Citizen Dreyfus wants Civics; he's going to need a bigger boat
Teaching Civics wrong a second time won't help America slay the Progressive shark
I am probably preaching to the choir, but here goes…
Actor Richard Dreyfus briefly made headlines a few weeks ago when he said that the new Academy Awards diversity guidelines “make me vomit.” But he didn’t vomit when he said it. He could have at least wretched a little.
His vomit remark was later in the interview with Margaret Hoover, host of Firing Line. Dreyfus was really on the show to fix things. He wants American Schools to re-emphasize Civics.
Most of the interview was about Dreyfus’s efforts to re-invigorate civics education in the U.S. through his charitable effort, The Dreyfus Civics Initiative, through which he intends to: “Teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country…if we don’t, someone else will run our country.”
Good. I agree. Teach civics.
However, returning Civics to American classrooms will NOT correct those things Dreyfus says plague the country.
From the Dreyfus Civics Initiative website:
How is America Not Fulfilling Its Potential?
Despite having a political system that highlights individual freedom and responsibility, we fail to provide individuals with the skills they need... It is quite apparent that civic values have been absent … We have experienced conflicting political parties unable to compromise, violent protests that have showcased a government unable to foster peace... Extremism has plagued our government …. The lack of civility in debate that has been seen in our political bodies is ... On top of that, the average American citizen has a poor understanding of civics and the nuances of our political structure. Civics must be taught so that our future leaders have the skills they need…
QUESTION: Mr. Dreyfus, how will you do all that? How will merely teaching kids the constitution and the workings of our local, state and Federal governments inculcate those virtues? How will kids learn logic and rhetorical skills? Such skills are not taught today in any public school other than a few charters.
The only tool the Dreyfus Civics Initiate proposes on its website is a Civics Discussion Club. The description falls immediately into stultifying, snobbish expertisism:
“The Discussion Club will be facilitated by individuals with vast historical knowledge and a deep passion for civic education. Facilitators might be leaders in the corporate sector, lawyers, academia, school teachers – anyone with a deep interest in civic education…” and will “follow the Oxford Rules of Debate.” Also, “the purpose of the club is to get the general public to think critically and discuss how we can improve our country.”
Golly! Dreyfus will get the general public to think critically by using the Oxford Rules of Debate? Now I am no big-city Classical student, but it seems me that one ought to know how think logically and speak clearly long before encountering the “facilitators” at the Discussion Club who themselves know nothing of the Oxford Rules of Debate.
Dreyfus’s effort reminds me of an encounter I once had in the middle east. I confronted some employees about a flat tire. They “fixed” the tire by putting more air into it.
“But WHY was the tire flat?” I asked.
“Had no air,” was the answer.
Dreyfus, famous for his role as oceanographer Matt Hooper in the iconic 1975 film, Jaws, has found himself pushed off the starboard* side of the Orca into waters filled with people he is very uncomfortable swimming with (i.e. the Right, home-schoolers, Christians, traditionalists, etc). He nostalgically remembers a progressive civics education that was flawed and fading even when he was a kid.
Dreyfus’s understanding of civics is much like that flat tire I mentioned. He sees a deflated culture and thinks pumping more civics air into it will get it back on the road. But the air will leak out again. There is a hole. What do we plug it with?
Modern schools use a 100-year-old Progressive pedagogy based on John Dewey’s first premise that schools should be the agents of social change. The second premise, and an unchallenged one, of progressive civics is that government is the solution for ALL change. Modern Civics education, presumably the one Dreyfus remembers and desires, is inextricably tangled in that progressive orthodoxy. The foundation of that orthodoxy is the unconstrained vision of man’s nature.
Thomas Sowell quotes William Godwin in his famous book, A Conflict of Visions:
Godwin had little use for those “moralists — quite conceivably meaning (Adam) Smith— “who think only of stimulating men to good deeds by considerations of frigid prudence and mercenary self-interests,” instead of seeking to stimulate the “generous and magnanimous sentiment of our natures.”
This constitutional republic that Dreyfus wants to nobly protect did not emerge ex nihilo. Nor was it “Built from the ideas of the Enlightenment,” as the DCI website states.
Those same Enlightenment ideas (those of the unconstrained vision) fueled the French Revolution, which didn’t turn out so well. In fact, Enlightenment ideology was even more unfettered for the French who, at the time, had both Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine in Paris to stoke the Rousseauean flames.
So why did the Americans succeed and not descend into bloody chaos like the French? What prudential virtues did the American possess?
First, we had God. The Lockean principle that “all men are created equal” was tempered by the profound Judeo-Christian understanding that all men are also sinful, that they are fallen beings, imperfectible, and corruptible no matter how beneficent their actions or intents appear.
Progressive civics will never concede that mankind is selfish, irrational, ignoble and untrustworthy. Its failure to understand this truism is the source of the “it would have worked with the right people in power” trope. The wrong people are ALWAYS in power. So don’t give them very much of it, dummy.
Second, the Founders were all Classically educated. They studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew. They read all the classical works and understood the foibles and benefits of democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, republicanism and tyranny. They understood the populist Grachii and the reactionary Sulla. They loved the mythology and drama of the Greeks and the political and military prowess of Rome. The Founders were not mere products of Locke or Rouseau or Kant. (See Carl J. Richards’ excellent book, The Founders and the Classics). The Founders did not reject the ancient world and religion like the French did, but instead restored a classical liberalism using the great cautions the ancients bequeathed us.
How many times have you heard or read this:
Americans don’t how to talk to each other anymore.
This is usually followed by, “… due to our unprecedented polarization.”
Our inability to communicate or listen to an opposing view is not caused by exremism, but rather causes that extremism.
We don’t know how to talk to each because we are not trained to talk to each other. The only way to do that is to re-establish Classical Education as the cornerstone of the Republic. Let’s start there, Citizen Dreyfus, so that we can stand stoically on Lexington Green instead of screaming at the Place de la Concord.
Deus benedicat populo Americae
Salve!
* Starbord side is the right side. RIGHT side, get it?
Your experience in the middle east reminds me of an old Mutt and Jeff cartoon that Peter Kreeft writes about: Jeff is standing next to a pile of stones with a lit lantern on top, in the middle of a road, at night. Mutt comes along, sizes up the situation, and asks, "Jeff did you put that lantern there?" "Yes, Mutt." "Why?" "To warn the cars away so they wouldn't crack up on the stones." "Oh, and did you put the stones there too?" "Yes, Mutt." "Why?" "To hold the lantern up, of course."
Khan Academy and the National Constitution Center are pushing a new online civics course, even using AI to coach kids through 'rational' debate of the issues. But your point hits the same against them as against Dreyfuss: we are not miseducated because we are polarized, we are polarized because we're miseducated. We don't need 'nice lessons'. Classical studies will help our children think clearly, avoid pure partisanism, and spreak truth.