Jenna A. Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, has co-signed an open letter to Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) regarding their support for the Civics Secures Democracy Act. The letter, written by members of the National Association of Scholars’ Civics Alliance, urges these legislators to withdraw their support from the bill, which promises to subsidize a progressive action civics curriculum if passed into law.
“Civics education is safeguarding our republican ideals, but it must be done right,” Robinson said. “Several bills currently under consideration promote activism at the expense of a sound civics education.”
The Civics Secures Democracy Act is designed to restore the importance placed on civics education in American classrooms, but, as the open letter warns, the bill promotes an ideologically biased view of what that civics education should include. One way the bill does this is through its emphasis on “media literacy,” “evidence-based practices,” and improvement of “knowledge and engagement … [among] traditionally underserved” students. Although these phrases sound innocuous, they are often used by education professionals as code for action civics and critical race theory. The bill would also force states to accept action civics and critical race theory if they wished to receive federal funding.
Other signatories include Mark Bauerlein, Professor Emeritus of English, Emory University; Roger Kimball, Editor and Publisher, The New Criterion; Stanley Kurtz, Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center; and Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars.
To read the open letter and learn more about the Civics Secures Democracy Act, click here.