'Students spout opinions based on personal experience,' because reading is 'stressful'

The Sunday worship service at a St. Paul church ended when about 40 people entered and began shouting.

Do people have a First Amendment right to rush into a church, shout political slogans and shut down the religious service? Don Lemon, who reported on the anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, seems to think so. Wanting to worship in peace is a sign the evangelical Christians were "entitled" by "white supremacy," he said.

You'd think someone who once worked for a national news network would understand that worshippers of all colors and creeds have rights too. The protest, which targeted an assistant pastor who allegedly works for ICE, clearly violated the FACE Act, which “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to … exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

In August, an armed intruder killed two children and wounded 30 others at a mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. The evangelical worshippers probably remembered that.

American "schoolchildren do worse on civics and history exams than they do on any other subject," writes Richard D. Kahlenberg in the Washington Monthly.

Furthermore, young Americans seem blase about democracy. In a 2023 YouGov poll, 31 percent of those 18 to 29 years old agreed that “democracy is no longer a viable system, and Americans should explore alternative forms of government.” Mob rule?

"The right wants to erase unpleasant history, while the left talks of nothing else," he writes in a review of James Traub's The Cradle of Citizenship. The book finds some "glimmers of hope," writes Kahlenberg. But not many.

Traub found a partisan divide. Some red states ban “action civics,” fearing that teachers will mobilize students for left-wing causes. He suggests that “replanting a local creek or holding a model congress” does not have to be a “species of neo-Marxist social justice propaganda.”

In some blue states, teachers prioritize civic skills over knowledge, he writes. In part, that's because they want to be “culturally responsive” and avoid history lessons that feature too many white men. Also, they think too much reading causes "stress."

In numerous classrooms, students spouted opinions based on personal experiences but not grounded in any background reading.

He saw little "drill and kill" -- and few substantive discussions.

"Some red states take a jingoistic approach that soft-pedals America’s sins, while some blue states teach versions of American history that suggest oppression is the overriding theme," writes Kahlenberg.

Sadly, Traub concludes, “if Florida compels teachers to tell their students that America is God’s gift to the nations, Minnesota counters that ours is a tale of oppression and resistance.” 

He found educators who teach “that American history belonged to, and could be claimed by, all Americans," and show students how leaders have used the tools of liberal democracy to bring about peaceful change.  In a lesson on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Sheryl Hopfer, an eighth-grade history teacher in Texas, told students: “It’s like the Founding Fathers had a baton and they passed it on to the next generation.” And then Lincoln “passed it on to us.”

Traub also praises Virginia's history standards, adopted in 2022 and 2023 after fierce debates.

A national road map called Educating for American Democracy provides guidance on how to share the perspectives of different groups of Americans while telling “a common story, the shared inheritance of all Americans.”

Americans are not as divided as it may seem, writes Kahlenberg. A More in Common survey finds that "nine in 10 Democrats want kids to see the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in a positive light" and "eight in 10 Republicans say schoolchildren need to learn about slavery and segregation."

It's not that students learn about 1619 instead of 1776, writes Mark Lilla is a professor of humanities at Columbia, in a New York Times review of the book. They don't learn much of anything. Not 1619. Not 1776. Nada.

Traub found public school educators who are averse "to memorization of vocabulary, chronology and narrative — the elemental material out of which reality-based opinions and arguments can be formed," Lilla writes.

Many teachers are "convinced that their students are no longer capable of reading whole books or remembering what they read." As a frustrated Illinois teacher said: “History has been pushed to the side within social studies because there’s too much reading and writing . . . That creates too much stress, and it makes the kids feel bad about themselves.”

Classical charter schools, where students study the Western canon, seem to be providing a "more rigorous and civic-minded education" than traditional schools, Traub reports. He heard ninth-graders discuss Marcus Aurelius at a mostly-Hispanic classical charter near Dallas, and seventh-graders compare St. Anselm to Thomas Aquinas at a school in Phoenix.

“It was in classical schools,” Traub observes, “rather than mainstream ones, that I had most often heard the kind of reflective discussion that civic education seeks to foster.”