Teach the republic: Why every civics crisis traces back to teacher preparation

• America’s civic knowledge crisis undermines self-government, with fewer than half of adults able to name the three branches of government.
• Teacher preparation is the key leverage point: well-trained educators can multiply civic understanding across thousands of students over their careers.
• Scalable programs at public universities, along with continuing education for teachers, could transform civic culture ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.

At a contentious school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, anger and frustration boiled over during a public comment session on the district’s transgender rights policy and racial equity plans. The tense gathering was marked by outbursts, insults, and recriminations before a unanimous vote by the school board halted the proceedings and police cleared the hall. One person was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct. Board members – former PTA presidents and local business owners – sat frozen, lacking the constitutional grounding to navigate the chaos. This scene, replicated across America, isn’t about left versus right. It’s about a republic that’s forgotten how to govern itself.

Not every American goes to college. But every public school teacher does. That simple fact should be central to any serious plan to rebuild our civic culture.

The problem is no secret: fewer than half of American adults can name the three branches of government, and most cannot list the freedoms in the First Amendment. College students, despite years of formal education, fare little better – just 31 percent can identify James Madison as the “Father of the Constitution,” and only 28 percent know the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. These are not harmless gaps in trivia; they are cracks in the civic foundation. Less than a quarter of Americans trust the government in Washington to do the right thing. A citizenry that cannot articulate the framework of its own government is more vulnerable to misinformation, manipulation, and division.

Meanwhile, other nations put us to shame. Estonian students rank fourth globally in civic knowledge, with their education system emphasizing constitutional understanding from an early age. Singapore requires civic education through its National Education program and citizenship education curriculum. American students can’t explain their own Constitution, while students abroad master theirs.

Parents across the political spectrum want this to change. A 2022 Jack Miller Center survey found 89 percent of parents say teaching the nation’s founding principles is “very important,” and 73 percent want schools to prioritize the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. 92 percent say students should learn about key historical figures, even if those figures held controversial views. Parents aren’t asking for less civics; what they want is more engagement with our history and ideals, taught seriously and taught well.

Yet so much of the national conversation about higher education reform focuses on elite, highly selective institutions – the Ivies, the flagship R1 universities, the top-tier liberal arts colleges. Those schools play a vital role in shaping our national discourse and in advancing new innovative ideas and research, but it is critical to remember that they educate a small fraction of Americans and an even smaller share of the nation’s teachers.

The day-to-day people who run our local institutions and governments – school board members, county clerks, city councilors, nonprofit directors, small-town mayors – are not products of elite universities. They come from the same public schools and state universities that serve the vast majority of Americans. These are the people charged with stewarding the public interest: making zoning decisions, managing budgets, ensuring public safety, and shaping local education policy.

If our aim is to sustain a functioning, self-governing republic, then it is not only appropriate but essential that deep constitutional study be centered in ordinary institutions. We cannot confine this work to boutique seminars for the well-connected and already powerful. The work must also happen where most Americans – especially future teachers – actually train: regional public universities, teaching-focused colleges, and continuing education programs that are accessible and affordable.

The cultural shift we need will not come from tinkering with semester requirements or adding standardized tests. It will come from going upstream and transforming the preparation of the people who will teach civics in the first place. Teachers are civic multipliers. A single well-prepared teacher can reach hundreds of students a year, thousands over a career.

Research demonstrates the powerful role of teacher content knowledge. In one study of Grade 11 mathematics, 77 percent of the variation in student achievement was explained by differences in teacher content knowledge, underscoring the transformative potential of deep subject mastery. By strengthening the civic and constitutional fluency of teachers, we can meaningfully enrich classroom dialogue – and, over time, reshape the tone of our broader civic square.

Yet more than half of all secondary school history students are taught by teachers with neither a major nor minor in history. The numbers for political science are likely worse. High school social studies teachers are among the least supported in schools, teaching larger classes and taking on more non-teaching responsibilities than other teachers. This is educational malpractice at scale.

Utah Valley University’s Master of Arts in Constitutional Government, Civics & Law (MACGCL) is built for exactly this purpose. It immerses educators in founding documents, Supreme Court cases, and the philosophical traditions that shaped American democracy. The teaching track combines constitutional depth with advanced pedagogy, enabling educators to lead civil, substantive discussions in politically charged classrooms.

The research track, with a residency at Pembroke College, Oxford, prepares graduates to contribute to the scholarly conversation on constitutional law and political development. This is not an R1 research program designed primarily to generate journal articles. It is unapologetically practical, aimed at putting constitutional mastery directly into the K–12 space where it can do the most cultural good.

Arizona State University’s Master of Arts in Classical Liberal Education and Civic Leadership, housed in its School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, presents a complementary path. Its curriculum blends classical political philosophy with modern civic challenges, taught through Socratic dialogue. Students wrestle with texts from Plato to Lincoln while developing the leadership skills to apply those ideas in real-world contexts.

Like UVU, ASU’s program is designed to produce civic actors – educators, nonprofit leaders, and public servants – who can bridge reflective understanding with daily practice. These graduates are cultural carriers, bringing the habits of deep reading, rigorous thinking, and civil exchange into the institutions they lead.

