It has become a commonplace among America’s educators and policymakers that Americans’ civic literacy has plummeted in recent decades. A years-long stream of surveys and empirical studies paints a cumulative picture of an uninformed or, worse, misinformed populace. It seems that no public figure or institution of any significance disputes this fact. From across the political and ideological spectrum, we hear warnings that Americans lack basic knowledge of their system of government, or that they fail to understand the fundamental philosophical concepts underlying our constitutional republic.
A few examples will illustrate the point. In September 2025, the Annenberg Public Policy Foundation issued an upbeat press release noting that its annual Constitution Day Civics Survey had found that Americans’ knowledge of certain facts had increased. For instance, 70% of U.S. adults surveyed were accurately able to name the three branches of the federal government. Of course, this means that 30% of American adults did not know this most basic information about their government. The press release went on to acknowledge that fewer than half of the respondents were able to identify a majority of the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment, and more than one-fifth mistakenly identified the right to bear arms as one of them.
The press release went on to acknowledge that fewer than half of the respondents were able to identify a majority of the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment, and more than one-fifth mistakenly identified the right to bear arms as one of them.
Beginning in 1998, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program, often called “The Nation’s Report Card,” has tested eighth-grade students on their civics knowledge. The exam includes questions on subjects such as the Electoral College, the role of Congress under the Constitution, and the purpose of government in general. The average nationwide score on this exam has never met the threshold for proficiency in the subject. Slight gains to the average score during the 2010s were reversed in 2022, leaving it flat compared to the 1998 baseline. Only 22% of the students tested in 2022 were judged as proficient in the subject. 31% failed to achieve even the NAEP’s “basic” level of knowledge, which merely requires understanding of concepts such as equality under the law and consent of the governed.
In 2024, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) surveyed more than 3,000 students to assess basic knowledge of American history and government. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed failed to identify John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly three-quarters failed to identify Kamala Harris as the President of the U.S. Senate. The students were 50% more likely (48% to 32%) to say that the executive branch has the constitutional authority to declare war than to say (correctly) that the legislative branch holds this power. A majority of the students (51%) incorrectly stated that the U.S. Constitution was written in 1776, and they were more likely (44% to 31%) to identify Thomas Jefferson than James Madison as the Father of the Constitution. By contrast, nearly 90% of students correctly identified Jeff Bezos as the owner of Amazon.com.
No matter where we look—grade-school children, college students, or adults—we find civic illiteracy in America. Nevertheless, Americans seem quite confident in their ignorance. In October 2025, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation found that although 58% of adults fail a basic civics exam and 86% fail a basic economics exam, nearly three-quarters (74%) express confidence in their ability to explain how American government works to foreign acquaintances.
No matter where we look—grade-school children, college students, or adults—we find civic illiteracy in America.
This lack of shared, foundational knowledge of American history and government has severe consequences. It contributes to our current state of political polarization, rendering us vulnerable to “conflict entrepreneurs” who mischaracterize our history and institutions as part of their project to stoke division in pursuit of their own ends, whether that be clicks, dollars, or votes. Nearly half of Americans report that the country’s political divisions already have an impact on their daily lives, often straining personal relationships and/or influencing their consumer choices.
Even worse, civic illiteracy discourages citizens from recognizing the benefits that have accrued to all of us as we have sought to work out the implications of our founding ideals for the past 250 years. If we take characteristic features of the American system, such as stable institutions, equality before the law, and competitive markets, for granted, we are more likely to allow our perceptions of the system to be swayed by the most recent news cycle or the personalities of current officeholders. For example, a poll published in June 2026 found that a record-low percentage of American adults (53%) reported being “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American; the disenchantment with America was concentrated among Democrats, suggesting a spillover effect from their dissatisfaction with President Trump to the country as a whole.
Over time, citizens who lack an appreciation for the foundational elements of American government will be much less likely to do the necessary work to maintain or defend them, whether that be through healthy civic engagement or the literal, physical defense of the country. One of the most unsettling findings of ACTA’s 2024 survey was that more than half of students (57%), including a majority of those who report being very likely or somewhat likely to seek careers in public service, said they would flee the country rather than stay and fight if the United States were to be invaded by a foreign enemy.
Over time, citizens who lack an appreciation for the foundational elements of American government will be much less likely to do the necessary work to maintain or defend them, whether that be through healthy civic engagement or the literal, physical defense of the country.
An obvious response to our crisis of civic illiteracy is to beef up civics instruction in the nation’s middle schools and high schools, and this would certainly be a welcome development. However, these schools currently face some important obstacles to effective civics instruction, not all of which can be addressed by simple policy fixes.
One serious problem for civics education in high schools is curriculum crowding. Over the past quarter-century, more schools have come to be evaluated by various levels of government according to how well their students score on standardized assessments. School administrators thus have a powerful incentive to direct instructional time toward the subjects assessed on those exams and minimize instructional time for other subjects. Under the current testing regime established by the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), states are required to test high school students at least once on reading, math, and science, but not on civics. Not surprisingly, most schools have therefore allotted their time for civics instruction simply to meet the bare minimum required by state law (typically one semester in high school). Many high school students graduate a few months before voting for the first time without having had any civics instruction since the ninth grade.
