Kids need 'more fluency in how politics operates around us'

A new book argues parents should do more with civics education at home

Political scientist Lindsey Cormack, with her new book How to Raise a Citizen (And why it’s up to you to do it)

Who’s responsible for teaching the next generation of citizens? What does it mean to be a good or productive citizen? These vexing, complicated questions obsessed me a few years ago, when I wrote Building Better Citizens. I tried to capture and understand the recent effort to reform civics education in schools. Of all the school subjects, civics feels the most complicated—it involves a bunch of different skills, like understanding history and current events, how the government operates, plus a bunch of really practical things like registering to vote or volunteering in service to the community. The path for an “engaged citizen” doesn’t look exactly the same for any two people, and much of it is voluntary. At school, where other subjects are quite siloed—think reading and math, with their very specific outline of objectives, standards, and standardized tests—a holistic civics education can be difficult for busy, overburdened, understaffed schools to do well. 

The school reform effort on civics, which seemed to be picking up some steam after the 2016 presidential election and the 2017 Parkland massacre, has sort of fizzled. There is a growing group of organizations dedicated to the task, some new laws and policies, some pushback and arguments over what schools should and shouldn’t be teaching, and still enough complacency to go around. Yet only seven states require a full-year civics course from kindergarten through 12th grade; student knowledge of politics and government seems to be decreasing, not increasing. 

Political scientist Lindsey Cormack has a different view of who’s responsible for teaching America’s young citizens about civic understanding and how to engage with politics. Her new book, How to Raise a Citizen (And why it’s up to you to do it), out this week, argues that parents and families should do more of the heavy lifting—showing kids how to register to vote, for example, and talking to them about the branches of government and what they do, and how politics affects our lives. 

But how do parents actually do this? Cormack, an associate professor at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, offers good advice and things to think about when talking to kids about politics and civics. She’s also written a primer on government for parents who feel less than confident about sharing what they know. 

We sat down to talk about the new book, about who’s responsible for civic learning, and why parents could play a special role at a crucial time. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

“It’s not so much that we need to be raising little government trivia experts…we need to provide them with a process, and then a few concrete steps they need to understand how to do.” —political scientist Lindsey Cormack

The Bell Ringer: Your book is basically an argument that parents should take on the job of talking to kids about politics and civics even more than schools should. What role should parents play?

Lindsey Cormack: I don't know any parent who doesn't want their kids to grow up as powerful as possible, as mentally healthy and stable and rooted as they possibly can be. For most education topics, we build over time—you know, in kindergarten we maybe introduce some vocabulary, show kids numbers and letters, and then we build to bigger concepts. The way we teach government or civic know-how, it usually happens at the very end of schooling. Like in your senior year, second semester, you're going to get a class on government.

We need to have more fluency with how politics operates around us. And I think kids are going to be better positioned to do that if they start to have those conversations in their homes instead of just relying on that senior year class that they get towards the end of their school.

And so the argument of the book is right now we have had a deep deprioritization of civics in schools. 

That means a lot of our young people graduate into a system that they don't fully understand. And when you don't understand something, it's not that hard to say, ‘OK, I don't want to care about it, because it doesn't feel good.’ They don't get it, so they’re not exactly excited to go participate more. There's true risk to this because part of our brains don't really get the system. When you hear something that seems outrageous, or really scary, it's more possible for that to flourish in your head if you don't have an understanding of the systems. 

I argue that parents owe it to themselves and their kids to have conversations about this. None of us are ever going to know everything about politics and government. But our kids need to understand that it's worth thinking about these things and being willing to learn more. And it's not just parents who have all the answers and tell them, ‘Here's all the branches, here's checks and balances, here's republicanism, here's what it is to be in a democracy.’

It's, ‘Hey, you know what? This is worth caring about. Let me show you how to have conversations. Let me be a willing participant with you and we can learn more together.’

When we were doing research for the book, we found that only about 25 % of kids had reported having an intentional conversation with their parents about politics, government, or anything related. And so we just need to take it on. It has to be something that parents do.

The Bell Ringer: My dad taught 8th grade US history for 40 years. And so around our dinner table every night, we talked a lot of politics and current events. Why don't parents have more of these conversations with their kids?