The Importance of Civic Education for Children – A Parent’s Guide

Civic education can seem like an afterthought in a country where classroom time is constantly being reallocated to prioritize key tested subjects. However, children need to grow an awareness of their civic agency and care for the community.

Developing an appreciation of our freedoms and responsibilities is essential to our democracy. This means teaching students to understand the structures of their government and societal institutions.

Understanding Our Government

While most states’ National Education Goals and curricular requirements express the need for civic education, this subject should be given more sustained attention in school curricula. Instead, teachers focus on subject-area mandates like math and reading.

Schools can promote civic learning by giving it the same emphasis as other subjects and providing opportunities for students to engage with community organizations. They can foster civic-mindedness by teaching students how to identify, research, and propose solutions to problems in their local communities and inviting community leaders into classrooms.

They can also provide students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to engage in a democracy and recognize how their political system relates to other systems worldwide, fostering a sense of global citizenship. In addition, they can bolster civic learning by encouraging community service, but only when it is appropriately conceived to be more than just doing good deeds (see Kassimir and Flanagan, 2007). A more amorphous conception of community practice that stokes student agency could include school-based efforts like community gardens or cultural events.

Understanding Our Rights

In a democracy, rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. An excellent civic education book for children instructs students that their rights are only protected by their duties to the community. Instruction should also emphasize that the community is not just a set of institutions but a social fabric in which citizens act on behalf of others and are held accountable for their actions.

Systematic attention to civics and government is needed from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The National Education Goals and curricular requirements in every state extol the importance of civic learning, but it should be given the priority it deserves. This inattention stems partly from the false assumption that civic knowledge and skills emerge as byproducts of studying subjects like history, economics, or literature.

Schools should promote opportunities for civic education that include simulations of democratic processes and procedures. Students at all grades can profit from the study of exemplary citizens—both famous and not-so-famous—who have defended their human rights and political freedoms, embraced their civic responsibilities, or served their communities in other ways.

Understanding Our Responsibilities

It is essential to teach civic skills because citizens should be able to identify their responsibilities. These include obeying the law, being informed and attentive to public issues, assuming appropriate leadership, paying taxes, voting, serving as a juror or in the military, and performing community service. These responsibilities help create and sustain our constitutional democracy.

If a young person never feels respected by the surrounding structures, they will stay civically disengaged. Civic education can help break that cycle by allowing youth to relate their policy preferences with the procedures through which policy is decided.

The national education goals, curricular requirements, and policies of every state should recognize the value of civic learning and ensure that it receives appropriate attention in the classroom. This should be done in addition to teaching students the content of English, math, science, foreign languages, art, music, history, and geography. It also should be done by promoting and supporting co-curricular activities that support civic education.

Understanding Our Community

In education, it’s tempting to define civic education as teaching children about the many structures of their government. But more is needed. Ask Americans if they can name the three branches of their government or their representative in Congress or state governor, and most cannot. Moreover, knowing about government is insufficient to help citizens participate in democracy.

Good civics instruction also teaches children about their rights and responsibilities, showing them how these rights and responsibilities connect with the politics and governance of other countries. It also encourages them to participate in community service; provided that schools ensure students understand the social and political context of the institution or agency they’ll be working with.

In addition to formal instruction, good civics education pays attention to the informal curriculum, such as school-sponsored student activities, community service opportunities, and co-curricular programs that students can participate in. This helps them develop the intellectual skills necessary for responsible participation in a democratic society.