A Republic, If We Can Teach It Fixing America's Civic Education Crisis

The Civic Education Crisis: How We Got Here, What We Must Do is a call to action, an effort to save our republic through better civic education. America faces a crisis in civic education that imperils the long-term health of the country. Too many Americans—especially young people—do not have the knowledge of history and principles necessary to sustain the republic. In what has become a vicious cycle, young people are not learning about their country—its history and how it works—and they grow up disengaged and distrustful. Too many young people do not understand the principles of self-government on which America was founded. And they do not understand America’s history as the story of the struggle to live up to those principles of freedom articulated in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Instead, too many believe that America’s story is essentially one of oppression, not freedom—injustice, not hope. In the first half of the book, authors Jeff Sikkenga and David Davenport diagnose the problem while proposing solutions in the second half. Truly, America faces a civics crisis and action is needed now to reverse the trend.

Jeffrey Sikkenga is the Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center and a professor of political science at Ashland University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy at the University of Virginia as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author or coauthor of three books: The Supreme Court: Core Decisions (2020), History of American Political Thought (2019), and The Free Person and the Free Economy (2002). He lives in Ashland, OH. David Davenport is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as well as a Senior Fellow at the Ashbrook Center. He is the former president of Pepperdine University (1985-2000), where he also served as a professor of law and public policy. David is the coauthor with Gordon Lloyd of three books: How Public Policy Became War (2019), Rugged Individualism: Dead or Alive? (2017), and The New Deal and Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry (2013). He lives in Coronado, CO.