Several months ago, the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) initiative announced $600,000 in grant money to five organizations for K-5 Pilot Projects in civics education. EAD is a national civics advocacy project that has lots of money and prestige. When it went public in 2021, six former U.S. secretaries of education, three of them appointed by Republicans, signed a letter of endorsement in The Wall Street Journal.
One of the recipients of this hefty grant was the Georgia Council for the Social Studies in partnership with the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement and the state Department of Education. The grant, it was said, will help Georgia “better equip our K-5 teaching corps with the pedagogical skills and content knowledge” to send kids to higher grades with “grounding and an inquisitive mindset towards civics and history.”
You should pause over the term “inquisitive mindset.” It’s a bright red flag — not because of the words themselves, but because of the people who will activate them. Where do social studies teachers stand on civics?
That’s not a hard question. A Rand Corp. survey found that the No. 1 outcome of social studies instruction in their eyes was not knowledge of government, law, or U.S. history, but “To be tolerant of people and groups who are different from themselves.” Persuading students to see themselves as “global citizens” slightly beat instruction in the Bill of Rights. Facts and dates came in last, with only one-third calling them essential.
The National Council of the Social
