,” one young woman says tentatively. “We were born here.”
It’s a good thing. Based on his years of making his students at the University of South Carolina Beaufort take the test given to immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship, most would be rejected.
“Thirty, 35% of the students will pass it,” says Dopf, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and former West Point instructor. “The rest of them are clueless. I mean, they’re just clueless.”
Most states require some sort of high school civics instruction. But with a recent survey showing that a third of American adults can’t name the three branches of the federal government, many think we should be aiming higherOver the past few years, a small but growing number of states have begun requiring students at publicly funded colleges to complete a civics requirement. That comes as polling indicates civics education is wildly popular across the political spectrum.
Civics — the study of citizens’ rights and responsibilities — fosters a sense of unity, advocates say, and an ability to deal with disagreement. It empowers citizens, and many people believe it could help heal America’s divides. Having it in higher education means they can look at issue in more sophisticated ways, perhaps weaving it into other classes.
“I feel we are in the business for making a case for America,” said Louise Dube, head of iCivics, which promotes civics education.
But what does it mean when those talking about civics often can’t be, well, civil?
Take North Carolina, where lawmakers and academics got into a heated battle over who should decide how civics would be taught.
Last year, North Carolina Republicans introduced the REACH Act, an acronym for “Reclaiming College Education on America’s Constitutional Heritage.” The bill required undergraduates to take at least three credit hours in American government and read a series of major U.S. history documents, from the Declaration of Independence to Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” They would also have to pass a final exam worth 20% of the final grade.
If the bill seemed anodyne on the surface, it met with intense pushback. Critics pointed to the bill’s “reclaiming” title, its attempt to dictate curriculum usually set by professors and that it was drafted by Jameson Broggi, an avowedly conservative U.S. Marine Corps captain and lawyer who has said curriculum must include “devotion to American institutions and ideals.”
The North Carolina act easily passed the state House in March 2023 and a first reading in the Senate. It seemed on its way to victory.
University of North Carolina officials and faculty were not happy.
“We tried to slow this down in House but had zero success,” Bart Goodson, senior vice president of government relations for the 16-school UNC system wrote to a fellow administrator in an April 2023 email, obtained by Broggi through an open records request.
“It was a ‘wrap yourself in the flag’ type bill and anyone who spoke against was essentially viewed as non-American,” Goodson wrote.
So, as the idea moved slowly through the legislative process, UNC faculty took matters into their own hands.
Wade Maki, chair of the UNC faculty assembly, worked with professors from four other campuses, including two historically Black universities, to draft a set of learning outcomes. They studied what’s being done in other states.
The resulting proposal, called .
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