Here's a brief statement why that might be the case. Part of the reason may be a shift away from civic education and towards science and math, as well as a trend towards high stakes testing using multiple choice tests:
In the past, he notes, “Knowledge of our unique form of government and our civic responsibility was basic to any education, beginning as early as kindergarten” — a knowledge that “has fairly dramatically declined in importance in recent years.”
Reasons behind this “crisis point in civic education,” Wiseman says, include an increased emphasis on science and math, mechanically gradable multiple choice tests that negatively affect students’ abilities to verbalize the importance of civic knowledge and involvement, and “a new and developing phenomenon — a pronounced disdain for government in general.”
Once, he says, “Students would arrive on campus, clamoring for the chance to be involved with government, to work in political campaigns, and to intern in Washington for starvation wages.”
But, he writes, today’s students “have a decidedly negative view of government in general,” and “it is evident many of these negative opinions were formed around the dinner table at home.”
Finally, Wiseman says, “The display of animosity between the two entrenched political parties is obviously taking its toll…Students and budding young political enthusiasts are becoming less familiar with a calling to make government work, and are instead being fed a steady diet of the evils of compromise and of an overly-stated failure of government to accomplish anything of value.”
Several studies have indicated, he says, that all this “will lead to a drop in participation, and a dramatic decline, in the faith that all of us invest in our ‘one of a kind’ democracy.”
Are we discounting the role that civic education has played over the course of American history? If so, will this have an impact on the stability of governing institutions? Perhaps that's part of what is leading to current instability?
This is worth discussing in class.
