Rebuilding a Civic Society

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Dwight Vick
August 6, 2019

We public administrators can no longer afford to just teach our students. We have to serve the broader community where we live. We have to teach the citizens we serve not just about what we do or why we do we do. We have to teach them about how our government works. We have to teach why our government works. We have to teach how it is important to them. We have to include civics in the classroom, the local Rotary Club meeting and VFW hall. Otherwise, we train modern public administrators to perform jobs, supervise employees and manage budgets who never learned basic high school civics.

For me, I assumed high school coaches intermingled civics with Friday night football until my son entered high school. Students were tested on social studies in eighth grade. Civics, American and world history and sociology were sacrificed at the math and science testing alter. My son’s school’s teachers and administrators were not at fault. It was the latest version of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

I saw the effects in the college classroom when I taught a freshman National Government course at West Texas A&M University.

A blonde-haired teenager sat on the front row. Dressed in the usual attire of a college student—jeans, t-shirt, sneakers—the boy sat in the chair like a fourth-rate version of a disenfranchised mini-John Wayne. Several students sat in the back of the class that looked more like Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber or a character from the Breakfast Club, a movie I suspected they never watched. I asked everyone to introduce themselves—say their names, their home town and one item of interest. I started in the back of the room and worked my way to the front. The teenage boy spoke.

“All of you government teachers are out to make us out to be liberals, Communists, faggots, and Muslims. If we don’t believe like you do liberal Communist faggots, you’ll pray Allah will send us to hell with 59 raisins and give us an F to boot!”

The Lady-Gaga-Justin-Bieber-Emilio-Estevez-Anthony-Michael-Hall-Judd-Nelson-Molly-Ringwald-Ally-Sheedy group stood up yelling at their classmate, “I’m a liberal,” “I’m a Democrat,” “I’m one of them faggots you’re talking about,” amidst other words like “Republican,” “Jesus freak,” “Freaking Christian,” and “You’re what’s wrong with this country.”

Another student interrupted them saying, “This is why government is bad. People who worked for the government were bad. All elected officials, bureaucrats, Democrats, Republicans. Government was bad.” No graduate class prepared me for classroom warfare but I knew enough to be grateful to that student. The classroom quieted as quickly as it erupted. He gave me the one topic that would unite all of them.

I asked them, “Which government is bad?” And, “What parts?” They became quiet. I heard a few, “Uh-on-uh’s” around the room.

I assigned three web-based surveys that would allow the student to measure their views and compared them to others throughout the world. They were required to write a two-page essay on their findings. Many students who thought they were right-wing Republicans held center-left beliefs. They begged me not to tell their parents and preachers that they did not think or believe like their family or follow Christian sermons. Others wrote they were proud to continue their family tradition of hating their government, their love for Jesus who was their only judge and gave them the right to carry a gun. They would pray that I would see the light. Some wrote they feared they would become their parents and wanted to learn other viewpoints. Almost all of them were written on an eighth-grade level.

For me, I do not know what was more disturbing; the classroom eruption, the content or the writing.

I also completed the assignment and discussed my results. I was a centrist, a moderate who balanced left-leaning social views with right-leaning opinions based upon my budgetary and military views. Students said nothing.

I spoke with a friend who taught eight-grade social studies in Maryland. He sent me an extra copy of his civics textbook. I incorporated it into my lectures. Instead of lecturing about the political, social and cultural impact of this recent movement, I started asking students to explain their reasoning and see if my questions would become theirs. By the end of the semester, I won over students who sought debate and most of the students appreciated the discussion.

By the end of the semester, all but one student, my mini John Wayne, shook my hand at our last discussion. They thanked me for using unorthodox methods to teach government. I had changed their minds about the subject and they were going to become involved by voting, finding other ways to express their opinion and researching it before they spoke it. While they were thanking for the hard work, John Wayne quietly left the room with his head hung low.

From that point forward, I included civics education in all courses I taught. We public administrators can no longer preach to ourselves about the need for civics education. We have to teach it not just by including it in our lectures, but by instructing the parents—the citizens of those 18-year-olds—about the importance of civic engagement. We have to rebuild what was torn down. We do this one citizen at a time.

We have to.

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Author: Dwight Vick is a long-term ASPA member. His email address is [email protected].

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