Why are college students so adept at pushing progressive causes and protesting for them? It might stem from a movement in higher education that “redefines civics as progressive political activism.”
The National Association of Scholars digs into that movement in a new 523-page report on the state of civics education on college campuses. The study, Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics, calls this movement “New Civics.”
The New Civics seeks above all to make students into enthusiastic supporters of the New Left’s dream of “fundamentally transforming” America. The transformation includes de-carbonizing the economy, massively redistributing wealth, intensifying identity group grievance, curtailing the free market, expanding government bureaucracy, elevating international “norms” over American Constitutional law, and disparaging our common history and ideals.
An executive summary of the advocacy group’s report lists nine findings on the state of civics education nationwide. Among them is that traditional civics education is in deep decay while the progressive New Civics movement has taken over.
It’s a movement that extends past the campus, the report argues.
Each individual college and university now slots its “civic” efforts into a framework that includes federal and state bureaucracies, nonprofit organizations, and professional organizations.
And the movement aims to take over the university completely.
The New Civics advocates want to make “civic engagement” part of every class, every tenure decision, and every extracurricular activity.
The report includes case studies from four public universities: the University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado State University, the University of Northern Colorado, and the University of Wyoming.
The findings back up the report’s main thesis. At Colorado State University, for example, there are more than 26 New Civics classes for every “Old Civics” course.
The report isn’t all doom and gloom. It also includes a series of recommendations to stop the current trends seen in campus classrooms.
Read them and the full executive summary here.
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