A civic vocation

Fears about waning civility in the American public sphere are never in short supply, and the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement bore these fears out Tuesday, when it announced that our democracy has hit a “crucible moment,” which, if we bungle it, will leave us in state of “civic malaise.” This malaise finds form in the lack of civic knowledge among American youth: In 2010, only one in four high school seniors scored proficient or higher on a national civics examination, and college seniors performed only slightly better.

But fear not—the Task Force thinks that American colleges could lead us out of the furnace by emphasizing civic learning in their curriculums. Revised curriculums would emphasize civic literacy and the value of working for the public good.

The problem with the Task Force’s pronouncement is not that it relies on education to drum up civic-mindedness; it is that it limits the ambit of civic education to college.

College is not, has never been and will never be the only postsecondary path available. Take, for instance, Rick Santorum’s recent quip that President Barack Obama’s putative push to send all American children to college amounted to “elitist snobbery.” Never mind that Santorum misrepresented Obama’s record. What matters is that both Obama’s defenders and detractors rushed to acknowledge an obvious fact­—that there all sorts of people and all sorts of careers in this country and that an expensive college education does not make sense for all of them.

Two recent studies by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce confirmed what we already know. Sure enough, even unemployable architecture majors—the least employed of all bachelor’s degree holders—have an unemployment rate nearly half of that recent high school graduates. But nearly 15 percent of workers with only a high school degree have salaries above the median salary of bachelor’s degree holders.

This is no surprise: College is not the only place to get the skills to make a living, and, with tuition increases persistently exceeding the rate of inflation, it might make more financial sense for some to get vocational training in lieu of a shiny liberal arts degree. Indeed, with the federal government originating more than $100 billion in education loans every year, alternative postsecondary pathways stand to gain ground.

What is missing from these alternative pathways, of course, is the civic education that is supposed to stop the deterioration of our public sphere. Colleges might be doing a poor job of cultivating the public-mindedness, tolerance and self-sacrifice crucial to a liberal democracy full of diverse people trying to solve hard common problems. But, if our public sphere is damaged, pinning our hopes to tertiary education will not save it. There are many legitimate educational paths—trade schools and apprenticeships, not to mention primary and secondary schools—that will need to prepare those who walk them for civic life if we are to make it out of the crucible.

How to create a curriculum the generates genuine civic intelligence and not just empty knowledge of American government, and spread this education across the board is an open question. But, in the meantime, we cannot forget that civic virtue does not belong—especially—to the college educated.