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building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those need it most. ♪♪ >> communications support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat■! to democracy. >> welcome back, i'm joined by the ceo, welcome to the show. i. sandra day o'connor served in legislatures and had been a civil servant in the governmente

from a lot of different places and unrs how interrelated these things are. all of that is one system of governance and it on several people and she realized there had been less and less civic education being done since she was a childmi after she stepped down from the court. in 2009 she incorporated icivics and went on and became a standard bearer for the cause of civics education as a requirement to a healthy democracy and that a submission we have been on.

we lost her in december last year she had been able to serve the nation for many years and we have taken up her mantle. this is the largest civics education site in the country and we have assembled a coalition of 330■) members and e make the case that we need to invest in civic education. the situation we have right now is difficult and dangerous we cannot have sufficient civic invested subject in school and we have seen results. host: she testified before congress back in 2012 about the importance of civics education as well as i■5iv. >> we have learned our american

students when tested on math ass students of an equivalent age from other countries and i think that distresses us because our country has been pretty advanced in math and science we don't wantbehind in less is promoted n increase in education. there are so many hours in the day is schools have to concentrate on something and they tend to do more math and science unless and civics and i want to make sure we continue to teach civics to students as they go through my own concentration has been at the middle school

level because the brain is formed and they are eager to le get it and us not too early to start. students want to know how the works, they want to be part of it. can you talk about how you are funding and who you are working with on a regular basis? guest: it was lovely to hear her voice and she is right on as usual. we picked up where justice o'connor left off. nka policy team to advocate to have more civic education in the l5school curriculum.

we now work at the high school and we believe civic education n be a real force for good for our country if we invest in in this problem that she pointed to witches by pushing the importance of one disin anothery doesn't work because these things reinforce each other and it every child will be a community member when they come out of high school. we will all have to live for each other they want to know how to how to solve problems civic community. that is what we try to do to prepare students with knowledge, skills and disposition.

host: can you give us a base hen we talk about what we mean with civics education and how it is changed over time? guest: justice o'connor referenced her upbringing where training.uch everyone remembers schoolhouse rock, they can sing. there are different versions of it the investment in civic education started to decrease which is the best measure of whheudents are getting civics or not. ■7-it is not possible to provida

high quality civics education in that little of time. get it in elementary school you can't build on it and middle school and in high school you don't have the base for conversations about issues that are relevant in your lives. what we talk about? civics is a little bit different than other discipline and that is for of a sport. ge you need to know if i want to fix my school and i don't like the amount of money or resources my school gets i must go to the state and local sc the government had no control over education. i was like 101 to know the branches of government and those kinds of things.hr

what kind of skills needed are different today than it was years ago. one of the skills that are critical are being able to to other people you disagree with. need to understand that democracy is a system designed for this that's what happened, that's what happens will try to solve problems about the above chess system and we need to be able to this into each other to find a common agreement and be civil to each other and have structures to discuss that andhat. ... important civic skills is detecting misinformation as a surprise to no one in the

audience we have a digital democracy. the traditional channels of absorbing information are no longer the case. we get, young people gethe those are subject to a level of mis- and disinformation but no longer created. that puts an emphasis on consumer to understand what's going on. and what people don't know is that there are simple and clear o teach young people about how to consume digital information, and you can get a much better at consuming truth if you are trained. that should be done at scale for every student. the third one is the disposition. so we belong to one community. we belong to whatever temerity you live in. we are part of it and thatce that you need to be involved and you need to be a part of the

solution is really important for students to■ have. and they need to practice that. they need to practice service in their communities, whether it's a community garden or whether ay issues on small ground. whether it's about providing meals. whatever it is we need a way to have students feel like that part of something larger than themselves. >> host: i want to go to some statistics from the annenberg public policy center. they do an annual physics knowledge survey and those results are often used a metric of how we're doing in that regard. we've gbe some numbers, in the latest one, 66% of respondents could not name all three branches of government. 10%■e name two% could only mean one branch of government, and 17% could not

name any branch of government. in the summary of this, they say the civics knowledge survey released annually to celebrate constitution day also finds although two-thirds of americans can all three branches of government, though 10% came name two, this wasielded in the year of high profile events that propelled the working government into the daily news cycle. this was a nationally representave u.s. adults, not children. i wonder what you think the impact is of that level of knowledge in the united states? yeah, this is a serious, serious problem. and it's been the result of the policies we had for civic education f decades. we have invested in the past before our recent increase five cents in civics compared to $50 per student per year.

