Redrawing the civics education roadmap

State standards for civics education in the U.S. usually require that K-12 students learn hard dates and facts, like the events of Shays’ Rebellion or the details of the Stamp Act.

A group of scholars and educators wants to change that approach by prioritizing knowledge over the number of facts, and asking “driving questions” that integrate information, conceptual reasoning, and critical inquiry. In a report released today, “A Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy,” researchers at Harvard, Tufts, and other institutions laid out this strategy and other recommendations for a large-scale recommitment to a field that has seen investment decline during the last 50 years to the point where it now attracts just 1/1000 of the money spent on STEM subjects.