The Semiquincentennial Edition (with Yuval Levin)

Thank you very much for having me.

Yuval, most subjects in school are defined by their subject matter.

So Algebra 2 is a class where you learn certain topics in math.

US History, you learn about US history.

By contrast, civic education seems defined not so much by subject matter, but by having a particular goal.

Mm, you, you might call it forming good citizens.

Uh, do you think that observation is right, and if so, what do you think the main goal of civic education should be?

I think that is right, and it's a challenge because forming good citizens might be a way to describe a lot of what education is for, and a lot of what we do in the rest of education, too.

I think the, the challenge of forming good citizens has to start with some sense of what a citizen is and what's required of a citizen, and these are deep, controversial questions.

Um, it seems to me that civics starts from the strange fact that every society forms its citizens, and every society needs a certain kind of citizen, and the challenge is, how do we align those things? How do we form the kind of people we need, rather than forming the sort of people who aren't good for our society or failing to form the sort that are? This does make civics very different, and I, it's not like math.

It's not like reading.

It has to begin from some agreed-upon sense of what our society is and what it requires, and that's why it's very controversial and very hard to do.

So, a, a lot of people will say, "Well, we need better civics education in schools." Often, I think it's motivated by this view, "Well, if we had better civics education, then students wouldn't support this politician that I am really, uh, I don't like." It might be Trump, it might be Mamdani, who, whoever.

What do you make of this idea that civic education can or should affect who ston- students vote for when they become adults?

Yeah, I, I think that's a misguided way to think about what civics will do.

Um, it's in a sense a way of saying, "This politician I'm talking about is illegitimate, is a kind of person who shouldn't exist in our society, and if we knew what the right kind of citizenship was, we wouldn't be talking about these ideas." I'm sure there are boundaries like that, but I don't think that, uh, our contemporary politicians are really outside of them, and we should recognize that helping people see the nature of our civic life and our society wouldn't really put much of what we do out of bounds.

American politics is mostly fought within the 40-yard lines.

That's still true.

The people we call socialists and fascists in our politics are not actually socialists and fascists.

They're pretty generic Americans with ideas that are, uh, a little bit off-kilter or off-center.

Uh, i- in Europe, they'd fit pretty much in the middle in most of the democracies.

And, you know, w- w- we shouldn't expect civics education to lead to, uh, voters choosing our party unless we intend to make civics education, um, just a, a, a matter of simple political preaching, which everyone at least claims isn't what they wanna do.

So we have to have a sense of what it is that shaping citizens is for.

It's for, uh, understanding the nature of our society, the nature of our political system, taking responsibility for it, taking ownership of the kinds of choices we have to make as citizens.

None of that leads to throwing either of our parties out of bounds.