How Kids Can Rescue Civics Education

When the Constitution was finally signed in 1787 and the men who wrote it emerged from Independence Hall, a Philadelphia woman supposedly asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government America would now have. Franklin’s response? “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The key word in Franklin’s challenge was you. He was 81 at the time. He knew the fate of the new American republic would rest in the hands of future generations. For more than two centuries since, “we the people” have answered Franklin’s challenge by exercising our rights, duties, and sovereign authority as American citizens.

Unfortunately, today, fewer Americans understand their rights, duties, and authority than ever before. In fact, our civics ignorance has reached the level of a national crisis.

A 2018 survey found that only 36% of American adults could pass the multiple-choice citizenship test the United States administers to naturalizing immigrants. Only 13%, for instance, knew when the Constitution was ratified, and only 24% knew why we fought the British in the Revolutionary War. Worse still, while three-quarters of seniors passed the exam, 81% of Americans under 45 failed.

A study six years later confirmed that the generational knowledge gap was growing. In 2024, 70% of surveyed adults failed a basic civic literacy quiz. Only one-quarter of respondents felt “very confident” they could explain our system of government. One-third of U.S. adults did not even know we have three branches of government!

The most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Nation’s Report Card, track the same downward trend. In 2022, only 22% of U.S. eighth graders scored at or above proficient in civics, while 31% scored below the basic level for their grade. The gap doesn’t disappear in college, either. A 2024 survey of undergraduates found that 60% of them did not know the term lengths for members of Congress.

This is more than an embarrassing factoid or just another symptom of the broken U.S. education system. America’s unique system of government — indeed, our entire way of life — depends on citizen sovereignty and democratic accountability.

If American citizens don’t understand how our Constitution works or our role in its functioning, the problem is not so much that the government will stop working. The problem is that the government will stop working for us. It will work instead for special interests, such as the teachers unions, that stand to benefit politically and financially from widespread civics ignorance. They certainly won’t solve this problem. “We the people” must. 

Toward that end, this month the American Cornerstone Institute’s Little Patriots program launched a national Civics Bee. Students in kindergarten through fifth grade from across the country will participate by answering questions about America’s founding, Constitution, and government. The competition will culminate in national finals in Washington, D.C., in April. Winners will have the chance to take home prizes, including a grand total of $39,000 in award money.

The Little Patriots Civics Bee will give young Americans an incentive to learn how our country works and what citizenship requires of them. It will prepare them to help preserve the institutions of our republic now and in the future.

When the United States declared our independence 250 years ago, European royals and aristocrats laughed when they heard we would be a democracy. They scoffed at the idea that ordinary people could govern themselves, let alone a large, diverse nation. But for 250 years, we proved them wrong — so wrong that today, all those Old World monarchies that mocked our Founding Fathers have been replaced with democracies of their own.

But democracies don’t perpetuate themselves automatically. They require engaged, responsible citizens to protect them day to day and generation to generation. The U.S. Constitution, in particular, with its federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances, must be studied and understood to be sustained.

U.S. citizenship is the greatest civic blessing any people has ever enjoyed. Our Constitution protects our God-given rights and affords us greater justice, security, and opportunity than any other system of government. But freedom isn’t free. It requires “we the people” to learn and practice the habits of republican citizenship and pass them on to our children.

Thanks to efforts such as the Little Patriots Civics Bee, young Americans will not only be able to learn about the greatest Constitution in the world; they’ll be able to teach the rest of us about it, too.

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Dr. Benjamin S. Carson Sr. is founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute. He previously served as the 17th secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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