Once upon a time, back in the 1950s and 60s, American students actually understood how their own government worked. Crazy, right? That’s because civics was a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Every high school graduate knew what the three branches of government were, how a bill became a law, and—brace yourself—even their own rights as citizens. This knowledge led to an era of unprecedented civic engagement. We changed the Constitution multiple times, passed the Civil Rights Act, expanded voting rights, and made actual progress. The people, armed with knowledge, held power to account.
Of course, that was a nightmare scenario for the ruling elite. An informed, engaged public? Perish the thought! Thus began the slow but deliberate dismantling of civics education in America. It didn’t happen overnight—no, that would have been too obvious. Instead, it was a death by a thousand cuts. First, civics was lumped in with history, then watered down to the point of irrelevance, and finally, in many states, disappeared altogether.
Coincidentally (or not), this decline in civic education lines up neatly with a rise in ignorance about basic governance and an erosion of democratic participation. Just look at voter turnout rates today compared to the mid-20th century. People don’t vote when they don’t understand how the system works, and guess who benefits from that? The same people who pushed to gut civics education in the first place.
This wasn’t an accident. The right-wing playbook has always been about control—control of information, control of education, control of the narrative. If people don’t know how laws are made, they won’t complain when those laws favor corporations over citizens. If they don’t understand the Constitution, they won’t fight back when their rights are eroded. Instead of churning out critical thinkers, our education system now specializes in producing obedient workers—just literate enough to run the machines but not informed enough to question why they’re being exploited. If it’s not on TikTok – it didn’t happen.
And where has this intellectual neglect hit the hardest? Unsurprisingly, the states with the lowest academic scores are the ones most resistant to proper civics education. Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia—places where underfunded schools, outdated textbooks, and deliberate curriculum sabotage keep entire populations uninformed. It’s no wonder these states consistently rank at the bottom in educational achievement and, surprise surprise, tend to vote against their own interests, but hell burning books is fun.