Civic Burden: Conceptualizing the Epistemic Harms of Traditional Civic Education Curriculum

• In Event: The Politics of Education in Politicized Times: Democracy, Knowledge, and Policy

Abstract

Purpose
Acute moments of political tension highlight contestations of democracy. Yet the Greek demokratia—rule by the people—remains central to most ideals of democratic life (Gutmann, 1996). Civic education serves this democratic aim by teaching students to self-govern (Winthrop, 2020) and to develop what political scientists call civic competence: when citizens know the information and skills needed to navigate their political context and engage in political life (Jerit, et al., 2014; Lupia, 2016; Popkin, et al., 1999). Civic competence is situated in the lived experience of citizens, yet civics education curriculum has failed to incorporate diverse political realities. Instead, U.S. traditional civics curriculum (TCC) prioritizes fact-based learning about national electoral institutions—e.g., the three branches of government or the U.S. Constitution—as they are intended to work, rather than real-world examples of politics based on students’ situated expertise.
Analytical Approach and Framework
TCC implies that mutually beneficial citizen-state interactions reflect the American experience. However, this uncritical assumption has “produced a decidedly incomplete portrait of public life” (Soss & Weaver, 2017, p. 567) that overlooks how marginalized communities encounter ineffective and repressive state actors and institutions (Bruch, et al., 2017; Cohen & Luttig, 2020; Weaver & Lerman, 2010). To navigate a repressive state, students need competencies distinct from those required to vote. Marginalized youth receiving TCC are unlikely to learn how to “advance their core concerns” (Lupia, 2016, p. 255), just as privileged youth, who are most likely to enter positions of power (Carnes, 2018), experience diminished epistemic resources and diversity of perspectives, which limits their ability to advance public concerns. This represents a collective threat to the democratic commons. Critical scholars interpret such limitations in participation as political oppression but rarely address how it fosters epistemic oppression. In this frame,the exclusion of knowledge that students need hinders their contributions to knowledge production and diminishes overall shared epistemic agency. Civics is an excellent case for examining epistemic oppression in pursuit of collective civic competence. Indeed, given that discussion (talk) and action (votes) are central to the epistemic power of democratic institutions like schools (Anderson, 2006), civics curricular policy designed without care for diverse lived political realities “weakens the system’s ability to identify and address problems of public concern” (Benson, 2023, p. 1719).

Argument and Findings
By understanding TCC's harms through an epistemological framework, a frame I call civic epistemic oppression, I situate the origin of oppression in the knowledge system where existing epistemic resources—curricular materials—are “inadequate to the task of addressing the persistent epistemic exclusions that are causing epistemic oppression” (Dotson, 2014, p. 116). Taken together, I conceptualize the intersection of civic epistemic oppression and political oppression as civic burden to capture the holistic harm students experience when they are excluded from developing the knowledge and skills necessary to develop relevant civic competence and participate in democratic life.

Significance
By understanding the civic burdens faced by both marginalized and privileged youth, we can consider new approaches to understanding and reshaping the traditional civic curriculum in more inclusive and democratic ways.

Author

• Abigail Dym, Providence College