Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
10/09/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/09/2024 18:36
A Century-Plus of Civic Education: What the Textbooks Show
Did the United States have a golden age of civics education? What topics did teachers deem most important in past eras? We delved into 87 textbooks spanning 1885 to 2000 and found a gradual shift of focus from government structures to individual actions. Yet the progression also reflects issues facing the nation during certain periods. Today's educators, like those in the past, must strike a balance in civics education between the contemporary and the enduring.
About the Author
Jed Ngalande is a research assistant for the Hoover Institution Working Group on Good American Citizenship. He is a graduate of Stanford University, where he studied biology and economics, while also expressing a passion for civics and government through participation in the Stanford Daily as a beat reporter and the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Partnership Fellowship.
About the Working Group on Good American Citizenship
Within the Hoover Institution's Center for Revitalizing Americans Institutions (RAI), the Working Group on Good American Citizenship seeks to craft and communicate policies and practices that nurture good citizenship in the constitutional democracy Americans inhabit-policies and practices that support the principles, convictions, character traits, and associations upon which liberty depends. Consisting of high-quality, nonpartisan research, analysis, and communications, our work is anchored to what Alexis de Tocqueville called "reflective patriotism" and seeks to cultivate in Americans young and old an affirmative attachment to the nation that Lincoln termed "the last best hope of earth."