Toward a Cohesive Union? Currents and Cleavages in State Civic Education Policy Discourses

• In Event: Values, Access, and Civics: The Politics of Equity in U.S. Education

Abstract

With civic education in the United States receiving renewed attention in state-level policymaking, this study explores the extent to which recently adopted civic education policies attend to the concerns of civic debt and polarization by examining policy messaging around desired civic outcomes. Through political discourse analysis of all civic education state policies enacted since 2017, we found the vast majority of policies espoused civic republican goals with varying degrees to which they addressed civic debt. This signifies congruence among state lawmakers that the rising generation of citizens should learn about the foundations and function of government, yet a continued disconnect between marginalized youth’s lived experiences of disenfranchisement and exclusion from the dominant narrative.

Authors

• Ariel Tichnor-Wagner, Boston University

• Ejana Bennett, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Hillary Parkhouse, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Ana Schcolnik, Boston University