Civic Education Has Bipartisan Support, Generational Fault Line

In a letter to British philosopher Richard Price, Thomas Jefferson penned the following:

“Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.”

As America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s words hold extra weight when it comes to K-12 education — more specifically, civics education and teaching about landmark pieces of U.S. history like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

This year, EdChoice, in partnership with Morning Consult, surveyed a nationally representative sample of Americans and asked them a set of questions on the importance of civics education. The results were decisive. Sixty-four percent of Americans said it is “extremely” or “very” important for schools to teach civics and how government works in middle school, and 77% of Americans said the same about teaching these topics in high school.

Roughly three-fourths of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important for K-12 schools to teach about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, the polling found.

Refreshingly, there is strong bipartisan support for teaching these topics.

On the importance of teaching civics and how government works, 82% of Republican respondents and 80% of Democrat respondents said it is “extremely” or “very” important for high school students. More than four in five Republicans said it is important for schools to teach about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Democrats hold similar views, expressing only slightly less support.

At the same time, a stark divide exists between different generations.

At 84%, Baby Boomer respondents are overwhelmingly supportive of schools teaching students about the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Gen Z respondents, on the other hand, are less likely to say that schools should be teaching the country’s founding documents. Roughly two-thirds of Gen Z respondents feel schools should teach students about the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

While support for teaching about the Constitution, for example, among Gen Z respondents (66%) could be seen as quite strong when taken at face value, it is 18 points lower than Baby Boomers. Moreover, Gen X and Millennial respondents’ support for teaching about the Constitution registers at 78% and 77% respectively, much closer to that of Baby Boomers.

There is real reason for optimism in these data points.

In a moment when Americans seem to agree on almost nothing, large majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike want schools to teach students about civics, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. Consensus this broad is rare, and on a question this fundamental, it is worth pausing to appreciate. It offers a starting point that does not require winning a partisan fight first, something not easily found in education reform nowadays.

But the generational gap deserves attention.

Young Americans today are not hostile to teaching the nation’s founding documents, but their enthusiasm trails every older generation by a meaningful margin. An 18-point gap between the youngest adults and the oldest is not something to ignore.

Gen Z represents the most recent graduates of the very K-12 system this survey asks about. Their relative ambivalence on civics education raises a question every educator and policymaker should sit with: if support for teaching these foundational subjects softens with each rising generation, what eventually happens to the shared civic vocabulary that holds a self-governing nation together?

Americans across the political spectrum still believe the next generation should understand how their government works and where their founding ideals came from. That consensus is worth preserving.

With the nation’s 250th anniversary upon us, the task now is to ensure that conviction does not quietly erode, and to make sure the young Americans inheriting this experiment in self-government are, as Jefferson put it, “well informed” enough to be trusted with it.