As America grapples with escalating polarization, encouraging signs point toward genuine civic renewal. Philadelphia’s Jack Miller Center, a leading nonprofit group fostering informed citizenship, just released its 2024 annual report. Its findings offer a comforting alternative to the week’s headlines, most notably the meteoric rise of New York City’s self-described socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. 

This past year, the center reached over 1,300 university professors and 2,800 K-12 teachers, raised $5.4 million in funding, and diverted 77% of this money back to the academic programs it championed. At a symposium last year, it asked, “Can civic education save our institutions?” 

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The results point to a resounding yes.

The Jack Miller Center began as a coalition committed to addressing America’s civic illiteracy crisis. Its mission: to reinvigorate education in America’s founding principles and history, fostering thoughtful, engaged citizenship. Through its growing network of “civic education centers,” JMC-empowered educators teach students to step outside ideological silos.

Even as hyper-ideology approaches critical mass, investment in foundational civic education offers a safeguard against ideological capture. This means nipping the very tendencies that enable polarization in the bud through a steady dose of discomfort and close engagement with founding texts.

This process demystifies and democratizes the broader arc of political society and the ideologies that leaders tap into, a necessary ingredient in healing our chronic institutional cynicism.

Civic education’s impact radiates outward. Inside the classroom, students genuinely engage with the wisdom of ancient thought and cutting-edge civic issues. Outside, these programs foster a vibrant, free exchange of cultures, opinions, and ideas. 

Ideally, civics centers will emulate the University of Chicago’s famous “no safe spaces” stance, emphasizing that self-governance demands discomfort and rigorous intellectual challenge. It means willingly accepting the challenge of defending one’s beliefs and understanding those of another.  

America’s founders were battle-tested. We won’t get there with trigger warnings and censored syllabi. The age of political nihilism and polarized takes will surely disappear if young citizens see themselves reflected in America’s vibrant civic life.

If not, then the gears of the republic will grind to a halt, and things will spiral. 

In The Use of Knowledge in Society, F.A. Hayek argued that essential knowledge is dispersed across individuals, incomplete, and often contradictory. When we fail to cultivate the civic tools for understanding these disparate “bits of knowledge,” we retreat into dogmatism. 

A true civic education demands intellectual humility and fosters genuine understanding of differing perspectives. It engenders the civility necessary to prevent radicalization and shows that seeking mutual understanding is a path away from extremism.

Progressive Democrats love to chide the civics movement for being narrow in its canonization and try to claim that existing departments already do most of the formative work. This is abjectly false and clear to anyone who has taken a class in a dying humanities department. 

Yet, despite their emphasis on deconstructing power structures, many progressive leaders seem to lack either the resources or sustained interest in consistently and principledly articulating their philosophy.

Maybe if they cannot beat their ideological opponents, they should consider joining in on their good work. 

OUR CIVICS DEFICIT IS A NATIONAL SECURITY CRISIS

It remains a shame that public education has, in many areas, devolved into a culture of ideological conformity. The optimal outcome involves students from all backgrounds acquiring these vital tools, allowing a genuine free market of ideas to dictate the future. A freer and vibrant education system benefits all students and reflects the national interest through and through.

The good news is that great people are already doing the work. Let’s hope that the gospel spreads even further and that the semi-quincentennial marks the true arrival of an educational renaissance.