Civics courses being no longer part of US school curriculums, which means too many children fail to learn how their democracy works. With Trump attacking our core beliefs, is it to late to begin? Not if parents take action!

By Donald A. Collins | 26 September 2025
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Courses on Civics are no longer widely included in school curricula in the United States! No wonder free speech is no longer well understood by Americans. According to a survey, nearly 50% of our citizens could not name the three branches of our government.

There are countless proponents for including Civics in school curricula.

There is a vast level of ignorance on how our democracy works as is well explained in this article:

Six former U.S. education secretaries, serving both Democratic and Republican Presidents, are sounding the alarm about the grave danger our constitutional democracy faces. Years of political polarization have culminated in riots in our cities spanning months, and the storming of the U.S. Capitol. They point to a root cause of our plight: our failure to provide sound civics and history teaching in our K-12 schools.

Even when civics and history are taught, there is discord concerning the content and how to teach it. And too often, teacher unions, rather than modeling positive social behavior, instead promote indoctrination of students on partisan political viewpoints. They also make outlandish demands in exchange for teachers returning to the classroom to provide the services they’ve been hired to fulfil in-person schooling for our children.

This is far more than a slippery slope — it’s an outright abandonment of a fact-based education in exchange for an agenda-based indoctrination.

Read the full article here.

Recently, my great granddaughter turned 13 and had her Bat Mitzvah, and she wrote me a thank you note for sending her a gift: Howard Zinn’s “Young People’s History of the United States”.

At this addition of Zinn’s book was preceded by a longer book published many years ago, but neither book has been out of print since the demand has continued. I have bought copies of this book for a number of people since it perfectly illuminates readers to understand the basis for our constitutional government and the progress or lack of progress that those principles have betrayed over our history of 250 years.

Now, since civics is no longer a school subject, it is even more important than ever to see that this book falls into the hands of not only our young people, but certainly most of the adults, where we learn that some 47% of our citizens cannot name the three branches of our federal government.

Understanding history is so important because, while it constantly changes, you can often see patterns in history that replicate current situations, such as how our government is functioning.

This is particularly true now since we are in a unique time in the United States, when our president has decided to ignore observance of our founding documents, such as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

When I was in high school, we were offered a course in civics, which explained the nature of our democracy and how its checks and balances help preserve it.

Unfortunately, as I explained above, across the nation, a course in civics is not often offered to high school students.

Far too many Americans either do not know or can’t remember that, as our constitution was being written back in 1790, there was concern on the part of many that there were not specific enough mentions of what rights citizens should always receive.

Consequently, before the Constitution was ratified, they added the 10 rights, which actually were the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, which has now subsequently had 27 amendments, including those first 10.

As those books I sent disclose one of the key amendments is the First Amendment, which is the right of free speech, which was just seriously tested when comedian Jimmy Kimmel had his TV program taken off the air because of something he said that did not please President Trump.

The reaction against Jimmy Kimmel’s removal and his subsequent reinstatement shows that the key amendment about free speech can still be effectively used against anyone who would deny such a right.

However, keeping such rights in a democracy is the constant responsibility of all our citizens. It is very easy, as history has proved, to lose democracy as Mr. Trump is trying to accomplish.

Of course, no document is perfect and the perfect example is the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment calls for the right to bear arms, which was a demand from southern slaveholders who wanted full rights to own guns to control the slaves they owned.

That amendment has subsequently fostered a dangerous situation where firearms cannot be adequately controlled to avoid killing.

My point is the importance that anyone who believes in democracy should understand the rules so that protests can be mounted and votes can be used to overturn bad actions by the government at every level, but particularly at the federal level and in our higher courts, which have a huge effect on keeping our democracy.

So it is vitally important that courses in civics be reestablished in our school systems. It may be more exciting to teach technology or to be able to get quick answers from artificial intelligence.

However, it is so important to give our younger generation a presentation of our constitution and the civil rights that it demands if we expect our democracy to survive over time.

Of course, the Trump administration may well succeed in destroying our democracy since we have ignored the importance of offering this basic instruction in civics for far too!

Final thought: It is up to parents in the absence of any likely action while trump is in office to make sure that their children understand that there is no partisan reason not to teach them to understand how the machinery of government works, so that the free speech and other vital qualities offered in the Constitution have provided the unique country in which they now live.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 60 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?” and “Trump–unrestrained dangerous liar!”.

Why indicting James Comey may come back to bite Trump

Trump’s DOJ VINDICTIVELY INDICTS James Comey!

Jimmy Kimmel is Back!

Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here