TEACHING CIVICS TO STUDENTS, PARENTS
Perhaps at no moment in recent American memory has a widespread understanding of civics been more crucial. Yet the portents are ominous.
The latest surveys show that fewer than half of American adults can correctly name the three branches of government, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “nation’s report card,” this year for the first time in its history reported declines in eighthgrade scores on its civics exam.
It’s important to understand how civics education works — how it can and does affect students and their families and influences subsequent civic engagement in the community.
The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on civics, has just published new research, based on extensive data from Indiana, that adds to the discussion of how civics education works.
It is generally understood that political attitudes are shaped across family generations in two ways: Political influence can flow down from parents to their children (“trickledown” political socialization) and also up from children to their parents (“trickle-up” socialization). But how significant and pronounced are these processes? How do they work? And how might they differ for families from different backgrounds?
We evaluated more than 580,000 individual records. Our findings were significant.
Consider this trickledown discovery: Children whose mothers voted in the previous presidential election were 20.3 percentage points more likely to vote in the first election in which they were eligible to participate. That indicates a 64% increase in the probability of voting.
Or consider, the trickle-up finding that, for white families, having a child who voted in their first age-eligible election was associated with a 4.9 percentagepoint increase in the probability a mother votes in the next presidential election. But in nonwhite families, that figure jumped to a 6.6 percentage-point increase. In families whose children do not qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, the increase was 4.8 percentage points; but in families whose children do qualify for free and reducedprice lunch, it was
6.1 percentage points.
Why does this matter for education policy? First, it’s clear that trickle-down and trickleup political socialization not only happen but also happen to a significant degree. Second, our research suggests a pathway for civics education “spillover” effects — in other words, civics education can improve civic outcomes not only for students but also for entire families.
O’Connor, the former U.S. Supreme Court justice who founded our institute, has a passion for civics education and has frequently said that civics must be taught anew to each generation. Ongoing research in civics will help make such teaching more effective for current generations of Americans and many to come.