These programs are doing incredible work, but one-off degrees, even excellent ones, cannot by themselves shift the culture of civic education. The real power comes when we create cohorts of teachers as they are groups trained together, equipped with the same constitutional depth and pedagogical skill, and supported through ongoing collaboration.

The Ashbrook Center in Ohio has been building such networks for years, hosting summer academies and seminars where teachers return annually to deepen their understanding of the Founding and exchange classroom strategies. Each Ashbrook teacher can reach up to 5,000 students during their career. Gettysburg College offers immersive programs rooted in American history and democratic practice that bind educators into lasting professional communities.

Now imagine scaling that model through our public universities. Each state could run annual cohorts of 25–50 educators who complete graduate-level civic training through programs like UVU’s MACGCL or ASU’s civic leadership degree. These teachers would not just return to their own classrooms; they would serve as civic leaders for their districts, mentoring colleagues, running professional development, and modeling how to teach first principles in a divided age. If just 50 teachers per state complete these programs annually, and each teaches 150 students per year for 20 years, that’s 7.5 million students reached nationally – a generation transformed.

The economics are compelling. America spends about $857 billion annually on K–12 education – roughly $17,300 per pupil. By comparison, a master’s degree in education averages $45,000, less than the cost of educating just three students for a single year (3 × $17,300 ≈ $52,000). Some programs are far more affordable: Western Governors University charges $4,125 per six-month term—around $8,250 annually. For a fraction of what we already spend per pupil, we could dramatically strengthen the civic and constitutional fluency of teachers. That small investment would change classroom conversations, and over time, the tone of the civic square itself.

For the price of a single administrative position, a state could fund several complete master’s degrees in constitutional government – four to five in many cases. The return on investment is extraordinary: teachers with strong content knowledge don’t just marginally improve outcomes; they transform them. Research shows that completing a high-quality civics coursework – emphasizing depth, discussion, and understanding – can increase the likelihood of voting by 3–6 percentage points. In contrast, civics education structured around rote memorization or test-based knowledge requirements yields no meaningful improvement in youth voter turnout.

Evidence from existing programs proves this works. Georgetown University research, confirmed by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse, found that students in the We the People curriculum scored significantly higher on both civic knowledge and civic dispositions than their peers. Generation Citizen programs showed a 26 percent difference in civic self-efficacy between treatment and control groups, with 90 percent of students increasing their belief they could make a difference.

Alongside new degrees, states should invest in continuing education – summer seminars, weekend workshops, and online certificate programs that reinforce constitutional literacy and civil discourse skills. Hosted by universities, departments of education, and nonprofit partners, these offerings would build a continuous pipeline of civic formation for educators. Cultural change in education is never the work of a single inspired teacher or even a small group of paradigm-shifting educators; it takes a durable network of colleagues and a sustained community of educators who, year after year, are grounded in the same civic mission, sharing best practices, and renewing the profession from within.

The moment demands urgency. The 2026 semiquincentennial – America’s 250th birthday – is approaching. We can either limp toward it as a nation that’s forgotten its own founding, or we can launch a moonshot for civic renewal. In 1957, Sputnik sparked a revolution in science education. Today’s civic ignorance should trigger the same urgency. The difference is, we don’t need to invent new programs – we just need to scale what works.

Public universities with schools of education should adapt the Utah, Arizona, Ashbrook, and Gettysburg approaches. States could offer tuition assistance, salary incentives, or loan forgiveness for completion. Philanthropies committed to civic renewal could underwrite scholarships, residencies, and cohort programs. This would be a far more strategic investment than scattershot “civics awareness” campaigns. By focusing on the one profession every American encounters – and the ordinary institutions that train them – we can embed constitutional literacy and civic virtues into the DNA of public education.

Importantly, this isn’t a conservative or liberal agenda – it’s an American one. The parent poll data shows overwhelming bipartisan support. The crisis crosses all demographic lines. And the solution is refreshingly practical: invest in the people who teach our children. Not with more mandates or standardized tests, but with deep knowledge and the confidence that comes from mastery.

James Madison warned in an 1822 letter to Kentucky’s Governor that, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

Knowledge does not just appear; it must be cultivated, deliberately and systematically. Programs like UVU’s MACGCL, ASU’s MA in Civic Leadership, and the teacher cohorts built by Ashbrook and Gettysburg are more than degrees or seminars. They are cultural infrastructure – forming custodians of constitutional understanding who will carry that inheritance forward.

Every school board meeting that devolves into chaos, every local government that can’t function, every civic institution that fails – these are symptoms of a republic that has forgotten how to govern itself. The next time someone complains about political dysfunction, ask them: What are you doing to train the next generation of civic leaders?

The Founders understood this. They knew republics aren’t sustained by luck or inertia, but by each generation consciously choosing to prepare the next. That preparation begins in the places where teachers are made. Not every American will study the Constitution in depth. But if every teacher does, our civic culture will be far stronger and our republic far more secure.