Civics could bridge divides. Teachers fear crossing the line

ALEXANDRIA, VA – Bathed in the glare of her classroom's fluorescent lights, Kit Vontz mulled how others her age felt about the nation's future.

"There’s so much going on right now, and it’s kind of overwhelming," Vontz, 18, recently told the small group of other seniors slouched over their desks in the Alexandria City High School government class.  

They were discussing research on Gen Z attitudes toward democracy. 

Vontz's classmate, David George Fite, said he'd found it hard to avoid a "hopeless mindset." A history buff, Fite added he'd become dismayed by the political "chaos" he'd seen in the news. 

Trust in the government among young Americans is at a record low, according to the most recent Harvard Youth Poll. The survey, published in April, found just 26% of 18- to 29-year-olds felt hopeful about the country's future.  

The results reflect an erosion of faith in the nation’s democratic systems among young Americans across partisan lines. 

To cut through the malaise, federal and state lawmakers are looking to bolster civics education. Experts believe that boosting young people's understanding of government and citizens' rights and responsibilities could help reduce political divisions and vitriol.  

They see the country’s 250^th birthday as the start of a potential decade-long civic renaissance. This year’s kindergartners will have their education bookended by the anniversaries of the Declaration of Independence and ratification of the Constitution.  

"This really is a runway," said Shawn Healy, chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics, a nonpartisan group providing civics resources to students and teachers.  

But educators say the realities of the country's deep divisions are making it more difficult than ever to teach students about the government. 

Classrooms in turmoil 

On Sundays after church, community members used to stop and commend Kimberly Huffman for educating local kids about the Constitution. Nowadays, when the service ends and Huffman exits her pew, her neighbors question whether she's teaching the "right Constitution."

At one parent conference last fall, Huffman said, a mother asked whether she was teaching her child to be a Democrat. It was the first time she’d received that question in her 32 years as an American government instructor.  

Her community in Wayne County, Ohio, has been a Republican stronghold for half a century. It voted for President Donald Trump in the last three presidential elections. Until the past few years, political rancor had never seeped into Huffman's classroom.  

Now, once matter-of-fact lessons have become tense.  

The curriculum for juniors and seniors at the county’s vocational high school, where Huffman teaches, covers four founding documents: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and Ohio's state Constitution. 

Huffman sticks steadfastly to the words of the documents. She doesn’t belong to either political party and encourages students to check her voter registration. Still, they routinely interrogate her treatment of topics like presidential powers.  

"I still face hints of accusations of being biased, even though I feel like I'm tiptoeing. I feel like I'm being meticulously cautious," Huffman said. 

A tense climate  

In an iCivics survey published in January, more than half of teachers reported a fear of backlash for covering something the "wrong way," and said basic civics concepts had become difficult to teach. 

David Bobb, president of the Bill of Rights Institute, a civics-focused educational organization founded by libertarian Charles Koch, pointed to the country’s antagonistic political climate as the culprit. Over the last decade, deep political divisions have influenced the way people view the nation’s history.  

Democratic lawmakers at the state and federal levels have pushed to expand history curricula to include more on the slave trade, treatment of Native Americans, and other marginalized groups. Republican lawmakers have argued these efforts unnecessarily disparage Americans. They've moved to ban the telling of "divisive or anti-American ideology." 

Policymakers from both parties have also introduced a slew of proposals to invest in civics education. But much like conversations about how to tell the country's history, many of those ideas are split along ideological lines. 

Conservative politicians have criticized civics initiatives that encourage students to participate in their communities, saying these tactics push activism. Meanwhile, Democrats have accused the Trump administration of presenting a biased view in its programs. 

The Department of Education last year emphasized a focus on "patriotic education" and awarded more than $150 million in history and civics grants. The agency also helped launch the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, bringing together predominantly conservative organizations to create K-12 and higher-education programming.   

Bobb believes the dogmatic way lawmakers talk about civics has had a chilling effect. 

"What that means is that adults and young people alike start having that same aversion to civics as they do to politics," he said. "Teachers are coming into this kind of climate, raring to make [civics] an antidote. But the young people still have a little bit of trepidation." 

Seeing eye to eye  

When students sit down in Jennifer Klein's classroom each semester, they make a forecast — not of the weather, but of American politics.  

Some say it’s sunny and bright; others say it's cloudy with a chance of torrential rain.  

Over the past few years, Klein said, the answers in her Pittsburgh school have trended "gloomier." She’s also seen the change in sentiment reflected in students' increasing hesitancy to express their opinions at the start of every school year. 

It’s a trend Josh Dunn, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has also witnessed in his college classes. 

"For the students, so many of them fear saying something that might get them, for lack of a better word, canceled," said Dunn, who also serves as executive director of the school’s Institute of American Civics.  

Educators like Klein and Dunn see their classes playing a fundamental role in helping the next generation learn how to effectively — and politely — communicate disagreements.  

During a recent lesson on Federalist Paper No. 70, Klein watched her once-timid students begin to relish debating with one another. They were discussing Alexander Hamilton’s defense of a strong executive branch in the 1788 document.  

To defend their positions, students shouted across the room examples from history and current events. Some laughed as their classmates persuaded them.  

"Once they know they don't have to be right all the time, once they realize that there's more than just one other point of view, it kind of opens their mind," Klein said. 

'A rah-rah situation' 

In his third-floor government classroom at Alexandria City High School, Fite and his classmates studied white poster boards featuring the major projects they’d completed throughout the yearlong course.  

They’d researched federal agencies, interpreted judicial opinions based on their understanding of the Constitution, staged a mock Congress, and met with city officials about public policy issues important to youth.  

Fite said the assignments had helped him "reconcile" his fears with a deeper understanding of the country’s systems. 

Zeanise Grandberry, 17, reflected for several minutes on the mock Congress. For the project, she portrayed a Hispanic Republican congressman from Texas. Before the assignment, Grandberry, a second-generation American whose grandparents emigrated from Jamaica, didn’t understand how a person of color could identify as a Republican.  

"When I first started researching him, I was like, 'Yeah, there's no way I'm gonna embody this person,'" Grandberry said, laughing. 

So, she called the representative's office to learn more. He ended up emailing back and forth with her. 

"It was cool to understand where he was coming from," she said. 

Grandberry still doesn’t agree with many of the congressman’s positions. But the project did alter her perspective. 

"A lot of people can have a negative connotation of people just based on which side they're on, red or blue," she said. "I don't think it should be such a rah-rah situation."  

Karissa Waddick covers America's 250th anniversary for USA TODAY. She can be reached at [email protected].