As US divisions deepen, civics lessons grow riskier

teaching civics – In classrooms from Virginia to Ohio and Pennsylvania, teachers say civics instruction has become more fraught as political divisions spill into everyday questions about bias, partisanship, and even what counts as “the right” Constitution. Survey results and po

Bathed in the glow of fluorescent lights at Alexandria City High School, 18-year-old Kit Vontz leaned back with a question that hung over her government class: what does hope look like when politics feels overwhelming?

Her classmates—slouched over desks as they discussed research on Gen Z attitudes toward democracy—were not speaking in abstractions. Trust in the government among young Americans is at a record low, according to the most recent Harvard Youth Poll. The survey, published in April, found just 26% of 18- to 29-year-olds felt hopeful about the country’s future. For educators trying to teach the machinery of democracy ahead of America’s 250th anniversary. that mood isn’t just background noise. It shows up in how students respond in class—and in how carefully teachers try to avoid becoming targets.

Federal and state lawmakers are betting the milestone can help revive civics. The country’s 250th birthday is being treated as the start of a potential decade-long civic renaissance. with this year’s kindergartners having their education bookended by the anniversaries of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution. Shawn Healy. chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics. a nonpartisan group providing civics resources to students and teachers. called it “a runway.” But inside classrooms. educators say the nation’s deep divisions are making that runway harder to navigate.

In Wayne County, Ohio, for decades after church services, Kimberly Huffman’s neighbors used to stop to commend her for educating local kids about the Constitution. Now, after the service ends and she exits her pew, they ask whether she is teaching the “right Constitution.”

Huffman. who has taught American government for 32 years. said that at one parent conference last fall. a mother asked whether Huffman was teaching her child to be a Democrat. It was the first time she’d received that question as a civics instructor. Huffman’s community is a Republican stronghold for half a century and voted for President Donald Trump in the last three presidential elections. Until the past few years, political rancor had never seeped into her classroom. Now, Huffman said, once matter-of-fact lessons have become tense.

The curriculum for juniors and seniors at the county’s vocational high school covers four founding documents: the Constitution. the Bill of Rights. the Declaration of Independence. and Ohio’s state Constitution. Huffman said she sticks to the words of the documents. doesn’t belong to either political party. and encourages students to check her voter registration. Still, students routinely interrogate how she covers topics like presidential powers.

“I still face hints of accusations of being biased, even though I feel like I’m tiptoeing. I feel like I’m being meticulously cautious,” Huffman said.

Across the teaching profession, that caution is spreading. In an iCivics survey published in January, more than half of teachers reported a fear of backlash for covering something the “wrong way,” and said basic civics concepts had become difficult to teach.

David Bobb. president of the Bill of Rights Institute. a civics-focused educational organization founded by libertarian Charles Koch. pointed to the country’s antagonistic political climate as a culprit. Over the last decade, he said, deep political divisions have influenced how people view the nation’s history. Democratic lawmakers at the state and federal levels have pushed to expand history curricula to include more on the slave trade. treatment of Native Americans. and other marginalized groups. Republican lawmakers have argued these efforts unnecessarily disparage Americans. They’ve moved to ban the telling of “divisive or anti-American ideology.”.

Policymakers from both parties have also introduced proposals to invest in civics education. but the ideas are often split along ideological lines. Conservative politicians have criticized civics initiatives that encourage students to participate in their communities, saying these tactics push activism. Democrats have accused the Trump administration of presenting a biased view in its programs.

The Department of Education last year emphasized a focus on “patriotic education” and awarded more than $150 million in history and civics grants. The agency also helped launch the America 250 Civics Education Coalition. bringing together predominantly conservative organizations to create K-12 and higher-education programming.

Bobb argued that the dogmatic way lawmakers talk about civics has had a chilling effect.

“What that means is that adults and young people alike start having that same aversion to civics as they do to politics,” he said. “Teachers are coming into this kind of climate, raring to make [civics] an antidote. But the young people still have a little bit of trepidation.”

In Pittsburgh, Jennifer Klein said her students’ forecasts about American politics each semester have grown darker. Some say it’s sunny and bright; others describe it as cloudy with a chance of torrential rain. Over the past few years. Klein said the answers have trended “gloomier.” She also said she has seen students growing more hesitant to express their opinions at the start of every school year.

That hesitation is something Josh Dunn, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has also seen in his college classes. Dunn, who also serves as executive director of the school’s Institute of American Civics, said many students fear being “canceled.”

“For the students, so many of them fear saying something that might get them, for lack of a better word, canceled,” Dunn said.

Klein and Dunn say civics classes can still do something essential: teach students how to disagree effectively—and politely. During a recent lesson on Federalist Paper No. 70, Klein watched her once-timid students begin to relish debating. The class was discussing Alexander Hamilton’s defense of a strong executive branch in the 1788 document. To defend their positions, students shouted across the room examples from history and current events. Some laughed as classmates tried to persuade them.

“Once they know they don’t have to be right all the time, once they realize that there’s more than just one other point of view, it kind of opens their mind,” Klein said.

In Alexandria, the same tension shows up as students try to live inside their own country’s competing narratives. In Fite’s third-floor government classroom at Alexandria City High School. he and his classmates studied white poster boards covered with projects from the yearlong course. They had researched federal agencies. interpreted judicial opinions based on their understanding of the Constitution. staged a mock Congress. and met with city officials about public policy issues important to youth.

Fite said the assignments helped him “reconcile” his fears with a deeper understanding of the country’s systems.

Zeanise Grandberry, 17, spent several minutes reflecting on her mock Congress work. She portrayed a Hispanic Republican congressman from Texas. Before the project. Grandberry. a second-generation American whose grandparents emigrated from Jamaica. said she didn’t understand how a person of color could identify as a Republican.

“When I first started researching him, I was like, ‘Yeah, there’s no way I’m gonna embody this person,’” Grandberry said, laughing. She called the representative’s office to learn more, and he ended up emailing back and forth with her.

“It was cool to understand where he was coming from,” Grandberry said. She still doesn’t agree with many of the congressman’s positions, but she said the project shifted her perspective.

“A lot of people can have a negative connotation of people just based on which side they’re on, red or blue,” she said. “I don’t think it should be such a rah-rah situation.”

Taken together. the classroom stories. the teacher surveys. and the policy debates show how civics—supposed to be the shared language of democracy—has started to feel like a high-wire act. The goals of America 250 and the push to boost civics education collide with a reality where teachers like Huffman say they feel “meticulously cautious. ” where students like Dunn’s say they fear being “canceled. ” and where even the founding documents can become contested.

For Healy and other civics advocates. the hope is that the America 250 moment can make civics a stronger antidote to political division. For teachers in places like Alexandria and Wayne County. the immediate work is more basic: keeping a classroom from turning into a verdict on the teacher—so students can wrestle with the system they’re inheriting.

civics education America 250 civics grants Department of Education iCivics Harvard Youth Poll Bill of Rights Institute classroom bias presidential powers Federalist Paper No. 70