Civic educators watched last week's riotous assault on the Capitol with a mixture of alarm and hope. The mob's brazen disregard for the truth and the rule of law shook teachers around the nation, but also made a stunning case for the need to invest in civic learning, which could enjoy a breakthrough year in 2021.
A bipartisan bill to invest $1 billion in civic education, a teacher-friendly incoming president, popular support for civic learning, a surge in youth activism — and the fragile state of American democracy itself — have all combined to create "sort-of a Sputnik moment" for civics, says Louise Dubé, the executive director of iCivics.
Her organization, the nation's leading provider of civic learning resources, is leading a 144-member CivXNow Coalition of civic education groups that is working to mobilize allies from the Girl Scouts to the American Bar Association, along with legions of educators, students and teachers, to support the bipartisan Educating for Democracy Act.
Authored in the Senate by Republican John Cornyn of Texas and Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware, a close ally of President-elect Joe Biden, the bill would dole out $1 billion to states for American history and civics programs and ramp up teacher training and student assessments. A House version was introduced by Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro and Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole.
The bill sets out to reverse chronic underinvestment in civic learning, which now receives just 5 cents in federal funding per student each year — compared with $50 per student annually for STEM education.
"I'm really heartened by the fact that the bill in the House and the bill in the Senate are bipartisan, despite the billion-dollar price tag," says Dubé. "That tells me that our political leaders recognize the depth of the problem. And it would be transformative for this field, for students and for educators."
The same hurdles that have plagued civic education for decades remain, of course.
Civic learning tends to get lost between the cracks of social studies, history and geography, can spook teachers wary of political controversies, and has triggered partisan disputes over whether students should learn facts and dates or how to transform communities. Only nine states and D.C. required a full year of civics or government studies to graduate as of 2018, though dozens of state legislatures will be mulling bills in their 2021 sessions to mandate more civic learning.
President Trump has undermined civic education both directly and indirectly, some argue, by modeling uncivil behavior as well as by roiling partisan disputes over what students should learn.
He has bullied and jeered at detractors, flouted the truth and the rule of law, assailed representative democracy with his unfounded voter fraud claims — and has now ended up as the first president impeached two times. Even as the nation grappled last year with racial reckoning, and students clamored for greater equity and diversity in classroom materials, Trump signed an executive order to promote "patriotic education" that he said would counter efforts to "paint America as a systemically racist country."
The Trump era may also have created an opening for civic education, however.
Americans' civic knowledge actually increased in 2019, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a product of the president's constant clashes with Congress over budgets, immigration, impeachment and executive power. Trump's controversial presidency also helped spur record voter turnout, including among young Americans fired up over issues like race, global warming and gun safety.
Public support for civic learning cuts across party and ideology. Pollster Frank Luntz found in a survey last year that more than half of voters in both parties identified civic education as the best way to strengthen American identity.
Curriculum standards for civics, history and social studies, which vary by state but which in many cases have drawn fire as outdated, facts-heavy and lacking diverse perspectives, may also be in for a reset. A bipartisan group of national educators is poised to unveil a new roadmap for civic learning with the help of a $650,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Education Department.
Led by iCivics — in collaboration with Arizona State, Harvard and Tufts universities — the roadmap is expected to stress critical thinking over rote memorization, and to encourage students to embrace and actively engage in constitutional democracy. To be unveiled in March, the project is dubbed "Educating for American Democracy: A Roadmap for Excellence in History and Civics Education for All Learners," and sets out to define what students should know with an emphasis on civic agency, equity, diversity and inclusion.
Both the roadmap and the $1 billion legislation may find allies in the top ranks of the new administration. Biden is poised to move the Education Department in a new direction and the new first lady, Jill Biden, is a community college professor. Betsy DeVos, Trump's only Education secretary until quitting last week after the mob stormed the Capitol, clashed with teachers and promoted controversial charter schools, but Biden has pledged to invest in teacher salaries and training.
The biggest hurdle facing the bill may be the coronavirus pandemic, which will continue to suck all the oxygen out of the education policy room until schools and politicians figure out a way to safely reopen classrooms and help students make up what they've lost during virtual learning.
Another challenge is that the Educating for Democracy Act will likely be considered as part of the reauthorization of the federal law governing federal aid to elementary and secondary schools, which invariably stirs up disputes over the shared role of states and the federal government over testing, standards and unfunded mandates.
Nevertheless, Dubé is cautiously optimistic civic education may finally be ripe for revival. If nothing else, the mandate for it may never have been more evident. "Clearly, we are a nation so polarized as to be dysfunctional," she said. "And that polarization cannot keep going on in a system that asks for compromise."
Carney is a contributing writer. She also heads The Civic Circle, a member of the CivXNow Coalition.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.