In addition to curriculum crowding, the civics instruction that does take place in high schools across the country suffers from uneven quality resulting from the inadequate or even counterproductive preparation of many classroom teachers. To be sure, America’s schools boast many outstanding teachers of American civics and history—teachers who inspire curiosity and appreciation for their subject in their students. Nevertheless, the uncomfortable reality, widely acknowledged but seldom discussed publicly by education insiders, is that at far too many schools, responsibility for civics and history instruction is assigned by default to teachers who entered the profession primarily out of a love for coaching athletics rather than a love for classroom teaching. Thus, they often succumb to the temptation to “phone it in” when it comes to their teaching duties, filling up class time by having students fill out worksheets and the like. So prevalent is this phenomenon that the American Historical Association published an essay on the topic as far back as 2005.
Perhaps even more troubling, the civics curriculum at many high schools has drifted away from nonpartisan transmission of foundational knowledge about American history and government toward an ideologically coded “action civics,” backed by influential interest groups and designed to recruit students into the ranks of progressive activists. As reports from groups such as the Pioneer Institute have shown, students, under this newer framework, spend scarce class time receiving instruction in activities like “community organizing” and earn academic credit for working with putatively nonpartisan organizations dedicated to progressive goals such as immigration amnesty or “climate justice.” The end result of such a curriculum focused on “action civics” is that students who lack a basic understanding of the American system of government are encouraged to believe confidently that they know how it should be changed.
The end result of such a curriculum focused on “action civics” is that students who lack a basic understanding of the American system of government are encouraged to believe confidently that they know how it should be changed.
None of these problems in the K-12 system should discourage policymakers or reform-minded administrators and teachers from taking steps to improve civics education there. My own state of Florida, for example, has implemented robust civics standards and standardized testing at the middle-school level; in the last academic year, 76% of students achieved proficiency on that exam. Florida has also invested significant resources into teacher development for civics, including training on how to teach the primary-source documents that are the focus of the required civics course. However, it is necessary to acknowledge the scope of the task on multiple fronts nationwide: reform of the standardized testing regime, a rethinking of the current overlap of personnel between curriculum and athletics, and curricular reform that pushes back against the well-funded and politically influential proponents of action civics, refocusing instruction on the fundamentals of civic literacy.
A cursory look at the landscape of American higher education might lead one to conclude that the prospects for civics education reform there are no better than they are in the K-12 system. By now, it is common knowledge that most disciplines in the humanities and social sciences are immersed in critical theory and that their ideological treatment of American history and government has reached absurd levels. This long-term trend was illustrated dramatically in a 2026 study published by the Progressive Policy Institute, which found that American Quarterly, the flagship journal in the discipline of American studies, “essentially erases virtually anything positive about the American experience” in favor of painting “a one-sided and unrelentingly negative portrait” of it. A similar study by the Goldwater Institute found that the editors of the American Political Science Review, which plays a comparable role in the discipline of political science, functioned as ideological gatekeepers, explicitly favoring articles that promoted activism for progressive causes and virtually blackballing scholarship focused on the U.S. Constitution or any of the fifty state constitutions.
This ideological skew is not limited to the contents of scholarly journals. The authors of a recent study published in National Interest used the Open Syllabus database to examine the classroom syllabi of tens of thousands of course offerings in the humanities and social sciences. Using three hot-button and divisive public-policy issues as test cases, they found an overwhelming imbalance in assigned readings, with progressive viewpoints being advanced without rebuttal more than 90% of the time. Distorted presentations like these are obstacles to civic literacy and engagement; students are not given the opportunity to engage with and understand diverse viewpoints that are widely held by their fellow citizens.
This ideological skew is not limited to the contents of scholarly journals.
Fortunately, policymakers have proven more willing to take concrete actions to address problems related to civic literacy at the university level than they have been at the K-12 level in many states. The reasons for this disparity are not entirely clear; the influence of teachers’ unions over local school boards, the greater prevalence of whistleblowing by students in universities, and public awareness of how campus radicalism can spill over into society more broadly might all be contributing factors. Whatever the reasons, advocates for civics education should take advantage of the current appetite for reform in higher education to advance prudent policy proposals that can move the needle on this longstanding problem.
State legislatures, governing boards, and senior administrators have an array of options for improving civics education in higher education. Universities can adjust their graduation requirements at both the curricular and co-curricular levels to promote civic literacy in the student body. Policymakers can also take steps to ensure that campuses facilitate ongoing, healthy dialogue on issues of civic concern. I will give a few examples from Florida, where I live and work, while also noting that similar measures have been adopted in several other states as well.
State legislatures, governing boards, and senior administrators have an array of options for improving civics education in higher education.