science is the least invested id math. it's not a surprise and it's a direct consequence of the choices we have made in allocating resources. people need to understand how these things are if americans don'tth understand how our system of governance works, then they are less likely to undbout policy issues and they are more likely to think a policy of kind of entertainment as opposed to something that will have an impact on their lives. the time has come for us t thinh is we absolutely must invest in the civic knowledge, civicskillf americans if we will have the

leadership and governance that we deserve. >> host: i want w to get to our collars present by want to read a bit more from that annenberg survey, which said in 2023 nearly six in ten,ith the with only some high school educatiod ty taken six course inigh school the focus on the constitutiona or judicil system. one-third of those with only someollege education, 33% said they said they ten a college course that focus on the system of government and the constitution. this gets back to what you were mentioning about only certain people seem to have access to civics education. >> guest: there's an enormous gap in equityr ability overall of civic education, some areas get a whole lot more. some school districts have debate club. they have visits to museums,

local historical sites. these are all things we knowl work. so if you look at the data from the national education as the mt serious standard for achievement by students at k-12, the last set of results showed that students in history and civics perform at the lowest level so 22% of students are proficient in civics. but if you start, so this is a specific picre. but if you start looking deeper, those students who get quality education, meaning that teacher is well trained to teach civics, do a whole lot better. so the reality of the picture gets ait little complicated. it's true americans in general

have not got enough civics. our students today definitely do not it's very and even who gets it and how. but mostly the quality of civics is a real issue. do we get civics that is irrelevant to the students? understand how all of these things that are relatively complex, compex vocabulary. what the mean to me in my life and i can use them to have a better life. that's the ability to do. we need people to be able to understand how this is relevant to their lives trim and lots of folks waiting with questions foe lines. let's start with jason in pennsylvania. go ahead, jason. >> caller: have though. i'm in icivics member and i'm excited -- yes, hello.■w excited because he's my two favorite favorite resource can c-span and icivics

together. imlking. i've been in icivics user for over ten years. it's a a fantastic resource. really engaged with students in learning at all different levels and ups look cited as a middle school teacher to have these resources and also i can't wait for civseally excited. my question is, how do you curate your material to be used in a country where civics to be a a device that topic and is become more a more difficult to teach it in schools? if you talk more about tha so hu guys together. >> guest: thank you so much. so have, it's about 400 teachers strong and they are part of icivics.uestion, jason, is really you.

we higher educators and educators know how to make advanced topic, direct and to engage students. so we don't, for example, higher on educators who know their students come to know the material and know how to make it fu f students. that's what we think is really importants. and yes, it's a very divisive topic w from that, rem% nonpartisan. and it takes a little doing,ght? it takes a look at our best method to do that is to maintain and independent review council where we present our materials, anything that could be potentially divisive to folks with differentiewpoints, academics from different former conservative meanings and more progressive meaning just to make

sure that we can find the language that is unifying. our goal is to unify the country. that's the theme of civic learning week through civic education, a w the time, putting effort to be able to live and walk the walk, you know, not just talk the talk from the talk more about civic learning week in terms of who it's for, what kind of resources are available in and out of the classroom? >> guest: thank you so much for that. national civics learning week coming up next week. we have programming all overy ts virtual. that portion is organized by our civics map coalition. our coalition has 330 member organizations. those 330 member organizations are devoted tond making civic learning a greater priority in

our country. we all agree we need to invest more so that we can sustain a healthy democracy. we organize this weeks of people can see what civic learning is and how it a unifying force for this year and beyond. it's our second annual civic learning week, and we have a big national forum in washington, d.c. at george washingtonon university. we are featuring many panels, one information literacy and disinformation. one on how to mak progress onont up, how do you do this work in depth in communities where there e dople whoon have. we talk about can we teach the elections in this moment, and at night will have a conversation with colleen shogan and

secretary education, and i will be interesting but the main program is a conversation with sotomayor■kjç and amy coney barrett. this is an incredibly important time to show people who are maybe not thought of as having similar points of view but who agree on the strength of our country, the reasons why we need to defend it, and the reasons why we n a pathway to work together. >> host: i can to folks you can find those resources at civic learning week.org. that's civic learning week.org. also a to point out that these that also offers a civics education resource called c-span in the classroom. you can find more information about that on c-span.org/classroom. free resources for teachers, students anddi the public as wel featuring c-span program in

public affairs coverage that's religious history, current events and the constitution as well as lesson plans and of the resources for educators. so that's c-span.org/classroom. now let's go to ralph in washington, d.c. good morning, ralph. , good morning. i want to congratulate this laid on her efforts. we definitely need it. i am 70 and a place on civics and then stunned bhe knowledge. if you don't understand civic you don't understand of the country was formed, the republican to get were given an hour i is to defend this. in the bill of rights it so important, the first amendment is freedom of speech. i mean, i'm w say that, i don't agree with what this person says, it's some type of speech him hate speech would have got a speech it is. and, therefore, the goveren to - what they've done and sent to people facebook and twitter and

other media outlets. i'm just stunned that people don't understand the significance of it. and in our schools insteadf teaching civics we're teaching the united states is evil, that you have victim and oppressive groups that are separated. you are and oppressive because your skin color and your victim because of your skin color. this is about the fisa stuff i've ever seen, stunning anything propagated and pushed. thank you. >> guest: so i'm going to just pick up on what the caller left off and thank you for your callc education space. i've been here ten years and icivics is by far the largest civics we teach about 9 billion students a year and work a bit popular because we stick to the facts and we stick to teaching

the ch4pildren in a nonpartisan way. we think it's really, really important. in 2019 we began an effort to try to reduce the partisanship or the divisions in civic education or it's called educating for american#v 300 people participated in the development of this roadmap. it's not a curriculum. it's a set of questions. and those questions ask americans to take a look at what happened in the past and determine how we should act i would urge you to take a look at that. this is really in depth and a lot of times people■■ want to he a purely good view of something or a purely negative view. we don't think that's the world today. there are ways to admit there are things we have done right. we have greatde