- what are we really talking about when we say that we want kids to learn more about civics?

That's a great question, and I- and I will tell you, I think the word civics is not my favorite because I think civics is sort of this, like, anodyne term that doesn't really mean anything and people are like, "Is it volunteering? Is it donating? Is it voting?" So the way that I like to think about it is politics and government, because I think those are two sort of, like, related but separate understandings of the world.

And when I think about what our kids need to know, they need to know the Constitution.

They need to understand what the rules of the game are.

The Constitution is sort of like the charter of government is a very fundamental piece that many of our kids get out of high school having never read.

So that's, like, a problem from the get-go.

But they also need to understand how our politics happens in actuality.

So true.