In the inaugural issue of From the Academy, I described the benefits of Florida’s general-education reforms for liberal arts education. Those reforms have also strengthened civics education in Florida. Florida statute 1007.55 states that a goal of general-education courses is to “support and defend the constitutional republic” and that institutions’ general-education courses, where applicable, must teach “the historical background and philosophical foundation of Western civilization and this nation’s historical documents.” This requirement increases the likelihood that students will encounter course material that bolsters civic literacy across the general-education curriculum. Moreover, the state agencies that oversee Florida’s public colleges and universities have made specific curricular choices to increase student engagement with American history and civics, most importantly by replacing an introductory sociology course with an American history survey course in the statewide core curriculum in 2024.
Florida also has a more specific civic literacy requirement for its public colleges and universities. Florida statute 1007.25 requires every student seeking to graduate from those institutions to both take a civic literacy course for credit (a survey course in U.S. history or government) and to pass the Florida Civic Literacy Exam (FCLE) or achieve a comparable score on the CLEP or AP exam in U.S. History or American Government. High school students enrolled in a U.S. Government course are also required to take the FCLE; their scores do not affect their eligibility to graduate from high school, but students who pass the FCLE in high school do not have to take it again in college.
In 2023, Florida’s legislature enacted a requirement that each of its public universities create and maintain an Office of Public Policy Events managed by an appointed director. Each office is mandated to host, at least four times per academic year, public debates or group forums that “must address, from multiple, divergent, and opposing perspectives, an extensive range of public policy issues widely discussed and debated in society at large.” Furthermore, the events must include “speakers who represent widely held views on opposing sides of the most widely discussed public policy issues of the day and who hold a wide diversity of perspectives from within and outside of the state university community.”
Along with several other states such as Arizona, Tennessee, and Ohio, Florida has created schools of civic thought, or “civics centers,” at several of its public universities to restore a measure of balance in the presentation of American history and government that students receive. Among these, the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education has received the most attention, but it is not the only one. Florida State University sponsors the Institute for Governance and Civics, Florida International University has the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom, and the University of West Florida houses the newly created Academy of American Civic Republicanism. Each of these schools of civic thought has its own distinct emphasis, but all of them work to inculcate civic literacy in students and members of the public through course offerings and public programming. A priority at many of these schools across the country has been to work with their states’ K-12 systems to strengthen the teacher-training pipeline for civics education. Some schools, such as the Hamilton School, have begun to offer graduate programs with the potential to address deficiencies in the professorial pipeline as well.
Along with several other states such as Arizona, Tennessee, and Ohio, Florida has created schools of civic thought, or “civics centers,” at several of its public universities to restore a measure of balance in the presentation of American history and government that students receive.
No single one of the reforms discussed above will solve the crisis of civic illiteracy in American society. However, their cumulative weight has already affected students’ reported attitudes on issues such as civil discourse and free speech in Florida, and their long-term effects will likely be much greater. Policymakers elsewhere have many opportunities to replicate or expand on Florida’s reforms. One state to follow this strategy is Iowa, which recently passed legislation requiring students in its public universities to take courses in U.S. history and government to be developed by the University of Iowa’s new Center for Intellectual Freedom.
One final point for advocates of civics education to consider is the long-term need to reinforce the study of American history and government with the study of the broader influences on our institutions. Recently, the U.S. Department of Education updated its definition of the “American political tradition” to include not only the primary sources of the American Founding and basic concepts of republican government, but also the influences of “key works of history, literature, humanities, and art,” as well as “the influence of Western Civilization, such as ancient Greece, Rome, and Judeo-Christianity, on the founders’ values.” This updated definition represents a welcome recognition that America’s founding principles and institutions did not originate in a cultural vacuum.
Russell Kirk, whose writings helped inspire the creation of this publication, often reminded his readers that order in the commonwealth flows from order in the individual soul. He also insisted that politics too often was a “preoccupation of the quarter-educated.” In other words, Kirk believed that a healthy politics depends on a populace, or at least on a leadership class, that has developed a healthy moral imagination and a sound moral philosophy of the kind inculcated through the study of great literature, music, and art. America’s founders had this sort of education, and a full-orbed civic literacy requires some understanding of it.
In short, civics literacy must be seen as dependent on a broader liberal arts education—the education appropriate to free citizens—rather than something narrowly utilitarian.
In short, civics literacy must be seen as dependent on a broader liberal arts education—the education appropriate to free citizens—rather than something narrowly utilitarian. Advocates of civics education should therefore work to ensure that students become familiar with major works that helped to form the Founding generation—not just Locke and Montesquieu, but also Plutarch, Cicero, Aristotle, Virgil, and even Cervantes and Chaucer, to say nothing of the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, or the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Leaders at the various schools of civic thought should give serious consideration to adding faculty competent to teach these and other great works in the service of advancing civic literacy.
The opportunities for civics education in colleges and universities are abundant, and their impact will eventually be felt in the K-12 system and the broader public. Advocates for civics education should seize the opportunity to work with supportive policymakers to advance these reforms wherever they can be implemented. In the current environment, universities offer the most potential for us to increase civic literacy among our fellow citizens.
Jason Jewell