A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Trump administration is pouring money into civics education ahead of the country's 250th birthday. It recently awarded more than $150 million to dozens of colleges, universities and other groups. Now, the goal is to train K-12 teachers in U.S. history and civics. And as NPR's Cory Turner reports, the money can't come fast enough.
CORY TURNER, BYLINE: Scholars, experts and advocates across the political spectrum agree on at least one thing. Students in the U.S. leave high school knowing woefully little about American democracy.
DANIELLE ALLEN: I think we hit bottom about four, five years ago.
TURNER: Danielle Allen is a professor at Harvard, where she manages a research lab focused on civics education. She says since World War II, the U.S. government has prioritized funding science, technology and math education over civics and social studies. Not long ago, she says...
ALLEN: We were spending about $50 per kid per year of federal monies on STEM education and only $0.05 per year per kid on civics education.
TURNER: No surprise, in 2022, only about 1 in 5 eighth graders scored proficient in civics, according to federal data.
CHESTER FINN: There's millions of kids coming out every year who don't know this stuff.
TURNER: Chester Finn is president emeritus of the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute, which evaluated states' learning standards in civics and U.S. history a few years ago. He says five states got A grades for civics and history both, while 20 got a D or F in both.
FINN: So, no, there's - nobody's accountable for learning this stuff or teaching it effectively or schools imparting it effectively.
TURNER: That's the bad news. Now, the good. Allen, Finn and dozens of other scholars have worked together on a bipartisan roadmap to improve civics education. For one thing, they agree students need civic knowledge - basically, facts.
PAUL CARRESE: Foundational principles, moments, dates, events, documents you must know.
TURNER: Paul Caris is director of the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University and calls himself an intellectual conservative. He also served on that roadmap's executive committee.
CARRESE: Then you also must know about the disagreement and the discussion and the debate. What does that really mean? Who was that person really?
TURNER: For example, students must understand the Declaration of Independence and why it remains a seminal visionary document. But they must also be exposed to history's complexity and contradictions, including that Thomas Jefferson, while declaring all men are created equal, enslaved more than 600 people in his lifetime. Carrese says the roadmap also stresses the need to teach students the art of disagreement.
CARRESE: Not passionate, demonizing disagreement, but civil disagreement and then civic friendship.
TURNER: That means cultivating a sense early on that no matter how much we may disagree, we're still in this together. Disagreeing doesn't make us enemies. The roadmap even supports teaching what it calls reflective patriotism.
CARRESE: Citizens and aspiring citizens should love their country - it's a lovable country - and be grateful for it, but in the American way.
TURNER: Meaning don't love it blindly or passively. Speak up if it isn't living up to your standards. Arizona State is one of many schools that was recently awarded a grant by the Trump administration to train K-12 teachers and that will likely draw from this bipartisan roadmap. Another is Utah Valley University.
SCOTT PAUL: We have a track record of being what I call maniacally nonpartisan.
TURNER: Scott Paul founded the Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative at Utah Valley, which is training K-12 teachers in civics all over Utah. No one I spoke to thinks this civics push will be easy, even with this new money. But Scott Paul says the stakes of not doing more were recently made horrifically clear to him when the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered on the Utah Valley campus.
PAUL: I was just struck by the irony that this awful act happened at a place where we've been working on the solution.
TURNER: Kirk was killed not far from where Paul and his colleagues were hosting a conference marking Constitution Day.
Cory Turner, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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