This fall, millions of students are returning to public schools, where they will be regularly tested on how well they are mastering math and reading but not on how well they understand the American political tradition. They are beginning the school year in a country where the federal government invests 100 times less money in how they learn civics than in how they learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
For a long time, we got away with failing to teach young Americans the genius of our liberal democratic system and why it is worth defending. That’s because both political parties broadly endorsed the system. But in 2026, when the president of the United States routinely attacks liberal democratic norms, and a rising left-wing fringe is calling for repealing large parts of the U.S. Constitution, it’s long past time for a renaissance in teaching young people how to protect their freedoms and to detect the dangers of a demagogue.
The country needs to put the formation of citizens at the center of the educational experience and make it lively and engaging for students. In a new Progressive Policy Institute report, “Teaching American Democracy: Understanding Who We Are as Americans and Why,” we lay out a detailed plan for doing this. We hope both political parties will engage in this effort. Still, we think Democrats, who surveys find face a patriotism deficit of 19 points among working-class voters, have a special political incentive to do so.
Public education was meant to keep the democratic experiment alive, but we’ve been failing to meet that foundational charge. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), students perform worse on Civics and U.S. History than in any other subject. A 2025 Gallup survey found that only about half (53 percent) of those ages 18-29 agreed “democracy is the best form of government.”
What’s wrong with how we teach civics, and what can we do to fix it?
The first major challenge is that many students see civics as boring. Middle schoolers are just half as likely to name social studies as their favorite subject as physical education, art, or math. It shouldn’t be that way. The American political tradition is extraordinary. In a world of kings and queens, the founders created a revolutionary system of self-governance meant to honor political equality and human liberty. Legendary fights erupted over how to empower a functioning government without threatening the freedom of individuals and how to address the country’s gravest failure to live up to its own professed values—chattel slavery. Learning about this ought to be exciting, especially since the ideals underpinning the Declaration of Independence still fuel today’s battles for social and economic justice.
But civics is made less interesting than it could be, in part because of the culture wars. Some blue states deemphasize stories that involve dead white males in order to be “culturally responsive” while 21 conservative states have placed illiberal constraints on what teachers can say in class about race. As a result, a 2026 iCivics survey found that nearly 6 out of 10 civics teachers worry about the “potential backlash for teaching something the ‘wrong way.’” In addition, many red states have deemphasized hands-on learning out of a (sometimes legitimate) fear that students will be enlisted in left-wing causes.
To enliven civics education, we should begin by renaming the course as “American Democracy.” The new nomenclature signals that school children are not learning merely about one type of government among many, but about a thrilling advancement for liberty and equality in world history. The course will explain not only how the American system works, but also the historical drama of how it came into being, and why.
The federal government should also provide financial incentives to states that give teachers the freedom to engage responsibly in discussions of politically charged issues and give students the chance to engage in nonpartisan, non-ideological, hands-on learning. Many students learn best by doing. Teaching students the various theories about why free expression and robust debate lead to better outcomes than letting one all-powerful ruler govern is important. But having students engage in a model Congress, where they come together to resolve issues, or contact local officials to seek better funding for a dilapidated public library, takes learning deeper.
The second challenge is that policymakers vastly undervalue teaching the American political tradition. Schools spend less on it, devote less time to it, and assess students much less often than they do for subjects like English and math. In grades 4–6, students spend about four times less time studying social studies than reading, and high school has comparatively fewer course requirements as well. On the NAEP, states must participate in state-level math and reading tests that make comparisons possible. That’s not true for civics.
This needs to change. All states should require three years of American Democracy, just as they typically require three years in math and English and hold students accountable for mastering the material. In a country where liberal democratic norms are under steady attack, helping all students understand who we are as Americans and why is as important as literacy and numeracy. In addition, states should be required to participate in a state-level NAEP so that we can find out who is engaging in the Mississippi Miracle of civics and learn from it. Right now, we have no idea.
Finally, American schools fail to explain the comparative advantage of liberal democracy adequately. When polls show that almost one-third of young Americans believe “Democracy is no longer a viable system, and Americans should explore alternative forms of government,” students need to understand more clearly what living under those alternatives entails. Excellent courses exist to do that. The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) Comparative Government class lets students learn about living in autocratic societies such as Iran, Russia, and China. The problem, however, is that vanishingly few students take the class. In 2025, fourteen times fewer students took the Comparative Government exam than the AP US Government exam.
States and the federal government should incentivize school districts to teach what it is like to live in nondemocratic societies. Just as American tourists paradoxically discover a great deal about their own country when they travel abroad and see what makes us different, so a course on nondemocratic societies could inspire the enhanced American patriotism found among immigrant groups, who know from first-hand experience the comparative blessings of American liberty.
The efforts to strengthen teaching about American democracy should be bipartisan, but if Republicans won’t go along, Democrats have a powerful political rationale for taking the lead. Although Donald Trump is arguably the least patriotic president in American history (no one else has sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power), the Democrats are perceived as being less patriotic.
Rather than arguing that we need to “strengthen democracy,” which fell flat because it invokes rules and processes, those on the center-left should run on patriotism, which has much greater emotional resonance. Run on teaching every American student that what makes our country great is our ideals. It’s a rebuke both to left-wing accounts which falsely suggest slavery is what makes America different, and right-wing accounts which erroneously suggest that you’re more American if you’ve lived here longer. Most Americans reject both approaches, and our schools should too.
