Good Citizenship and the “True and Inspiring Story of America”: A Critical Policy Analysis of the South Dakota Civics and History Initiative

• In Event: The Political Polarization of Educational Politics and Its Implications for Democratic Education

Abstract

Objectives. In the aftermath of the Capitol Insurrection, many states sought to bolster civic education through efforts such as the South Dakota Civics and History Initiative (SDCHI). This study examined the SDCHI through a Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens to understand how the initiative and related rhetoric reflected, protected, and perpetuated Whiteness as property.

Theoretical Framework. We drew on literature from civic education, CPA, and CRT to analyze South Dakota policymakers’ and Governor Noem’s claims about the “true and inspiring story of America” (Carson & Noem, 2021, para. 3) and what they reveal about how White supremacy continues to operate in our nation’s schools. We view civic education as engaging young people in a purposive and critical way to examine their environment, to notice and question injustices, and to act to improve their civic and political communities (Rubin, 2011). Through CPA, we sought to examine not just the formal legislative policy, or big-P policy but also the little-p policies that have developed within localities and institutions like the SD Department of Education (Ball, 2021) around civics and history instruction. Horsford (2019) demonstrated the usefulness of CRT as a framework for CPA given their shared aims of addressing “issues of power, marginalized perspectives, and the distribution of scarce resources'' (p. 263).

Methods. We conducted a CPA using methods from content analysis that allowed for a concentrated look at the SDCHI. Through an inductive, consensus coding process, we drew on both pattern and axial coding (Saldaña, 2015). In analyzing these relationships and patterns, key codes and concepts emerged as particularly salient for generating two themes that held explanatory power. We also recognized that the SDCHI developed in a particular sociohistorical time period (Brewer, 2014) and constructed a brief microhistory of the policy over the course of 2021, situating it in the U.S. context in the wake of the Capitol Insurrection and intense political polarization of this time.

Data Sources. We analyzed 40 policy documents (see Table 1), including policy texts, Noem’s speeches, opinion pieces, government documents, and non-governmental texts such as newspaper articles and news clips related to the SDCHI.

Results. We identified a two-pronged policy approach to preserving the master script of American exceptionalism. First, legislators leveraged funding to ensure that the SDCHI presented students a single narrative of U.S. history through teacher training and curricular materials. Second, it ensured that this master script was taught from a paternalistic framework aligned to narrow "American values" that privileged White students’ comfort. These strategies revealed how White supremacy is preserved and illustrated the vested interest of Whiteness in maintaining a narrow, homogenized script of U.S. history that precludes a reckoning with historical and present injustices.

Scholarly Significance. The findings show how Whiteness as property functioned to thwart efforts towards socially just and culturally responsive education. By critically examining these policy mechanisms, this study seeks to inform the responses of educators and policymakers committed to emancipatory, democratic, and socially just approaches to civic education.

Authors

• Alison Wilson, University of Houston

• Kristina Brezicha, Georgia State University